Trips & Reports 2008

Take water into this cave! Its boiling hot and i almost passed out from dehydration! thank god for water dripping from the ceiling-yummy!

Despite turning out of the cottage the wrong way and going down loads of little windy lanes we found the place fine, had a great change in the sunshine and amazingly found the cave without any trouble (thanks to mark- the book had said its right next to a 1mX1m rock... yea like theres only one of them in a valley!!!). The leading and rigging was a joint effort between mark and I, most of it involved looking at the... read more

muddy faces te he!!! (welly water on head not so cool!)

Didn't like it :( Big exposed traverse with a fixed line you can't rely on. Free climbs over smooth calcite flows with water running over them and a big (mahoosive) drop below and nasty awkward overhanging exposed climbs around protruding obstacles. We didn't have enough rope either, so it was free climb time all over. We made it all the way to the uPVC patio door which goes through to Cathederal Show Cave, through which we could hear classical... read more

Never again....

i laughed for most of the trip and me and dom were being incompetent and behaving like children. I also learnt that i cant walk down muddy slopy hills on the way back from the cave.

Full report in Wales Log Book. We went to a dig we visited the year before. As the weather was nice we played at moving rocks, before deciding someone had spent alot of time backfilling the dig (which had been a decent size previously). So we stopped and refilled and headed back. Later found out that people had been digging in the sink for decades, but the limestone in the area is odd to say the least and impenetrable to cavers. An... read more

I've done Large Pot before but certainly don't remember it being quite such a struggle! Having consulted with Mark, it would appear that the first trip didn't go into the Red Herring series as I suspected but in fact did the route we did today, and went through Arcadia into Necropolis. On today's trip the entrance was vividly remembered but from Thornton Hall onwards it may as well have been an entirely new cave! As Andy G will attest to, don't... read more

How can Faff factor not be a 5? We were all meant to be caving! http://www.cefn-yr-erw.co.uk/index.htm

Daren on the first day of Wales. What a start! It was grim weather, cold, with rain in the air. And having not caved for a few months launching straight into Daren was going to be a 'hit the ground running' sort of beginning to the week. After getting changed Matt E started walking in one direction, but Gary, running on Ade's instuctions called him back for another direction. After a walk up the hill side and Gary incurring injury... read more

After the SRT training course we headed to TSG and stayed the night. Had lots of fun and caver shenanigans. Then we split into lots of different groups going in JH, Titan and Peak. My group were going to do some bolt climbing in the area past the "lake of 1000 banana skins". However we had a group of 5 people going down titan in front of us so we had to leave drill kit behind and not do some... read more

Could this trip have been any more faffy?!? High water levels plus incoming storm of doom means we choose to do rowten. 1) arrive at container a bit late... 2) attempt to leave container only to find out that I need a new car battery. Get jump start from Andy. 3) slow traffic. 4) EFFICIENT (no, really) breakfast at bernies see's us catching up time and leaving before midday. 5) get to parking for rowten to find seven cars, at least one going... read more

You forgot the bit about Mark checking the guy's legs out!

A superb and highly successful trip. With the exception of an aborted attempt six months back (water levels too high to pass Bell pitch), I haven't been down Ireby Fell since I was a fresher myself. This trip reminded me what an excellent and varied trip Ireby is. We arrived to find numerous cars parked at Masongill, and given the recent wet weather we expected Ireby to be rather packed. We were surprised to find ourselves to be... read more

After all my wussing around about caves with ropes in I totally loved this! Stringy, dry and spacious. Ace! I want to do it again.

Because we were being "efficient" on the ropes we'd packed, we rigged the main hang from a point about half way along the rift (instead of the very end). This was a nice change and provided extra interest by hanging a bit closer to the waterfall (still completely safe). There's also a couple of plate hangers in place for a nice y-hang part way down which would've broken the pitch up quite well (if i'd used them). If there's another group... read more