Trips & Reports

haha i like the use of "recce" in the description! this is a very small cave-don't bother unless you're very skinny (even ade didnt fit!). the pitch is quite short and spacious, into a chamber, then theres a short crawl to a blind pot, where you shimmy across a scaffold bar, then theres the first squeeze (non-tiny people remove srt kit here) which we did head first on left hand side-however it comes out high up, above a hole and... read more

I've never seen a waterfall in jingling before....

Yey, we found a new (yet to be named) cave at Kettlewell! After several hours digging, we'd excavated an impressive amount of rock and got down to real cave. Its currently only about 2m deep but it goes on. We gave up after it became apparent that we need somthing more industrial than a steel pole and a spade. The boulders got slowly larger until we gave up trying to lift them. We must return with some lifting gear!

YEY NEW CAVE!! Very little faff for me as i woke up at 20 past 10, found out there was a trip, and was out the house by 20 to 11! Cheese toasty rating for Old Granary in Patley bridge 4/5. Started digging the hole with the expectation of doing this for a bit, giving up then going to look at some mines, but then we found a draught and got very excited! After much digging and strange looks from walkers, and... read more

A return trip is a must. When abseiling down the mouse hole shaft the first deviation is easy to spot as a p-hanger to pull you away from the wall to which the y-hang is attached, about 25m down. The second deviation is about another 20m (not 10m as shown in the Braemor rigging guide). It is on the same side of the shaft as the first deviation, and will require much swinging around to reach. ... read more

Only joking, it wasn't that hardcore. Surprising how fast time flies when you are surveying.

Chuck, Kev, Imogen, and I were "Team Pub"! We tried the first boozer on the left (heading back towards the main road: can't remember its name). This pub was extremely crap: there was a sign in the door saying "no food today". It turned out that they also needed one saying "no beer today"! There was chuff-all beer (or even cider) going! We left in disgust and went to The Craven Heifer a bit further up the road. Very nice pub:... read more

As above with Laz's report, but we also enjoyed Inglesport lending us some climbing shoes, though they did ummmm and aaaah a bit about letting us use them outdoors and not on their wall. Not bad for two quid though. Also, I bolted.

Bolting was fun and definitely got some curious looks from people passing by but the day wouldn’t have been complete without the zip wire attempt…. which did end up being quite slow but next time can we have a bigger, faster and better one pleeeeease!

A fun cave with picturesque entrance. BPOTW is an open shaft a few hundred meters from Bull Pot farm surrounded by trees, bluebells and a mysterious edible plant. There are two ways in, a direct abseil with a rebelay over a ledge, of for those of the climbing variety a sneaky side route. In fact there is a sneaky side route allowing multiple ways down this short but ridiculously expansive cave. We took the direct 4 pitch to the bottom version. when you reach the... read more

I nipped down the chimney climby entrance (25 m rope is a perfect length for this) and sat in the sun whilst Laura rigged the open shaft and Imogen and Britt followed. Chuck and Peter nipped down the chimney. During my wait, I went off and visited North Chamber (been in here before, not particularly exciting) and Cavern 32 which I'd not been in before. This is quite a big chamber and quite a surprise when you squeeze through the little... read more

Best bits: the bluebells, muddy crawl, and going weeeeeeeeeee on the descent down. Worst bit: having the taste of wild garlic in my mouth the rest of the day (thanks Chuck)

So we had a bit of trouble finding it, but nothing too drastic. Just didn't really match the description!! First few metres i thought i would regret agreeing to this cave, but i suppose once you get used to moving at a mere few inches an hour (ok slight exaggeration but you know what i mean) then it gets more enjoyable!! Somehow missed a pitch, and the 30m pitch was reached after some more fun squeezes and an... read more

So, the entrance isn't where Selected Caves said it is. Walk up the path with Ingleborough infront of you until you reach a kind of drainage line going through the path. Directly to the left at right angles to the path it looks like a track goes off, ignore it. The path to the cave is not actually that worn and you want to walk diagonally left, slightly away from Ingleborough top. You reach an area where there are two... read more

The walk up in the sunshine was gorgeous, although a little hot. The cave itself was definitely a challenge :s but team spirit and randomly made up songs helped:p. Definitely not for the claustrophobic as at some points it was too tight to turn your head around with your helmet on (although I soon realised taking it of was a bad idea as you had the challenge of finding space to put it back on again!) Glad we turned back when... read more

corkys was really good so fun rating of 4 or 5 for that bit, lit up gaping gill was amazing so 5 for that... we were going to go out a new entrance called Marilyns which involved doing Henslers crawl (we only had a survey and hadnt read about it since we only decided to do it at the top of the winch meet).. ...then we went into a very long very flat out crawl over gravel and puddles which we... read more

Went down Corky's, which is quite small but enjoyable going down and without tackle sacks. I can imagine coming back up with tackle sacks would be very tiring. As it was the winch meet GG main chamber was lit up with massive flood lights, which added some novelty, though I've already seen GG main chamber about a dozen times before. We then tried to go along the original Hensler's crawl from GG main chamber to reach Henslers, and from there to Disappointment.... read more

I'm pretty sure we did a Yordas thru-trip! ;)

My first go at rigging! And I didnt kill anyone!! Yey! :D Really liked the rigging, was well cool. And it was a nice easy cave to do it in too, so it was fun. Was a bit slow to start off with tho. Sorry :( hehe! Found a frog that I caught and named "friend" and then he decided to do a few suicidal jumps... but he was ok. Had a bit of messin around at the bottom which was... read more

We got out of sight of daylight - what more do you want?

