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David Wilson, James Wilson, Rebecca Diss, Thomas Porter, Ana Teck, Ellie Pizey, Chris Hayes, Jan Kożuszek, Laura Temple, Thurston Blount, Janak Subberwal

Friday

No minibus, so it’s every car for themselves. I meet Thurston at cave house and we wait a few minutes for Laura so we can stuff ourselves into her well-loved Focus and zoom off to the Northwest. Google maps says the toll road will save us an hour of driving, which we deem a worthwhile investment. Laura switches to a different navigation app though, with the sole purpose of being warned about speeding cameras. She’d volunteered us to do the shopping, not realising that Chris was, for the first time, driving himself to Yorkshire and would be in a better position to fill his nearly empty whip with hash browns.

“Chris, if by some miracle you’re not driving, please shop” - Laura

We manage to call Chris, who for some reason is driving his grandpa around. Meanwhile, we pass a big Jaffa ceke-branded tank truck going the other way, presumably filled with delicious jelly. We also see a truck carrying a wall, for whatever reason, and signs pointing to a place called “Newcastle-under-Lyme". Much laughter ensues.

We get to Bullpot farm at a reasonable time and see a hedgehog trotting by the ‘Pissing Place’. Laura and Thurston decide to fatshame the hedgehog.

“Yeah I bet they talked – Ben Richards and everyone’s mum” - Laura (I will not provide any context)

Jan

Saturday

Pool Sink > Boundary Pot: David Wilson, James Wilson, Rebecca Diss, Ana Teck, Laura Temple

We did a boundary pool exchange; I don’t know which way we went in or who was in the other group. My chest harness was unbelievably tight to start with, I’m not sure who wore it before. We entered via that stream which is very nice, it contains the wretched tube and is surprisingly slippy in places. There were some outrageous downclimbs, some were just awkward though, for example you had to slide into them just off the exit of a horizontal squeeze. Davey snapped a handhold flake of one of the particularly nasty ones. Unfortunately that made it impossible for me to take the traditional route so had to spider round the top of the hole, facing into the abyss. We met the others and insisted they leave out of wretched rabbit, the way out would be so absurd we doubted they would be able to find it from the description. I think after some traversing I got sent to look at something with an Easter related name, but I’m not sure if I’m imagining this. I’m also unsure of the members of my group, I think it was James, Davey, Anna, Diss but that sounds made up too. I remember Diss in particular because her SRT bag is massive.

PS: Sorry Davey for flicking a massive rock at you, If it had been a football, I would've been proud.

Laura

Pool Sink > Wretched Rabbit: Ellie Pizey, Chris Hayes, Jan Kożuszek, Thurston Blount, Janak Subberwal

After some faff, we settled on a Boundary to Pool exchange for the main trip of the day, with an Extremely Tarty group going Boundary first, and a somewhat more intermediate one going to Pool, including yours truly. Many things seemed to be going wrong for me, as I realised I did not have wetsocks with me, which in turn meant that my wellies, that I put over my normal socks, were half a size too large – the size 12s are perfect if I put them over the wetsocks! Alas.

The walk to the upstream part of Ease Gill was, as ever, pleasant but long. The other group caught up to us right as we were debating whether we were at the right entrance and alleviated our doubts before disappearing further up the gorge. I was gonna go in first originally, but it seemed like an unpleasant crawl and Chris insisted on packing all the ropes into Ged, the Laura-sized tackle sack we got for Slov, so I happily let him struggle ahead and only followed once the dull thudding of Ged slamming against the passage walls died down a little.

The entrance to Pool was not created with people my size in mind. Much struggle ensued as I contorted myself into mystic shapes demanded by the tight and winding passage. Fortunately, it wasn’t too long before it opened up and I found the first pitch, already rigged by Chris, and dropped down into a streamway. I wanted to rig the second pitch for practice and discovered much to my horror that I’d forgotten almost all the knowledge I’d had before. Still, with Chris’s help I managed to stir my memory and did a reasonable job of pitches two and three, connected by a walking passage where the rope nonetheless continued, lying uselessly on the floor. Weird bolting, but it worked I guess.

Thurston then took over for the final pitch, starting with what seemed like a confusing traverse going up. Once we got down it was not too long before we bumped into the Boundary team, who informed us that the main feature of that cave is some cursed routefinding that we really should not attempt on the way out, so the decision was made that we’d go out through Wretched Rabbit instead.

At this point I was beginning to feel oddly weak and light-headed, despite the cave so far not having been that challenging (maybe apart from that one bend near the entrance). I had some chocolate and a precautionary ibuprofen, remembering last time I was in Wretched Rabbit I was battling a nasty headache, and followed the group along the main streamway.

Before heading out, we took a detour to see the gorgeous Easter Grotto that just seemed to keep going, as Thurston and I crawled further and further along the path that snaked between the formations while Ellie and Chris stayed back and chilled.

The way up was going ok initially, though I was quick to run out of breath on the scrambles up boulder chokes, climbs up waterfalls and in tight winding passages of Wretched Rabbit. Then we came upon a taller traverse in a rift, becoming too tight to follow at the same height. ‘Do I just go up here?’ I say. ‘Yes!’ Thurston shouts from somewhere ahead. Ok then, up I go. I manage to find some footing and lift myself up into the passable part of the traverse when one of my wellies slips and I am sent tumbling down the rift like a ragdoll, utterly terrifying Ellie, who was waiting behind.

In retrospect I can’t have gone down more than about 150cm, and the tight confines of the passage made it more of a slide down than a fall, but I still had to stay in place and calm myself before discovering that I could just go along the bottom of the rift, with no climbing necessary. It would later transpire that the bodily harm resulting from this fall would total to one small bruise on my right shoulder. Not too bad.

After this incident I was actually feeling a little more on top of my game, probably because of the adrenaline infusion I’d got, and the rest of the way out went without much excitement, though I did stop now and then just to make sure everything was ok and breathe in peace. On the final climbs with the big fat handlines Ellie even offered to tie a prusik knot with a sling for security, which we should probably always do anyway. The knot itself turned out to be far less complicated and mysterious than I was expecting, amounting to just wrapping the sling a few times around the rope.

Not long after we were out of the entrance tube, more than on time for call-out but too late to try and go swimming, which the other group had been planning to do. After walking back to the farm I took a wonderful shower and proceeded to be blissfully useless in the dinner-making process. The pasta bake was wonderful, as it always is when Thurston is involved, and a group of local cavers invited us as judges in their cake competition, a difficult challenge we were nevertheless determined to rise up to. Had some drinks and went to sleep at a reasonable time.

Jan

Sunday

After the adventures of the day before I decided I didn’t really want to do more caving, so I just stayed at the farm, did some washing up and generally vibed. Seems like the others had a good time, with most going down Bull Pot of the Witches, joined by a random representative from the Red Rose club. Cleaning then went smoothly and we sped off, assaulted by rain. We played some car games in an effort to keep Laura awake and discovered that I cannot move much on the back seat or the entire car starts to shift. A nice weekend overall, despite the adversities.

Jan

Cow Pot: Ana Teck, Laura Temple

Bull Pot of the Witches: David Wilson, James Wilson, Rebecca Diss, Thomas Porter, Ellie Pizey, Chris Hayes, Thurston Blount, Janak Subberwal + some random Red Rose person

No one wrote anything for either of these trips, much sadness :(