Gentlewoman's Shaft (mine) - Ringing Rake Sough (mine)

Sunday October 14th 2012

Members present: Alastair Gott,  Kevin Francis,  Mandy Fu

Faff rating of 3 since we didn't get into the cave till 3pm! Lost a MUSCy Ben due to the usual Sunday hangover syndrome. We ditched Al's car down at the car park, and checked to see the lid in the playground wasn't covered by a park bench. Drove the other two cars up to where you park for Jug holes. I had done this trip once before, and gotten horrendously lost trying to find the cave, so had to remember hard which was the correct route. Luckily, no issues and we found the entrance pretty much straight away. ~40m abseil (take 45-50m just in case!), ditching SRT kits, then mostly a stroll downhill (with a few free climbs, crawls, stooping passage and moist squeezes) to the bottom entrance.

Some nice dog tooth crystals throughout the mine. Tried to take some photos but had epic light failure :( Route finding isn't too bad, last time we used the trip report from a certain derbyshire club website. After some photogaying by myself and Kev, we continued and eventually got the the two wet ducks, which were mildly unpleasant but luckily quite short.

Lots of ancient miners graffiti to look out for throughout the cave too. The 400m+ coffin level was impressive, but seemed to go on forever! On seeing daylight, I 'kindly' let Kev go first to battle with opening the heavy lid, and to reduce my time lingering with the mahoosive spiders egg sacs which dangled around the lid - euuurgh...

Trip took us 2 and a half hours, which could easily be extended to have a proper explore of the rest of the passages. A quick play on the kiddies swings, then a wander down to the chippy before heading back up to derig. A fun day out, thanks to Al and Kev for trusting my memory of the trip :)