Trips & Reports

Spent perhaps 15-20 minutes finding where we were supposed to park and a further 55 minutes of wandering around to actually find the cave. We ended up asking another group of cavers for directions, though we were about to go and look in the right place anyway. Pretty busy down the cave, rather a lot of waiting around near waterfalls, even more so with 4 beginners. It's not too hard as a beginners cave, but we should probably limit future learning-SRT... read more

A cave of contrasts... The entrance and route to the first pitch look like a tourist cave with all the work that's been done, while the meandering streamway a few pitches in(I lost count) is so organic I thought I was in the intestine of some massive petrified beast. Found all sorts of stuff at the bottom of the pitches, from abandoned metalwork to a wetsuit. Very random. Having gotten down all of the six pitches with... read more

We had fireworks after! scares the ducks on campus, hehe :)

Ah Cambridge! All I can say is I wish everybody knew how to do everything perfectly just like them. So we sat and waited while those permit-carrying bastards played around in their perfectly formed '3 teams of 4- like it's supposed to be' while I tormented the rest of the team by singing disney songs for 2 hours. 2 HOURS! You know how BAD disney songs get after two hours? Oh sure there are a couple of good, even great ones... read more

Giants Hole is a fun cave, but the name is deceptive and missleading. As the only giant in the caving club I can conclusively say this cave is not optimised for the larger end of the population. Generally its an interesting maze like rift that tends towards tightness, opening into a large cave with a bit of everything every caver needs, mud, water, climbing and in the case of the wind-pipe a little bit of fear (in my case the worry was... read more

A lovely cave to be small in.

Not a bad trip. Took us while, however. Almost 5 hours. Had some minor Nav issues after the crabwalk. Was plain sailing after that.

i had well a good time today - back on the old srt lol. Felt good to abseil again hurrah! (but do i miss prussicking, hmm no!) Rigged which was exciting. Spent lots of fun trying to avoid the waterfalls, although peter did make a good dam, and theres some cool pretty things in there too, red iron oxide etc. yay!

We thought this was the entrance to Old Ing Cave (to the left of the track, on the way to where Old Ing actually resides...). It comprises a tight bedding plane entrance (several spiders' webs accross the entrance!) in a 5 ft deep shakehole. After a couple of metres it opens out into a low crawl with a few inches of water in it. After about 6 meters, I reached a constricted pitch head. It was quite difficult to see the... read more

A very easy stomp down a stream passage for a few hundred metres. We turned back when we got to a line of P-hangers and the water suddenly became 'kin deep! Well worth a quick visit when up doing Calf Holes or Birkwith.

We found a dead sheep far into the cave! i thought it was foam, but it was a very adventurous sheep! hence the scum rating :)

We missed the sheep (probably a good thing!). There was quite a lot of water down there but it must have dropped significantly in the past day or so, judging on the amount of foam up the sides and at the bottom of the staircase. Apparently, that was about 3' deep until Gover and Chuck started kicking it at each other! A fun, little trip with a bit of everything.

We found a super fun happy slide! it was amazing! :)

I've got a boat in my garden. Can we go back?

Just found this report: http://www.pennine.demon.co.uk/NPC/1959/OLDING.HTM Describes explorations in the late '50s around Birkwith and Old Ing.

Bar Pot was rather busy this weekend. We ended up rigging underneath two ropes, which we expected to be gone by the time we came out, but it was not to be. We arrived to the bottom of the big pitch to find several people descending/ascending. A long wait was required! Otherwise a very efficient trip down to GG main chamber, quite speedy with no issues. Unfortunately the sun had passed the point at which it streams... read more

Great trip, though I wasn't expecting the ma-hoose-ive trek to the cave. OK, it wasn't that bad... it was frankly scorching on the way up to Bar Pot itself, especially carrying the evil tackle sack. Really enjoyed my first practical use of SRT, although need to get fitter for those climbs back to the surface. The short ascent to the very top was great fun with the little squeeze towards the top. Need to get some gloves...... read more

Ok so there was lots of crawling in water which was rather refreshing! However, let me just say this - FOSSILS!!!!! amazing.

Well, apart from a slighlty late start, everything went OK! Three groups, all in staggered, and out again. Out team kicked @$$ as well, our freshers are hardcore! Dom

An excellent and very efficient trip! Three staggered teams worked well, we never saw eachother (even when the final team was getting changed just outside our car we were still completely oblivious to them!). A great cave with a nice mix of everything. Some slightly awkward climbs up assisted by fixed handlines provided a good challenge for our new folk, and a nice balance of ladder/stompy/squeezy and crawly. Really easy to navidate too, with the exception of the bit in... read more

A fun little jaunt down Long Churn. Ollie and set off first with 4 freshers (I'm crap with names!), got to the entrance to find that Ollie had left the rope at the stream! DOH! Whilst Ollie went back to get it, I showed everyone else the delights of the entrance to Borrins Moor. I then stepped into the stream heading towards Long Churn and promptly fell flat on my arse in the stream! :) Down Dr Bannisters, down the waterfall, down to the... read more

A really successful first trip of the term. We had a much much better turn-out of freshers from the AU Mart than we'd expected so it took a bit of time to get organised. We split into three teams at Long Churn lead by Rich, Matt and myself, which seemed to work out quite well. We were only 10mins apart but just far enough not to wait for each other. As always long churn was busy, more so than I've... read more

Fun little trip! Was amazed that Ade actually remembered where the entrance was! Some small pitches provide a great location to help Freshers with their SRT. Jo and Sam did amazingly for their first time!

