Yorkshire VI
Ben Richards, James Wilson, Matti Mitropoulos, Ellie Pizey, Leo Antwis, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Jergus Strucka, Salwa Ahmad, Herman Wong, Leonie Siepmann, Hannes Reichle, Esther Mueller
Friday
A relatively speedy getaway meant we of course arrived at the incredibly reasonable hour of 1 am at the NPC. Urgh. Better than 2 am I guess.
Now reunited with my fellow Central Asian explorers Matti, Salwa and Leo, the bus ride featured many conversations, songs and other references to our ridiculous adventure three weeks prior. Leo also managed to navigate us halfway to Mendip before we finally turned North. He claimed it was closed roads, but undoubtedly it was in fact his Cornish homing instincts.
Ben
I had been waiting impatiently for 2 weeks for this day to arrive. The central asian travellers were once more going to be reunited! Matti was flying all the way from Germany and Leo was joining us from Cornwall! And me? I finally had a free weekend to brush up on my long-forgotten SRT skills and driving abilities. The drive was quite comical. Amongst the 3 people sitting at the front, me, Matti and Leo we had not appointed a navigator and so before we knew it we were heading to Cardiff, Wales, but to our surprise everyone in the back was oblivious so we formulated a good reasoning for our detoured route. Surprisingly people were not that annoyed, I think, so all was good. After Asda’s quick shop, I decided to take the wheel but was quite nervous because my sleeping routine for the past 4 weeks since being back from central asia was 5am wake up and 8pm sleeping and by the time we reached Asda it was way past my bedtime and I was definitely falling asleep… The only thing keeping me awake? A ferocious cold draft blasting into the car from somewhere on my right; like Mother Nature herself had turned on a personal Arctic fan just for me. It kept me icy, alert, and very much alive. And finally at 1am we reached the beloved NPC. And headed off straight to bed after a couple of hrs of catching up with Matti 😉
Salwa
I booked my flights quite late so was semi-forced to have a bit of an adventure flying in to London, spending Thursday night in Zurich sleeping on the streets and chatting to a rather opinionated man in the one 24/7 bar; I did eventually make it to the union as the Friday noon approached, right on time for my minibus test to be able to drive CTO for slov. I passed with flying colours of course, so I faffed around in South Kensington for a while to eventually meet the minibus gang to load the bus with pleasing efficiency. We had the 17 seater (since when does the union have a 17 seater? Can we even drive that?) and the club had left most of its rope at the NPC last weekend, so the bus was as spacious as it could be. Not that that really affected me, I was either driving or co-driving the whole time. Shout out to the happiest man in Birmingham who graced us with his wise words.
The ChatGPT generated meal went through about 3 iterations before the Asda was reached, and 4 more in the shop itself, so I mostly just did what I was told, trying not to spout my opinions too aggressively lest I end up being assigned responsibility for this weird meal. Nevertheless, my choice of snack was a gigantic bag of M&Ms, which I bought solely for the fantastic slogan on the front. Around 1am we made it to the NPC though (very reasonable, I thought), and I made myself comfortable in the snug.
Matti
Saturday
Lost Johns: Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Salwa Ahmad, Herman Wong
A successful trip got caught up when one of their 30 m ropes was not in fact 30 m long, so they didn't quite make it to the bottom. However it sounded like all had fun.
Ben
After a rejuvenating morning fuelled by the classic caving breakfast, I was assigned to a team: Chris, Julien, and Herman, headed for Lost Johns. After driving to the cave, Esther complimented my safe driving skills—a compliment I am now carrying with me like a badge of honour. The cave itself? Chef’s kiss. Lost Johns served up an action-packed menu of short (10m) and long (50m) pitches, traverses, and some good old-fashioned horizontal caving. But the most unsettling part was the loud, thunderous rumble of the stream crashing into the cave—amplified by the classic British weather from the night before, which had, unsurprisingly, delivered its usual dose of heavy rain. With Julien rigging, I used the opportunity to catch up with Chris. We chatted about weird and wonderful topics—until I noticed that “just a bit chilly” had become “hello hypothermia, my old friend.”