A nice slightly more challenging trip. A lot of small stuff, and a couple of awkward bits that are a right ***** to get past. Lots of very unspoilt prettys though.

Bottom rift was tight, and the rigging guide nonsense. WE packed metel work for the waterfall pitch and bottom pitch. Guide listed 11 bolts, we took 15, and after using all + snapgates and braking crabs, we were 4 short, and you wouldn't want to miss any, traversing over the pitch in the rift. Also, 30m rope for the bottom pitch may be too short - we couldn't test, as we had to turn round

As this was a training trip for Brittany and my first rig in years, we only did the first 3 pitches leaving the Ollie + Alan to do the rest. I forgot how fun rigging was so plan to do it quite a bit more (I definatly need the practice). The first traverse was rigged very high to make it more fun and fun it was for me. Climbing high through a rift with a heavy bag of rope swinging underneath you... read more

Ahhh the weather was very pleasant on the stroll up to ingbleborough. We did take it very leisurely indeed. The Winch meet was in the process of being set up and we met one of the club members. He told us that we were very naughty for attempting to do stream without a permit and that we are all very bad cavers :( After ignoring the ill informed man we went down the cave and had fun. The cave is... read more

For future reference... This cave is not recommended for someone's first cave in over 4 months!! Was a toughie for me, but still quite enjoyed it. Wasn't feeling too happy bout learning a knot pass 10m off the ground so me and Holly headed back. Then kinda got a bit stuck in the oil drum entrance, I have no upper body strengh! So thanks James and Holly :) Got some cool bruises tho hehe!

This cave was either harder than I remember it or I've gone soft in my old age, the pitch heads were all a pain to get off! 4 for faffage due to us packing ropes for a differnt cave in the morning! But all in all a grand day out :)

Midweek caving!! Chuck, Simon and I decided that a trip to P8 would be fun to do on Wednesday afternoon. We met at the container at 11.30ish and packed the ropes to go two different ways. (we hadn't decided which route to take.) P8 is normally a wet cave but after this lovely weather it was pretty dry. We managed to get very far down the cave because of this. Normally you stop just after true second pitch, but we explored... read more

Hardcore Level of 4 due to swimming in sea!

Picture a cold and windy morning, the beach is flat and almost empty except for the odd person dressed in a warm coat and hat walking their dog, and a few funny looking people playing frisby, three of who strip down to the bare minimum and run into the freezing cold sea... i dont no why, it seemed a good idea at the time! This followed by attempts of bay-watch-style running out of the sea, blowing circles in the sand (...... read more

Faffage started just after leaving the container (a rather efficient 20 minutes after arrival), when Kev realised he'd forgotten his contacts. Closed roads, heavy traffic, a stop at Sainsbury's for chocolate and batteries and the need to photocopy the description and survey (no laminated copies could be found!) conspired to give us a late start cavewards. A plesant change and walk up to Meregill, followed by trying to work out which direction 235 degrees would be from the sun in order... read more

Four caves in one day and back in time for cheap pizza in Bodrams, so pretty slick by my standards. Birkwith was unbelievably dry which made it far too easy, the fun mini-waterfall climb wasn't even there! There was a good splodge of mud on the left of the canal that you cannot normally get far into which was a nice bit of variety. Old Ing was good as ever, although the water was very low we still could not get... read more

WAs tempted to put the faff higher, due to chuck chatting to the police in the back of there car

Hehehe naughty Chuck

Very litle water. We took piccies. There was a dead rabbit floating around under Dr Bannisters - Nice!

very dry. went for a bit of a wander at the bottom.

Providence Pot explored to a little downstream of the connection with Dowbergill Passage, Dow Cave explored to upstream of the duck. Admittedly the bit in the middle is the hard bit. Anyone up for a crack at the through trip while the memory of both ends is fresh? Lots of death defying (hopefull) traversing across rifts with no holds 20m up in the air. Fun fun fun :)

My second attack at this cave, though to begin with it looked like it was a no go until we noticed the hole we were in was actually Low Dow Cave! We made excellent time, taking no notice of formations etc until we came to the canal - the same place my original trip had ended. We persued this a fair way until the water level was just below the point of the male body that makes it feel all the... read more

This was a superb end to our Wales week, with a bright sunny day by the river a few of us had scouted a couple of days earlier. A slightly awkward climb up the side of water cascades keeps most tourists at bay, and leads after ten minutes walking to a lovely grassy area in the sun right outside the old mines of Pontneddfechan. Below, some waterfalls and deep pools provided opportunity for jumping into water from great... read more