Lancaster Hole - 28 Jan 2006

Saturday January 28th 2006

Members present: Debbie Flowers,  Dominic Galliano,  Emma Welsh,  Laz Abbott

Dom had great fun rigging the entrance to Lancaster Hole because there were already two other sets of ropes going down it! The rest of us had fun squeezing past the MONSTER chunkage of rope that made up the three rigged rebelays in the tight bit at the top! This was Emma's first rebelay underground so having to work out which rope was ours every few minutes made it a bit more 'interesting'!

After Emma had passed the first rebelay, she got her lamp wire caught round a bit of rock and started garotting herself! by the time I had gone down to see how she was doing, she had freed herself and continued on down.

Once we were all down, we set off up the moddy slope for Slug World. A bit slippery and scrotty getting in but well worth it: very pretty! :)

Back to the bottom of the shaft, we headed off to Bridge Hall and climbed up into The Colonnades. Also quite pretty, etc. We had our doughnuts in there. 8) Only slightly gritty from where the lid had come off in the tackle sack! :o

Back to Bridge Hall and down the little hole and headed off to Fall Pot. I went down the rope already rigged there. This has to be the mankiest bit of rope I've ever abseiled down! I was down to about 2 bars on my rack before I could actually move!! Whilst I was doing this, Dom legged it back to Bridge Hall to grab our other rope.

I had a bit of a wander around at the bottom of Fall Pot but couldn't remember the way down to the streamway, and I didn't fancy trying any of the dodgy looking climbs I found with no one else down there to extract me! :s

I came back up the MankRope (TM), getting a face full of mud off it every time I moved up the rope! We headed back to Bridge Hall and then set off for The Graveyard.

Once we got to The Graveyard we all stood about looking at all the little stal thingies and then noticed that there were at least two bats flying about us! This is quite an impressive way in and down two pitches. Presumably, there is a bat-size entrance into this bit!!

We wandered about a bit and then went off to find The Chapel of Rest. I climbed up a slopey bit covered in mud that had the consistency of chocolate cream in a cake (it didn't taste the same, though :( ). Suddenly, my carbide went out and wouldn't relight. It also started making really nasty fizzing and bubbling sounds from the generator! I decided that it would probably be best if we left at that point! :o

When I had got up the top of the small pitch on the way back to Bridge Hall, I thought I'd have a quick look at my carbide. I discovered that I had some of the 'cake filling' splodged over the jet of my carbide! When I flicked it off, it started working again. Yay! :)

We headed out of Lancaster Hole and I got frozen sitting about waiting on the surface for everyone else. Still, I got to see the pretty sunset. Back to Bullpot Farm to change in the comparative warmth!

A fun trip.

:)