Speaking of which—plot twist—I actually remembered how to SRT! I was shocked. I clipped, un-clipped, descended and ascended with grace without asking one to double check every time I did anything. My confidence in the gear? Sky high. My confidence in heights? Absolutely non-existent. At one point, I froze while traversing past a ~ 3m pitch (yes, you heard that right), and Chris had to heroically come rescue me. I believe it’s what the caving community calls “a learning opportunity.” I call it “a full-body mental crisis.” Desensitisation to heights? Yeah, no. We emerged triumphantly at 7:30pm—early! Callout was at 8pm and we were buzzing, ready to rub it in everyone’s faces… only to find out we were the last ones back. A quick drive back and it was time to make some sort of food with the ingredients we bought on friday- Gnocchi with tomato sauce and cheese cooked by Leo Antwis. And then before you know it was time to hit the hay for me…
Salwa
Notts Pot: James Wilson, Ellie Pizey, Jergus Strucka, Hannes Reichle, Esther Mueller
They went down the left hand route and then up instead of down. Seemed like they had a good day out.
F'ing Hopeless: Ben Richards, Matti Mitropoulos, Leo Antwis, Leonie Siepmann
Another late morning as rampaging faff engulfed much of the day as per usual. We finally left the NPC at 12:30. It was decided that today would be a Leck Fell day, so a series of trips to the windswept highlands were selected.
I decided not to bring my camera stuff this weekend, the second in a row, and so was free to go wherever my heart desired, instead of where my Peli case demanded. F'ing hopeless had been on my list for quite some time, and although it felt insane not to take a camera to supposedly the prettiest cave in Yorkshire, I thought it was still reasonable to do a recce there and see what all the hype was about.
Leo was wearing his barefoot toe-spreading "shoes". I found these highly entertaining. Sadly he put wellies on for the cave itself.
We found the entrance of the cave pretty easily with GPS, and Leo rigged down the first two pitches. It was odd to be in such a newly dug cave, and all the scaffolding and shoring felt delightfully new and shiny. Although a little loose, the cave wasn't too bad and we flew along at a reasonable pace. A muddy climb and a rifty squeeze were a little annoying, but not much so without a peli case. Eventually, we came to a wet pitch down, with a crawl in the streamway the obvious way on. Matti and Leo went on, but Leonie wasn't feeling on top form after doing nearly 300 km of cycling the week before, which is very understandable. I decided to see how bad the crawl was, and it turned out to be pretty wet and long, despite most of it being hands and knees rather than flat out. After returning to Leonie to report my findings we decided it was best to head out, so back I went for trips three and four through the squeeze to tell the other two.
Leo said the Apostles were just around the corner, so I nipped down to take a look before heading out. They were just around the corner, but sadly the corner itself was a gorge with foot-deep, wellie-sucking mud. Sadness. The apostles were meh, but the roof above did have some fantastic straws in it, and there were a couple of impressive curtains on the way too. I got one photo of Matti and zoomed back to catch up with Leonie who had started to make her way out.
After catching up with her, we continued out at a steady pace, with Leonie feeling quite a bit worse after having done some pitches. At the top of one, I was nearly killed by a chihuahua-sized rock crashing down beside my wellie which gave me quite a fright. Definitely the right decision to head out.
At the surface, we were greeted by glorious sunshine. Leonie said she was feeling a bit better and was happy to head back to the bus alone, and I passed on the info from Matti that the key was on one of the wheels. I decided to go join the others in Notts Pot, given it was only about 50m away from the F'ing Hopeless entrance. Given the sunny weather and freedom from the cave, surely nothing else could ruin Leonie's day, my logic went. Hold that though.
I nipped down the entrance pitch, splashed my way down the really-quite-wet streamway to Three Ways Chamber, and found that the others had gone down the left-hand route, and then up into Twilight Zone or whatever it's called. James had just reached the top of the first pitch in this series and I explained for the first of four times why I was in this cave all of a sudden. I zipped down after him, repeated my story to Hannes, then passed him and repeated my story to Esther. Dropping the pitch after her I then met Ellie and Jergus who were just up from de-rigging the first pitch above the meeting point of all the routes. I could at least help take one of their tackle sacks, which was nice, after which I rocketed back up towards the surface.
