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