Notts 2

Sunday November 9th 2025

Members present: Adrian Turner,  Charlie Hilton,  Elly Masteller,  Lucy Anderson

Its apparently been a while since a report was written for Notts 2, so I'll take that responsibility upon myself. I had not yet done Nots II and didn't know what to expect from it other than descriptions of the scaffolded entrance. We had two trips going in at different times; We were the second trip. Weather on Leck Fell was pleasant enough and we quickly got changed, leaving our SRT kits behind. I completely fell for a joke about how far the walk was (its not even five minutes from the road), and was glad to see just how close it really was. Ade led us in the entrance, followed by Charlie, then Lucy, and finally me. Descending the entrance was actually more fun than I expected it to be, though I somehow missed the kitchen cupboards that had been shoved into the wall.

At the bottom, Ade led us onwards. When we made it to a climbable rift, he instructed each of us on how to descend it, which I was grateful for because I am NOT a confident climber. I definitely should have remembered how I climbed down, as the climb up was considerably more difficult for me. I also didn't pay much attention to our route until we hit the streamway. At this point Ade told me that I would be leading us back, and would need to remember what the small climb up into the entrance passage looked like. I took a mental photo and we stomped through the water downstream. At one point Ade pointed us toward a crawl and said "see how far you get." Charlie took the initiative and led Lucy and I through until the hands-and-knees crawl turned into a belly-crawl, at which point I took the lead. We continued onward until the water level was too high, and we turned back around to meet up with Ade again.

We began the journey back upstream and soon encountered the first of the large formations. I somehow had no idea that Nots II had large formations in it, so this was deeply surprising to me. Ade had his camera equipment and stopped us for a few photos (which you can view on the gallery). At one point, while we were up on a shelf, we heard the voices of the first group returning, and they walked underneath us on their way out. They saw our very cool pose and were totally impressed. We clambered down from our photo op and continued, admiring the formations, and wading through the water (with only a small amount of grumbling when it became waist-deep).

The walk through Curry Inlet was stunning. I really enjoy seeing formations, and listening to Ade's explanations of how they all formed was fascinating. We spent a good amount of time here, cleaning the area with the water canisters left there for conservation purposes. We took the opportunity to take more photos, but I started to become cold. As I was doing the Macarena to stay warm, I saw lights behind us. Manchester cavers soon met up with us, watched us take a photo, then continued past us as we made for the exit. We stopped for one more photo then I led us out. Thankfully I didn't miss the left turn to the exit. Though, once through this short climb up, I attempted to lead us the wrong way about 3 times because I hadn't paid any attention on the way in.

Remember the climb I said I should have paid attention to? I decided to just use the footloops on an in-situ rope to pull myself up it instead of climbing. Wrong decision. This was so hard and took so long. I absolutely should have tried to climb it instead. Alas, we all made it back up and reached the scaffolded entrance.

Climbing up the ladder, scaffolds, and bricks was surprisingly short! At the top we remarked how much easier the ascent was than we thought it was going to be.

It began to rain as we made it back to the car, and a very soggy trip was made soggier as we changed into our no longer dry clothes.

This was a very very enjoyable trip! I definitely would like to go again, if not only to redeem myself on the foothold climb that should have been much easier than I made it.