Miss Graces Lane Cave - 6th Jun 2009

Saturday June 6th 2009

Members present: Adam Wilkinson,  Adrian Turner,  Charlie Dixon,  Josh Vale

It rained so Otter Hole was out so we ended up going down this one. Its a great cave. VERY easy to get lost as there are loads of different promising-looking routes to go down. Our main focus of the trip was to go down the La La slide (yes that is the one next to tubby hall) and also to see the white crystal pool (or something like that). Most of the cave is completely dry, except for a particularly muddy (and I mean squelch squelch) crawl to what we soon realized lead us to the BOTTOM of the La La slide. once almost all of us had got up there (after several attempts as we were completely covered in wet mud ), I decided we'd seriously missed out on the fun of a slide so had to go down it... which lead to much struggling, squirming and giggling on the second attempt to get back up (I think if it had taken me any longer they might just have left me there!) ... although it wouldn't really have mattered as after some further exploration past the slide we decided our best option after all was to go back the way we'd come!

There have been several attempts to push the cave and there is scaffolding in various places which is NOT to be trusted (I found this out after loosing my grip when climbing down some, and falling down with a scaffolding pole following shortly after!!) There are little crystals throughout the cave, Ade said the pool thingy wasn't much to look at, but something i thought was really cool (apart from the dodgy ladders, of which there are many) was that there are places in the first entrance bit where insects have obviously died while still attached to the walls and the stuff that forms stalactites (calcium is it? cant remember!) has formed on them. They are quite pretty (in a weird sort of way) Ive got some pictures which i will upload soon.

Oh yeah, and on the way back up the entrance ladders we saw THE cutest newt in the world, it was about a centimeter long!!!

Anyhow, that is my little schpeel of this funky cave!