Lancaster Hole - Cow Pot

Saturday January 10th 2015

Members present: Adam Walmsley,  Adam Hughes,  Adrian Turner,  Dan Boothby

So this was my first trip into Easegill amazingly! What a great trip!

Over breakfast in Inglesport both teams met up and it was decided who would do each entrance, where we'd all meet up and how long we could be bothered to wait for each other underground before we'd head back out the way we came. After we headed to Bull Pot Farm to get changed, admittedly without knowing for sure that Walmslers would be joining us!

As we pulled up to BPF we spotted chav mobile that suspiciously resembled that driven by Mr Walmslers but without said Walmslers... A quick game of 'Where's Walmslers?' finished without success so we decided to head inside and get changed, presuming that Walmslers had been distracted by a butterfly or whatnot.

Soon we emerged to pack ropes and get organised to head onto the hill and low and behold just as we were about to leave a Walmslers was spotted approaching us already donned in caving gear! Seems as we had gone inside to get changed, Walmslers had returned from Walmsling around, got changed and walked to the cave presuming that we had already headed underground!

So united we headed off to see what lay below...

Mr Turner was elected (forced) to rig Lancaster followed by me then Dan and finally Walmslers down the entrance shaft to the main pitch. I have to say the main pitch was pretty cool, nothing like a long abseil!

From here Dan and I headed up Slug World to take a look at the pretties contained there. If you haven't been up there is worth having a quick peak! We all then headed onto the Colonnades where Mr Turner spent quite a while cleaning up some formations restoring them to their natural brilliance. The rest of us went for a bit of an explore before we decided it was time to go and meet up with the others in Fall Pot. I don't remember much of the connection other than heading through one crawl which may have been the way on only to be faced with a substantial hole in the floor at the other end, clearly not the way on!!

When we arrived we decided to have a sit down and wait for the others to arrive, thinking they wouldn't be long. Soon enough voices were heard above us and the lights of those above us radiated down upon us. Thinking they would be mere seconds away from us we decided to switch our lights off, lie down and wait to see the spectacle of the others descending... But then strangely the voices faded and the lights disappeared. But still we stayed in the dark awaiting there return. But where had they gone.

Minutes ticked by and still no sight of the others... The minuets rolled on and on until we were all getting rather cold so we decided to abandon our lofty position and head down to the bottom of the chamber. Then at last we saw lights and heard voices above us! The other group were finally on the way down!

Walmslers and Ade decided to do some 'engineering' to pass the time whilst Dan and I exchanged songs with those desending from above. Will Scott's voice often punctured the air with his normal chant of 'He's got beer on his...'. Soon enough we were joined at the bottom by Vicky, Will, Rachel and Wem where a brief exchange of 'Where did you lot go?' and 'how long have you been down here?' before it was decided that we would head out.

I lead the way up the impressive pitch to reach the top of what is an impressive traverse pretty much over a huge drop followed by Dan, Ade and Walmslers. Soon all were reunited at the end of the traverse and we proceeded incident free through the streamway section (apart from Ade who got wet feet as he'd misplaced his wellies).

The two climbs up to the entrance pitch are fairly awkward to negotiate due to a lack of footholds on the bottom one and just the sheer awkwardness of the top. Being tall certainly seemed to be an advantage! Soon enough all were out and up the entrance pitch to emerge into the winter night.

A quick change at BPF followed then off for pizza at Bodrums!

All in all a great trip which I would highly recommend!!