Trips & Reports 2015

Twas reet early one morning in May When Walmslers did rise from the hay He thought as he ate his breakfast pie: “Let’s go down Otter Hole in the Vale of Wye”. So he hopped in his black chav-mobile And stopping for coffee at Keele, By 7 reached the campsite at Chepstowe Finding the others all ready to go. Andy H, Vicky B, German Sophie, And to get them all psyched, Andy G From there, they all did a-hasten To meet their great leader, Pete Mason. Now the walk through the woodland... read more

The indisputable caving gem of Fountains Fell according to the Black Book. A cracking trip with loads of variation and just the right amount of challenge. Mark was keen to return to bottom Gingling after his first trip here last year (see Vicky's trip report). The faff began when we arrived at the Dale Head car park and in completely un-forecast rain. Not wanting to get changed in the cold and wind and rain was thinly disguised as concern about... read more

After connecting Jenga and Excalibur about four weeks prior to this trip, the stage was set for someone to do the full grand tour and through trip. Unfortunately, our digging group, after many months of wallowing in the mud and water around the connection point were quite fed up of it and so the task fell to a club outside of our digging circles to take the glory. I was honoured to be taking a team of fine underground explorers... read more

Now that Jenga and Excalibur pots have been connected by the efforts of the digging team it was decided that YUCPC should pop over the Yorkshire Moors and give it a go, and a great sporting trip it was with brilliant trip down Bogg Hall to finish of the day (and wash ourselves off ;-) ). The 45min journey from York to the moors was a nice change to the usual 2.5hour journeys to the dales even if I was a... read more

After our excursion into the Excalibur system, I was quite keen to have a go at Bogg Hall, if partly to wash off some of the mud! The entrance is doable with a handline, and we were very quickly at the bottom, sitting in an inlet amongst the bird remains and otter poop. A short distance to the main streamway and we were splashing upstream. Low air space is the theme of the middle third of the cave, starting off... read more

A great Sunday trip, taking us a very leisurely 3 three hours to see all the sights, including the fantastic Lu Blue sump. The trip contained almost every type of crawling – on sand, in water, on cobbles, on flat limestone, on soil, on small prickly stones – and we did seem to spend a lot of our trip on our knees, good practice for the more gruelling northern stuff. Also there was climbing, meandering through boulder chokes and slithering... read more

Dench trip to the sump and back of this Wharfedale classic. None of us really fancied the scumminess and crawliness of the original entrance, but then none of us had thought to find out where the Hole in the Floor was. So scumminess and crawliness it was. On arriving at the second pitch, Doyle 'Ate All The Pies' Scott discovered he was too well-built to fit through the top slot so went out with Ali to go and try to find... read more

It was after a particularly faffy morning that we found ourselves in Kingsdale at about midday. After dismissing the idea of bottoming King Pot, we decided to give it a go anyway and see how far we got. We changed in glorious sunshine, and after a bit of debate as to the best route up the hill, we made our way past Braida Garth Farm to the plateau upon which the entrance is situated. Finding the entrance was not particularly... read more

After having convinced Andrew to go out as the runner, preparations for our prolonged stay underground were made. Andrew lent us his spare survival gear in addition to our own and the last points of our strategy agreed upon, especially, that Thomas and I would remain in the small chamber and not attempt to go anywhere else or self-rescue whilst waiting to avoid injury or exhaustion. Leaving someone behind in a cave is not easily done, even if rationally, in... read more

We wanted a shortish trip to do before heading home. I fancied the Great Oxbow Series; I'd been to the top end from the Skyhook a couple of years ago and was now confident of the traverses at the other end after doing them on Saturday. Trip time estimate 3-4 hours based on a guess of 1 hour to the start of the traverses, 1 hour to the Skyhook, 1 hour back to entrance, 1 hour extra to allow for... read more

Excellent trip into Dan-Yr-Ogof, fully fun, fully cold, Dan almost made it a quick trip by loosing his welly in the first lake, eventually finding it we carried on, did the full round trip with a quick detour for photography in Flabbergasm Oxbow.

A really really excellent cave; the reason I started caving. Good fun in the lakes and canal (including the infamous lost welly), pretty easy moving about in the passages, but the highlight for me was the formations. Cloud Chamber was stunning, incredible collections of pure white straws. The Grand Canyon Streamway was also impressive, especially when viewed from Flabbergasm Oxbow.