Back at the bus, I heard Leonie's incredibly sad tales. Sadly the info of where the key was stowed was apparently of no use as she couldn't find the key after numerous rounds of all four wheels, and so she had sat outside the bus through multiple rain showers, feeling utterly terrible. Much much sadness. I do feel really bad about this, although I had no idea where the key was either, but I could have at least provided moral support. Sorry Leonie!
Matti and Leo were out before I was and had made it back to the car for the very reasonable time of 6 pm for our 11 pm callouts and 9 pm ETAs. Ellie was out about half an hour later after having finished de-rigging, and Leo, Leonie (of her own free will), Matti and wandered over to Lost Johns to see if we could provide words of speed-based support to the other team who we were now all waiting on. Leo was of course in his barefoot shoes, which was a sight in itself.
We stood around and chatted at the entrance for ages, having also poked around the Starting Handle Hole entrance on the way over, but naturally just as we made it back to the bus we saw two cavers on the horizon walking back from that direction.
To pass the time we decided to make the minibus fully wheelchair compliant by testing out the wheelchair access ramp. It turns out this thing is enormous, with three large square sections that fold out into a catwalk that Chris pounced on as soon as he was out of the cave, having removed as many of his clothes as soon as possible, in typical Chris fashion. The view in the other direction was fortunately substantially better, as the rain had washed out all the gunk from the air, meaning we could see weird wind farms in places I don't think I've noticed before.
With Chris and Herman out, we could all head off in the bus back to the hut. With Matti at the helm, this was of course the perfect time to all share in Chris' post-cave trifle that he had stored in the secret compartment above the drivers. Shockingly this went without much disaster and should become a staple of the club menu in my opinion.
Back at the hut a protracted but surprisingly low-energy evening ensued, with many people heading to bed before 11 and others staying up until gone 4 am. Leo created a replacement tent pole for his tent that was without a double higher quality than the original it had replaced. He was about to trek to Newcastle on Monday, so this was quite crucial kit. He also used the remaining tent poles to make weapons of mass destruction and told horrifying tales of doing similar things in Maths lessons back in the day.
Ben
As it turns out people were relying on me to wake up early and cook up breakfast but alas… that didn’t happen. After the third call to breakfast I slowly meandered into the kitchen, and settled down for the cave deciding process. There was a lot of back and forth, not least because it was technically summer, so we should be able to do wet caves but… the weather was proper shit so we were still limited in choice. No matter – Minibus to Leck Fell, and I would be one to experience one of the newest caves to be found in the Dales with Leo, Leonie and Ben. F’ing Hopeless had a reputation for being super pretty, but what I had failed to consider was that my last caving experience had been Su Bentu, Sardinia – a cavern of vast proportions, where every surface is coated in gorgeous formations of all shapes and sizes. There wasn’t a single British cave that could even come close to that, so I was setting myself up for disappointment.
Leo began the rigging with the intention of ‘learning to rig’ with the first pitch, then handing over for speed’s sake; but he did such a fine job he just continued flawlessly, me trailing behind him, occasionally distracting him with conversation or song. Before long we were at the start of the wet crawls and, as per usual, the initial dunk was the worst, after which it gets less and less grim as your body acclimatises. I didn’t pay much attention to Leonie behind me until I emerged in the next chamber along, so was a little concerned when I heard Ben approach after a while instead of her – he gave us a super quick rundown: Leonie was approaching illness and wanted to turn around, he would leave with her, jump down Notts to meet the other team. I did feel a bit bad about him leaving early before the pretties but… selfishness got the better of me and I voted to keep going with Leo. As mentioned, my awe at the pretties was underwhelming, and so Ben didn’t miss out on much – mostly just more wet crawling. I think F’ing Hopeless should not have a reputation for being pretty, but for being grim. In the same way that Shuttleworth should be known for being a chill beginners cave where you can learn to rig, rather than a notably well-decorated cave.
Anyway, Leos speedy derigging meant we were out before we knew it, dropped by Notts Pot only to find half of their team also out, so strode down to the bus – where Leonie slowly approached us with a melancholic gait. As it turns out, her restful afternoon was spent getting gradually colder as spitting rain and wind whipped around her shivering by the minibus, as she couldn’t find the key. We helped her open the bus, slowly got changed, then got distracted by the wheelchair ramp of the new minibus. Turns out its actually massive, so we had some fun catwalking over it until the others got back.
