Blue John Cavern - 29th Nov 2009

Sunday November 29th 2009

Members present: Catherine Moody,  Chuck Holder,  Matthew Chubb

After spending the night at the Chapel in readiness for Peak, we had a lovely lie-on on Sunday morning. Chuck got up at 8 to start on breakfast, and half an hour later appeared with tea in bed for the rest of us (he’s very well trained!) Looking at the weather outside we weren’t too optimistic; indeed, 8.45 saw Ann appear at the door to tell us that Peak was a no-go. My heart sank – that was the second time for me that Peak has been rained off – am I ever going to get to do this cave?! Shortly after, Chad and co. arrived, and after filling ourselves with breakfast we planned what to do with the day. Chad had brought SRT kits for the freshers and packed ropes for Oxlow so they were sorted. Unfortunately, when we left York the previous day the weather forecast had been quite optimistic and as such, to save boot space, Chuck and I had only packed the harness and cowstails we thought we’d need for the weekend. So, our options were to either go do a fairly dull non-srt cave, or go to a show cave then spend the rest of the day drinking tea at the TSG; we chose the latter option! Matt C decided to donate his SRT kit to Maz and Chad and spend the day with us instead of going caving.

So, after dropping the rest of the others off at Oxlow, and laughing at them having to change in the rain, we headed off to Blue John Cavern. There were some nice bits to the cave, including the big canyon-y sections, but on the whole fairly mediocre I thought (perhaps the Slovenian show caves have skewed my views somewhat!) The guide it seemed was rather bored of his job, and was very abrupt with his answers, especially when I started asking about whether the rest of the cave was permitted or not (the survey looked quite interesting).

After a random but yummy lunch of cous-cous and cheese toasties, we played snakes and ladders then had a brief nap. I had noticed some golden syrup on the kitchen shelf and decided to make flapjacks to while away a couple of hours – these were much appreciated by the very cold team that returned a few hours later! :)