Sell Gill Holes Camp 2.0

Friday April 24th 2026

Members present: Abbie Heathcote,  Ben Wellington,  Charlie Wookey,  Erika Lang,  Joseph Boor,  Sophie Brazil

Cave shits are awful. Very highly do not recommend. I suggest the Rosie method instead: ‘I just don’t do it’.

The conception of a Sell Gill camp was created for the event of the year which was of course, Challenge Week. 24hrs underground challenge? Where else to do it but Sell Gill? It’s mostly dry down the dry route, it’s pretty, and within walking distance of a train station (which was actually the only real reason we chose Sell Gill because we never managed to manipulate a driver into taking us).

Sell Gill 1.0 was foiled due to weather. The original group (minus me, I was having a cheeky menty-b at home) trained all the way to Horton and hiked up to the cave only to find water absolutely pouring down the dry route and the mission was abandoned. But the incompleteness of the trip nagged at all of us, and many of us also really wanted to have a practice cave-camp before the big scary Berger (and Sophie and I had more TVP and potato flakes in our living room than we knew what to do with).

And so Sell Gill 2.0 was born.

Me, Sophie and Ben took the early train down to Horton-in-Ribblesdale, with Abbie, Charlie and Joe due to follow us some 4 hours later. We got off the train into hot sunshine, which was a nice surprise and rather contrastive to the last Sell Gill. This was a good sign.

After about an hour of faffing at the train station, ice creams eaten and the melting tarmac marked with ‘I heart YUCPC’ and ‘BW’, we finally stopped putting off the long hot walk and set off. Our soaked buffs did something to help, but not a lot, and I’m surprised we didn’t all get heatstroke.

We discussed the likelihood of Sell Gill actually being ‘bone-dry’ as Sophie had confidently claimed it would be the day before.

Sophie: “Bones aren’t really dry tho. What about bones that still have chewy bits of meat still stuck on them? Sell Gill might be bone-chewy.”

Eventually Sell Gill appeared before us, and it wasn’t bone-chewy, or bone-fresh, but as predicted, bone-dry. More faffing ensued as we were rather reluctant to put on our hot caving gear, and leave the sun which was actually quite pleasant when you weren’t walking uphill with a huge rucksack.

Another hour-ish of faff and Ben started rigging, with Sophie guiding him. I got changed into my caving gear and immediately regretted it, as I was now way too hot. We passed bags over the rebelay so no one had to do a changeover with one, and we were in.

The second pitch was a bit bone-chewy at the bottom, so Sophie waited for me and caught my bag to keep it out of the water.

We got to the last pitch. This was going to be interesting because the rebelay had a sizeable puddle on the ledge. We sent Ben to rig, then we tried to figure out a way to pass the bags over this rebelay without getting them wet.

The method was this: descend until the bag reaches the almost-shelf above the puddle; push/shove/kick the bag into the shelf, hooking a foot into the straps if necessary; then descend to the same level as the bag while keeping it pushed in place and making sure it doesn’t drop down further once you’re no longer holding it taunt on the sling; brace your knees against the wall, then haul the bag into your lap; crab walk over to the rebelay and transfer the bag, clipping the sling over to the other person on the rebelay and then pushing the bag over the ledge so it doesn’t drop back into the puddle. Job done.

I think on our third bag transfer is when Charlie appeared, Abbie and Joe not far behind. Some further bag shuttling ensued, different people stationed at the bottom of different pitches, catching and passing over bags.

All down safely, we made our way to camp and began setting up, Sophie offering different jobs that were up for grabs. I volunteered to find the shitting spot.

Sophie gave us a ‘how to shit in a cave’ seminar which was very useful, but unfortunately did not make the experience any more pleasant. Don’t worry, I won’t go into detail, but just know that down a cave is maybe the worst place to have anxiety-induced IBS. Needing to shit because you are scared of needing to shit is a very vicious cycle, and I did not enjoy it.

Anyways, moving on.

We collected water from the waterfall, which was NOT yellow, it was COMPLETELY CLEAR and TRANSPARENT and definitely did not look like diluted piss.

Sophie and Charlie cooked the TVP and smash, which we ate with much giggling and a few “it’s not actually as bad as it looks”. We washed up and Sophie tried to force-feed us the crushed custard creams, and then it was story time.

We gathered on the tarp in our sleeping bags and I read five chapters of Mallory Towers, which made the freshlings quite sleepy and Sophie and Abbie passed out completely for at least two chapters. I eventually put the book down and since we were all quite unwilling to move from our cozy huddle, we all snuggled down where we were and turned our lights off, forgetting that Sophie was lying on the massive rock in the middle of our tarp which made for quite an uncomfortable ‘sleep’.