Ade may have been a little over zealous, rigging the massive 1.5m entry pitch :p The bottom chamber was quite cool, with scope for exploring the window halfway down the pitch. The dig at the bottom was fun to flat out crawl down. Honest.

I do like this fun stomp of a cave and it's a good way to get across to Sunset, via Middle Washfold, thus missing out a large chuck of the boring sunny walk (what's that all about eh?) It is a shame the cave lacks some proper pretties though. Also, the slightly different route gave us an idea where Congress, P98 and Tit Pot were as we didn't take the usual walk round Braithwaite.

This was our second attempt at the Manchester - Goyden through trip. The first notable difference was that the reservoir was not spewing water from the top. In fact it looked several metres lower than last time. We took this as a very good sign. The cave was easy to locate again, and the number of flowers outside had depreciated greatly. It took us about five minutes (in bizarre light conditions - for some reason none of us could see... read more

Like Manchester, this was considerably drier than last time, and we got much further in. We were limited by time, but if we hadn't been it would have been a more longer, exploratory trip. First we headed upstream, to see if we could find our newly bashed hole through to Manchester, but there were so many options and side passages that we stopped to concentrate on exploring the rest of the cave. Downstream this turned into an absolutely huge stream cave.... read more

This is a cave I've wanted to do for AGES and the weather looked settled so off we went! Considering I didn't have my trusty GPS we had no problem finding it. Andy in Bernies helped a lot by describing the entrance. An initial climb down leads to an interesting bedding plane crawl which soon opens out to a spectacular cave with some superb SRT. Black Dub pitch is the weirdest place I've ever seen in a cave. I got down... read more

Sat at the top of a wet pitch, freezing cold with no idea what is going on down below, for a loooooooooong period of time, to then be told to go back up as soon as you start descending the first of the main pitches = not fun. Next time I will wear a neofleece, and go to the bottom.

Garys report is spot on and sums it up well. A great cave, very reminicent of Tatham Wife (which is only about 500m or so along the base of Inglebrough) but rather more hardcore. A rather vespers-style entrance crawl leads quickly to the first pitch. More nasty shaped passages lead quickly onto the second pitch and the third is quickly reached. The deep pool at the bottom of the forth (?) pitch is rather scary... and is traversed around... read more

We planned to do Diccan due to it being a beautiful day and Andy Whitney ensuring us it had not rained since Tuesday. Despite this the amount of water going over the first pitch lip was just ridiculous. After about 2 mins of constructive "umming" and "aahhing" we decided not to commit to certain death. The only alternative lay in a lallygag down Alum Pot. True enough the water cascading down the bottom of the last pitch of Diccan was... read more

This mine was a great end to the weekend. Apart from a small entrance tube constructed of old school tables(!!) the mine is really big and stomply throughout. There are several dodgy boulders hanging in the roof that you might not want to stand under too long though! I'd recommend getting a copy of the survey as it would be easy to get lost, however the cart tracks keep you within the main passageways. The one we had was cleverly... read more

Very impressive to see the amount of stuff that they've found down there: old buckets, bits of cogs, tins, etc. Was particularly impressed by the 100-year-old (a complete guess) horse hoofprints in the mud! The sheer number of cave pearls was absolutely incredible! :o The roof is a tad scary in places, especially where the wooden props have fallen out and splintered, or dubious-looking railway lines are all bent under the weight! Some of the old writing on the walls is covered... read more

It was a superb mine. Walking through it was like taking a trip back in time, and it was very easy to imagine what it must have been like to work down there many years ago. Many implements still intact though rusty, including a saw sharpening bench (eek!), the crane was immaculate though I fear it won't stay that way for much longer. At each of the working faces, a small cubic indent in the ceiling had been carved, where... read more

This trip was an accident! We were looking for Pierres Pot when we found this. It's a major dig at the moment, which looked a bit unstable so we didn't go far down.

Never seen a cave with quite so much metal in it. We were brought there by locals you had emerged from Goatchurch slightly after us, and they took us in completely the wrong direction to Pierre's. It was still interesting to know it is there as it was only a short walk from the car and judging by the equipment they had in there it may be much bigger by next year!

Not very challenging (especialy as there were kids in jeans and trainers coming out when we got there) although 'The Drainpipe' was interesting! Lots of slipery mud slides - yey! :p