Notts Pot Centre Route - Twilight Zone exchange

Sunday November 9th 2025

Members present: Antje White,  Charlie Wookey,  Erika Lang,  Harvey Brown,  Jed Hampshire wright,  Rosie Marshall,  Sophie Brazil,  Viki Smyth

I made it to Notts!!! It was on my cave to-do list for over a year, and when I finally got there I even managed to cajole my way into being allowed to rig. Viki asked which route I’d prefer, saying that Centre Route was more straightforward to rig, but that Twilight Zone was more ‘fun’. Since Viki’s idea of fun often translates for me as ‘fun but scary/tiring/impossible/Viki pls push me up this climb I can’t do it’, I took this with a pinch of salt and contemplated which route to do right until we got changed and I was forced to make a decision. I chose Twilight Zone.

The walk to Notts Pot was surprisingly ok (despite the cold mist). I suspect because I forced myself to the front of the pack and for once managed to stay there instead of being slowly overtaken by everyone and left behind like usual. It’s quite demoralising watching your group ascend a hill ahead of you that you still have to cross two stiles and a stream to get to. I’m eternally grateful for the few who look behind them at such times and wait for me when they realise I’m three valleys away. Sorry for the tangent I just really hate walking can you tell.

Anyways, I hope everyone was grateful for my slow but steady pace, and we arrived at Notts fairly quicky, just in time for the weather to turn into proper rain and wind. We’d decided it was time for Harvey to rig his first cave, so he and Sophie went to start rigging while the rest of us hunkered down to wait, hoping that the rain would maybe stop for a bit. It did not, and once I could no longer feel my feet, I initiated a group huddle which was much nicer. Antje had weird bubbles coming out of her oversuit every time she pushed down on it which provided some entertainment for us, and we also discussed the merits and drawbacks of the oversuit hoods.

We began heading in and soon reached Three Ways Chamber where we parted ways for our exchange. Me, Viki, Jed and Antje arrived at the first traverse of the Twilight Zone. It was a nice tricky upwards traverse, around two corners and over pretty smooth rock. I was not impressed with the stinginess of the p-anchors, but I somehow manged it after much encouragement from my group, and a couple rounds of ‘Swing-looow, sweet chaaariooot’.

Descending the first big pitch, I didn’t bother looking for the natural that is, as the description used to say, ‘either very hard to find or may be absent’, especially after my failed attempt at finding the Dolly Tubs natural the day before, which was similarly elusive/non-existent. I descended down to the balcony and the ‘exposed four-anchor traverse and hard to rig Y-hang’. The description said it was a 3 metre swing to the y-hang, but it looked bigger than that to me and given my rubbish swinging skills, I decided to descend all the way down to the balcony and walk along the traverse instead. But this then presented the problem of the y-hang now being a good metre and a half jump over a rift, with the rope threatening to pull me back to the other side of the chamber should I mess up the jump. I suspected it would be a hard swing back into the rock if I didn’t make it, and the jump was really quite big and I spent too long looking at it that I psyched myself out and started to feel quite nauseous. Looking up I could see the three lights of the others above me, and heard many ‘You can do it’ and ‘just jump’s, that eventually I decided to stop being a wuss and just do it. I took a deep breath and leapt, successfully managing to grab onto the rock, haul myself up to the bolts, and clip in.

Extremely proud of myself, I rigged the y-hang and descended down and rigged the rest of the cave with much less drama. The deviation was maybe the nicest devo I’ve ever seen, and led the rope through a very cute window to the top of the last pitch where I found what looked like a red toadstool, but what I suspect was a very mouldy babybel? The picture will be in the gallery, feel free to speculate as to what else it could be. At this point I could hear the other group quite well, and finally met Rosie, Sophie, Harvey and Charlie (aw what a cute little rhyme) at the bottom of our last pitch. We enjoyed snacks and I organised a quick group photo, and then we began the exchange.

I volunteered to de-rig and so was left at the bottom by myself. Alexa, play Alessi Rose ‘the pit’. I love derigging loud and wet pitches as it gives me the lots of time to sing very badly and very loudly to myself and no-one can hear me (I hope). This serves as quite necessary morale-boosting when prussicking up cold and spraying waterfalls, but it’s also just very cathartic to scream girly-pop songs as loud as you can when underground. Can’t really do that at home unless I want Sophie and Holly to kick me out. Inspired by Asher’s playlist for the Valley Entrance High Traverse, I’ll leave my mental playlist for this trip below. This doesn’t really have that much to do with caving I’m just obsessed with Alessi Rose rn and can’t stop talking about her, and we support hyper fixations in this club.

The Centre Route was much wetter than Twilight, which had virtually no water in it at all, and I got quite soaked on my way out, especially since I found one of the tacklesacks wedged nicely in a rock under a waterfall, and had to enter said waterfall in order to free it.

Looking at the pitch to get out of Three Ways Chamber, we realised there was a lot more water coming in than there had been when we entered, and walking through the steamway was definitely a lot more exciting than before. When we got outside it was still raining and also getting dark, but the dry stone wall back at the car provided pretty nice shelter for a hurried change. In the car, Viki and I recounted my scary jump to Rosie and Sophie, which Viki tried to say was maybe slightly unnecessary and I could have just done the swing, but I insisted it was entirely necessary and completely unavoidable and so they quickly relented and agreed that my epic jump made the whole trip possible and I was a hero :)


Alessi Rose songs of choice for Centre Route derigging:
Get Around
First Original Thought
CRUSH!
That Could Be Me
Everything Anything
Falling Forever