Everyone else except Sophie seemed to fall asleep pretty quickly, but I lay awake in my sleeping bag for quite some time. I had brought my caving hut pillow (Polly the Purple Racoon) with me, which I was immensely grateful for, but she kept getting wet and I couldn’t figure out why because there was no water anywhere around us. I couldn’t seem to find a comfy way to have my legs or figure out what to do with my arms (the ‘one stuffed toy only’ rule meant I had to sacrifice Ray the Reindeer for Polly, so I had nothing to cuddle (seriously tho, what do people do with their arms if they’re not around a soft toy???)). Most of me was warm enough, but my nose was absolutely freezing and no amount of burrowing seemed to do anything to warm it up.

I tried to listen to the cave sounds and pretend that they were some ‘ambient study music’ playlist on youtube, but I listened a bit too hard and started to hear some sounds I really didn’t want to.

The waterfall was quite a way from us, but still pretty loud, and suddenly I thought I heard a laugh. I rolled over so both my ears were free to listen and stayed very still.

*cave sounds*

Hmm. Nope I imagined it.

I rolled back over. A few seconds passed, and I heard it faintly again.

I rolled back to free my ears once more.

*cave sounds*

There! That was laughing!

*more cave sounds*

No, don’t be silly Erika it’s like 4am, no one else is coming in Sell Gill at 4am… except maybe the army guys at the Craven.

Shit.

*cave sounds*

More laughter. Ok cool so we’re being raided by the army people, that’s awesome.

I rolled over to face Sophie.

E: “Sophie?”

S: “Yeah?”

E: “Not to freak you out or anything, I’m maybe just going crazy, but can you hear voices from the waterfall?”

We stayed still and listened.

S: “Maybe?”

We listened some more.

E: “There! That was definitely laughter!”

S: “Hmm, I don’t know”

More listening.

S: “Ok that was a descender sound.”

Listening continues.

E: “Do you think it’s the army people?”

S: “If it, is they’ll probably shoot us on sight.”

We lay there listening for ages, trying to prove to ourselves that we were just hallucinating, but the laughter and voices just kept getting more realistic.

Then we heard a sound that seemed to come from very nearby and we screamed and cartoonishly jumped together, clutching each other and whimpering.

E: “That sounded like a twig snapping, but there are no twigs in here!”

S: “It’s the cave monsters. They’re going to eat us.”

E: “ No no it’s fine it was probably just Joe or Charlie.”

We heard another sound, closer this time and we grabbed each other tighter and whimpered some more, then started calling out everyone else’s names.

They all woke up and told us we were crazy, and then promptly all fell back asleep.

I decided to quietly sing some lullabies to try and block out the voices. I started with ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, but then couldn’t think of any more so moved on to Alessi Rose and Taylor Swift songs. It was a bit of a challenge to sing Get Around and Falling Forever in a relaxing way, but All Too Well and The Last Great American Dynasty were pretty good.

At 8am Sophie’s phone alarm went off, and it felt not dissimilar to how it feels to hear the 6am alarm clock in Five Nights at Freddy’s. We had survived the cave monsters.

We decided to forgo any porridge making in favour of getting out of the cave as quickly as possible, so we ate the very sticky flapjacks and started packing up all our gear. There was some system decided to get us and the bags out but I don’t really remember it as I got quite sick on the way up. The main thing I remember is Sophie setting up a hauling rig at the top of the second pitch which I was supposed to help with, but when I got there I felt as though the flapjacks were imminently on their way back up so Sophie told me to go sit down in the daylight.

After a while I felt a bit better and decided to go back and help with the bags. This was a bit silly as I immediately felt sick again but didn’t want to be useless while everyone else did things so I just stood very still while I waited for Sophie to haul each bag up, then helped grab the bag and moved it off the pitch head to a non-drippy area, told the flapjacks to fuck off back down into my stomach, then stood very still again, and this was just about manageable.

At the top were some other cavers, I think with the CNCC doing a rigging workshop, who very kindly waited for us all to come out before they went in. Sophie shouted down to Abbie that we were off to do some ‘camp admin’ and then we scurried off to bury the shit drum’s contents. We tried desperately to keep the trowel and shit-drum hidden from the CNCC members and not look suspicious but probably failed miserably as we couldn’t stop giggling, and the trowel had quite a distinct outline when shoved down the front of Sophie’s half-stripped undersuit.

We dug a hole which took ages and was quite tricky as there were many sizeable rocks in the soil, but we did it and buried all the shit and put the soil back on top. Then we went back to our bags which were now on the surface to grab the washing up liquid and sponge as I was quite unwilling to travel on the train with the darren drum in it’s current state.

Darren drum washed, we rejoined the others who were all on the surface by now. We got changed, repacked our bags, lay in the sun for a bit, then headed off.

In Horton we sat in the pub garden for a while and then walked over to the train station. There was some running event going on, so the village was packed, and the two-carriage train was very busy which was very fun with our massive bags.

Back in York we waved goodbye to the freshlings, and me, Sophie and Abbie headed back to our houses, the various metal items on Abbie’s bag making a very whimsical clanging the whole way home.

Overall pretty vibey, but I hope to never have to shit in a cave again, or to be stuck in Sell Gill when the cave monsters return.