Trips & Reports

What a brilliant trip :) After strapping myself up with about 40 krabs (because that's how many we had in the boot), and sliding down to the first drop some short jokes already came my way. The first bit didn't take long, although I did get a tad confused about what ropes we had, and with Mike saying we were going to drown if it rained, I deceided to just get going and let Toby worry about that. On my way to... read more

The Monday bank holiday greeted us with sunshine and warmth in the morning as we set off to Alum, where an exchange trip between Diccan and Alum was planned. John and Mike were to walk up the hill before Andrew, Toby and me, and begin their pleasantly wet journey through Diccan. In the meantime, Toby was trying to gather enough underlayers having forgotten his thermal bottoms. In the end he had to wear his new, £200 Montane trousers, which were... read more

Ian Peachey joined us in the BPC hut on Saturday night. The next morning he offered to teach Warren (ULSA), John and me some basic SRT rescue techniques, and soon after breakfast we set off from the BPC hut to Sell Gill, Fossil Route. Walking through Horton and the green country side was very pleasant, until we noticed a sheep in a field that clearly seemed to be in agony. It was lying on its back, the head twisted to... read more

The trip started out nice and early at the container as we had to get into the cave before it opened to the tourists. Having been down the cave many years ago as a tourist I was looking forward to the trip. After a drive from York straight to the cave we met up with Matt in the car park. The wind in the car park ensure we were awake as it was chilling and fairly strong. After Matt had... read more

Two weeks without caving had already passed, and I started to get impatient to get some new bruises and experience yet again some real physical exhaustion. Luckily, every time this happens, a John Holloway comes along and offers to take me on a more interesting trip. During YUCPC training on Thursday, we started hatching plans for a little bit of weekend hardship, and were looking for at least one other team member. John was being mysterious about the cave he wanted... read more

http://www.rtbf.be/video/v_speleologie-a-la-basilique-de-koekelberg?id=1722653&category=info

A walk-in cave under a castle with a chamber full of 6-12% Belgian beer. 'Nuff said

A fun Sunday Stomp along the main stream way to see the sumps, with a deviation to take a peak at Ink sump, and a diversion past Galena Chamber on the way back.

On Saturday we changed our plans from going to Oxlow to going to Knotlow instead, trying to get into Hillocks Mine via Meccano Passage as suggested by Tom and Dave (SUSS). Driving to Knotlow took an hour instead of the promised 20 minutes, partly because the Sat Nav was not very precise with the directions it gave. A further complication was the equally imprecise description of how to find the entrance to Climbing Shaft provided by our friends from SUSS,... read more

You missed out the part where we (unnecessarily) walked about a mile to find the entrance ...

shhhh what happens at Knotlow stays at Knotlow ^^

I thought it would be great to celebrate Easter 2012 in style – cavers’ style – and organised a weekend in Castleton with Andrew and a few good friends from ULSA: Ruth, John and Kristian. It was the first time for me to be responsible for the organisation of a whole caving weekend from accommodation to transport and permits, and one of the lessons I learnt was that delegating is the best part of it. So I entrusted Andrew with... read more

very wet but very enjoyable

Awesome seeing a real-life diver kitting up! The cylinders go under the arms, how about that? I guess that's the best place for them when you're swimming about. Watching Clive assembling all his strange bits of harness and elastic was, I reckon, a similar feeling to a fresher watching a caver donning SRT gear. Awesome! Also turns out dive cylinders are a bit heavy - 12ish kilos apparently. One on the back makes traversing Pluto's bath that little bit more interesting!... read more

It was another fine day in the Welsh country side: perfect for some wet caving! For once we didn't have to walk up and down the rather steep hill to the cave entrance as Clive kindly drove us there - which was very helpful on the way back when carrying the diving gear. I have never seen a "real" cave diver and watching him getting ready made me realise how risky cave diving is. Otherwise you wouldn't need all the... read more

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This was a really really brilliant trip. Just as varied as Top Sink-Bye George and possibly even more fun. Less grim as well! I'd recommend it to anyone with relatively decent caving fitness and a fairly good knowledge of OFD. At least take a survey so you can get out if it all goes wrong! We started off going up the streamway in 1 at a fairly good pace and into the connection. Here Mark took the lead as he was... read more

I won’t write about most of the trip here, since Toby’s described it so well. It was a brilliant way to fit all of OFD together and to provide a real appreciation of the scale of the place. I’ll pick up the story from Cwm Dwr on the way back… When we reached the Confluence I think we were all feeling pretty good. We had a chocolate bar or two each to top up the energy levels, plenty of water, and cracked... read more

Rescue stuff! After reading that I figured I'd put in something about my experience of the rescue for those who have never experienced one. Here's a bit of stuff about what it's like to be a runner. Most will know all this already, but when I was a fresher I didn't really know what would happen so here it is, just in case :p If you are caving in a three, and one has an accident that immobilises them, the two... read more

Amen Toby :)

Absolutely hilarious trip, loved it, thanks Chad + Toby :) Apart from going around Roundabout Chamber once more than needed, everything went to plan :) Chad's commentary definitely made the trip !