Jenga Pot - Excalibur pot

Saturday April 25th 2015

Members present: Alistair Rollinson,  Andy Hurlbatt,  Dan Boothby,  Mark Sims,  Matt Ewles,  Rachel Findlay,  Will Scott

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 little sandwiched in between Andy and Mark. Upon arrival we were greeted by Matt and Gary and the gearing up began. Because of the rather abrasive and err crawly? Nature of the cave kneepads, shin pads and gloves are a must and elbow pads are recommended.Once the team had suited up we marched over to the Jenga entrance a whopping 30 second walk from the car park, and popped the lid to begin our rather muddy 4 hour trip. Moving though Jenga without my wetsuit and multiple layers of thermals was a very pleasant experience and I defiantly did not miss the various buckets, boxes and pieces of digging equipment that normally accompanied a digging trip to Jenga. The ease of movement mean that I could enjoy all that Jenga has to offer, mainly mud, mud and more mud and a range of interesting if muddy passages and chambers.

A memorable detour to one of Jenga’s larger chambers involved a rather interesting side passage that on the way in was pleasantly sandy if a little tight, this passage emerged into a tiny chamber; the floor required a little bit of persuasion in the form of a wee bit of digging us to visit to this point and being the first though I got a little confused and mistook the tiny chamber for the large chamber we had been told about (an easy mistake to make it is the moors after all and a large chamber generally means you can stand up ;-) ) At this point I had completely missed the absolutely tiny hole that lead to the actually chamber…. Ops… my mistake. It was only noticed after 4 of us had crammed ourselves in the tiny chamber, found an interesting shaped stick, played with the interesting stick and were making our way back along the crawl, at this point Andy located way on and after some digging and Mark reversing back up the crawl we were in!

After retuning down the now annoyingly sticky crawl (no longer pleasantly sandy) we continued to the Yorkie light/vocal connection via hello kitty chamber and then back to actual connection this giving us the opportunity to see the Jenga traverses and use the only fixed aid in the cave. The connection to secret dig (were a rather muddy Gary was found finishing Solo surveying the secret dig entrance) was a bit wet but not as bad as the canal the follows it, and the extended periods of crawling offered by screek extensions. However this was all worthwhile when we met Ade’s team (that had just come down the Excalibur entrance) and reached the main Excalibur stream way, wow the formations are really something.

After exiting Excalibur 6 of us wet suited up and drove over to Bogg hall, a brilliant hour followed in which the elusive Bogg hall otter was spotted, Rachel was sucked by bit by a fish and all the mud was washed away by the neck height water. All in all a brilliant sporting trip to a very unusual cave; a visit to Bogg hall after is defiantly recommended and really makes you feel like you have been caving.

Jenga--> Excalibur--> Bogg hall--> Pub--> Curry house = great day with friends