Back at the hut I offered my services to aid the cooking process but they were politely declined (can’t think why), so I just chatted and drank a few ciders until most went to bed. A lengthy cigar made way for lengthy conversation with Chris, Leo and Julien, so we were well into the hours of the morning before I made it to my roll mat in the snug.
Matti
Sunday
Hut, doing nothing work: Ellie, Jergus, Julien, Esther
Julien had achieved some work, unlike Jergus who had achieved none whatsoever. Ellie and maybe other humans had gone for a walk to the cafe at the road junction and back, and Esther cooked up some fantastic cabbage and gnocchi for us all when we got back from the caves, which was equal parts thoughtful and delicious.
Jingling: Ben Richards, Matti Mitropoulos, Leo Antwis, Chris Hayes, Salwa Ahmad, Herman Wong, Leonie Siepmann, Hannes Reichle
Today was to be a chill day. I was woken up in the most gentle manner imaginable by Esther, who quietly announced that breakfast would soon be ready. What a lovely difference to the normal routine of Matti concussing me with a frying pan.
Various ideas were floated at breakfast, which ultimately resulted in all in Jingling. Chris did float some other ideas, but the weather was still a bit naf and the water levels quite high so that ruled out the vast majority of caves.
Leonie wanted to learn to rig, so she would rig down one route while the rest of us went down the others and did some rescue practice. The dodgy danger tree of death route has now been properly bolted, so I could at long last do the main hang straight down the pot. Something I'd wanted to do for a while actually, ever since seeing photos of Jingling from the bottom.
Leonie had some expert tuition from Ellie on the indoor SRT wall at the NPC, before very ambitiously trying to derig the whole setup traverse first and continuing to derig out to the y-hang. This was very entertaining but sadly Ellie pointed this out and much laughter ensued.
Nine of us headed up to West Kingsdale in the end, after an extraordinary amount of faff, as is a time-honoured tradition in the club. James spotted a patch of trees on the horizon and decided that he would rather walk there than to put up with any more faff, so left the bus and trekked towards the horizon. The remaining eight of us stomped up to Jingling only to find it infested with other cavers already. This was probably to be expected.
After some discussion, we established that the other team were only doing the Lateral Cleft route, so Leonie could rig the normal way down and Chris would rig the straight hang. While waiting for Chris to do this I led a small contingent through the first section of Jingling Cave, such was the level of boredom. Given this is one of the legendary once-in-a-lifetime caves, I was sure to emphasise that they can't game the system by just coming here every time they walk past. You're welcome, Fiona ;)
This all more or less went to plan, and as I descended the main hang I paused to take some hilarious photos of videos of Matti blasting Star Wars from his penny whistle while watching Leonie rig down her first pitch. Quite the experience while I danged 50m above the floor.
The bottom of Jingling is actually very impressive, it's quite a large hole. The only other time I'd been there was on my rite of passage rigging trip with DW back in the day, so it was nice to see it again and see the rest of the cave. From the bottom, looking up you could see the other team emerge out of the cleft in the wall and descend a third parallel rope to the two we had rigged.
Meanwhile, Hannes rigged his first ropes on the bottom pitch, which he did a great job of. Chris whipped out his PVC-clad Kindle, and Matti blasted the Titanic theme tune on his penny whistle followed by a lawless rendition of Darude Sandstorm. I got some top-tier photos of all this. eventually, we all followed Hannes down his new shiny rigging to see the incredibly underwhelming bottom of Jingling and its dig. We did rig a rope down the dig from the top, but it turned out that the top was actually free climbable and the rope was needed to replace the ultra-dodgy handline further down the dig. We brought a 20-ish metre rope and this was nowhere near enough to do the top and bottom of the dig - it really does go down a long way. We didn't go down the dodgy handline section because both our rope and our patience with this terrible piece of cave had run out, so we started heading out.
A brief chat with the other team meant we learnt that they were roughly associated with the Red Rose and that they were here to rig ropes for a bolting team that was coming in after them. They also told us that they'd hilariously forgotten all rope bags, so had brought their rope in shopping bags which they'd left up in the cleft so that we wouldn't see them. Very entertaining.
