Trips & Reports

Stunning pitches -- probably a good Sunday trip. No difficult SRT but there's a fair amount of it! Wouldn't recommend it any time soon though, since there's a dead sheep at the bottom of the first pitch series right next to where you land and it smells horrific.

Running on a luxurious 6 hours of sleep the day began ridiculously efficiently. Jacob was already up and had made breakfast allowing for a fairly efficient start which was required as we needed to go pre-rig the first pitch of County and leave our SRT kits there. We didn’t prerig the second (which would later reveal itself to be a mistake) as we planned to exit via ignorance is bliss which apparently doesn’t require SRT. We got to the cave... read more

The grand return to Bull Pot Farm Finally!!! It did not disappoint featuring all the chaos you expect...with twice the efficiency! Our first trip of the weekend was planned to be Magic Roundabout combined with a wander into Woodhouse way. Now the problems began quickly. You see we couldn’t acquire a new version of the Magic Roundabout description and the old one was…. less than helpful. Quite confused we were not entirely sure if we needed a 25m rope or... read more

For clarification if anyone wants to do the Magic Roundabout route in the future: the old Northern Caves descriptions on the drive are not particularly helpful, since the reverse route has more recently become the established route and can be done as a pull through (since you are going down Aquarius Shaft). Therefore, if you are doing MR, don’t wait for Bob’s Boss to look for the passage to the right, start looking for a smaller stumpier stalagmite that precedes... read more

Marble Steps has turned out to be a new favourite cave! The day started somewhat painfully, having only managed to achieve about three hours of sleep the night before. Breakfast was grotesquely burnt pizza that I had made the previous evening before standing around in the kitchen trying to find some motivation. Gear collected from my haunted cellar, Paulina and I jumped into Ade’s car ready for a long day of caving. We collected Liam and were waiting for Jacob... read more

~Trip precis~ Turns out the club doesn’t seem to have many 35m ropes We tested the new key place. It worked We drove Inglesport café was open once more! (Bank holiday only) I was pleased We had food, and acquired Forbes and John The walk was long The cave was pre-rigged. The packing was for nought. The trip down was speedy. Rosie and I pondered going back and rigging shadow route for fun We carried on Ade suggested going along the long, long crawl It was long Nick did it backwards for... read more

After an 18+ month hiatus from caving thanks to the big C, I was ready for my second trip of the summer to get my caving muscles back into shape. With the CPC's winch-less meet going on, we had planned to head up Ingleborough to do... something underground. After a Morrisons breakfast we headed to Clapham for a swift change. Weather was forecast to be overcast and drizzly for most of the day, but water levels had appeared low at... read more

(…continued from previous trip.) It was now getting on for about 4 in the afternoon. We'd planned to go down Hurnel Moss, but this plan was scuppered when we were informed it had been derigged the previous day. Not to be discouraged, we quickly came up with a plan to go from Marilyn to Small Mammal. There was some trepidation at the entrance, with Chris worried about difficulty, and Jean-Luc keen to get home at a decent time. However, we... read more

( a joint report by Paulina and Rosie) It was a blood hot, sweat boiling day when our tale of terror begins. Beneath the benignly looming mountain of Ingleborough three naive cavers set off for an efficient adventure, unaware of the lurking danger that stalked them. For the week prior some of them became infected with a horrendous disease -- a taste of fun. It started off innocently. A laxer attitude than usual. A later start. A café breakfast. The next... read more

Waking up after a third night of wild camping and so so so much walking all limbs where agonised, but this didn’t matter for today was Rosie’s birthday which meant we were obligated to do an Easegill Traverse. Fortunately some preparation had already occurred the day before….. *Queue flashback* Arriving at Easegill after camping the previous night at the Lake District we realised that our original goal of transporting all our camping and caving gear as well as rigging and route finding... read more

My first impression of Pippikin was a particular sort of bemused relief, having stumbled around the hillside for over an hour attempting to find it. The CNCC description did not detail what side of the wall Pippikin was located, but the cave map placed it just to the right if coming from Bullpot Farm and Jean-Luc had vague memories of it being on that side too. By the time we had thought to check the other side, the sun had... read more

With my housemate taking the printer and the store annoyingly inaccessible, a description dilemma occurred before the trip even began. Fortunately mine and Rosies artistic capabilities managed to produce two one of a kind descriptions- one of the wet route and one of the dry route, handmade and ready to go. I packed some rope as Rosie cooked a restaurant level dinner and sleeps were had. This meant we were ready and organised for a fairly efficient start, being picked... read more

The story of Sell Gill Holes really starts the night before in Paulina's house where, her housemate having taken the printer, we were reduced to handwriting descriptions and drawing topos. I even witnessed Paulina's legendary nail varnish method in which the application of said chemical mixture to sandwich bags takes off the labelling. Always looking out for the easy job, I cooked whilst Paulina faced the task of deciding what rope to pack in how many bags. The day got off... read more