We wanted to get some rescue practice in before Slovenia so Chris, Leonie and I hauled Matti up the final pitch while he played his penny whistle. I say "we" hauled, Chris did the vast majority of the work all by himself and Leonie and I just watched him do it. We challenged ourselves by breaking into a tight line instead of using a second rope, which went very well actually, and then we set up another pulley to get Matti onto the traverse line which we then tugged him along to safety.
Up above us we heard another team, the bolters, and so we decided to call it a day and head out. Kindly this other team pointed out that the Matti/Leonie combo had rigged some mega rope rub and so they fixed our rigging for us, which was nice. I bombed up the ropes, managing to rope walk almost the entire way much to my delight, and at the top I got some entertaining photos of Matti. Much hauling and the bags finally joined us, after getting stuck on the P bolts at the very top.
With rain on the horizon, we dashed for the bus but did get drizzled on a bit. Back at the hut, we learnt that Julien had achieved some work, unlike Jergus who had achieved none whatsoever. Ellie and maybe other humans had gone for a walk to the cafe at the road junction and back, and Esther cooked up some fantastic cabbage and gnocchi for us all when we got back from the caves, which was equal parts thoughtful and delicious. I headed back on the train after realising that no one had scanned my open return ticket the weekend before when we had no bus, which is where I'm writing this from now, and presumably everyone else is having a miserable time on the bus something something. I also managed to get the entire report written, photos uploaded to the website and plonked in the article before midnight. Hell yeah. Time for bed.
Yet another fantastic weekend - next up, Sloveeeeeennniaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!
Ben
The NPC had a members meeting the night before in the snug, so there were constantly people collecting forgotten items etc during the course of the morning, diminishing the experience of the comfortable lie-in, unfortunately. Nevertheless I eventually gathered my porridge from the kitchen and seated myself at the table. After a surprising lack of faff we settled on all in Jingling – and proceeded to generate maximal faff while packing.
I had never been to Jingling, surprisingly, so made sure Leonie knew this, who had asked me watch over her shoulder as she rigged for the first time. I do feel a bit bad about how little support I gave her as she rigged the admittedly intimidating pitch, but she seemed to be handling it superlatively and displayed confidence with the knots not least from her sailing experience, so I wasn’t worried at all. Instead I annoyed everyone with terrible improvised penny whistle songs I played upon request.
I spent a good amount of time vibing at the bottom, eventually dropping down the last pitch before the dig only to see Herman emerge and derig the dig, then get told I was to be rescued up this 3m distance. Ok sure, I guess… Chris and Ben faffed about transferring my weight from pitch to traverse, and while I could have paid attention to learn from the application of rescue techniques, I didn’t. So that was that.
Back at the bus we met with James who had been waiting for an unfortunate length of time, and sped off quickly enough. Esther had incredibly made a gnocci – cabbage comboed meal for us to chow down upon once we got back, which she played down as a ‘quick meal she threw together’ but I would consider a ‘high effort meal’ by my standards, the sorts of which are only seen a few times a month in my kitchen.
Anyway thanks to the delights of summer, much of the drive back was still in daylight, making it far more enjoyable. Deep conversations with Salwa, James and Chris accompanied us back to London, where I didn’t engage with any of the ‘opening stores’ faff, instead opting to park the minibus. And before I knew it that was it - I was on the night buses home. Well worth the trip – no crazy caving, just good times all round.
Matti
Today was an interesting morning… All I craved was a tiny slice of morning serenity with Matti. Instead, we got surprise breakfast alerts on five-minute intervals 😂 Anyway, today’s plan was Jingling. We piled into the car around 12:30pm (peak punctuality, obviously), and most of us headed off to our destination. James, however, bailed last minute, claiming he wanted to go on a “walk.” Sure, James. Personally, I’m convinced it was because of what I had said that morning…
Jingling Cave was short and sweet. Then there was Jingling Pot, but to be honest, I spent more time chatting with Leo than actually doing anything cave-related. The cave itself was basically a straight 50m drop and climb back up, sprinkled with Matti casually fluting his way through it like some subterranean Pied Piper. And get this—I genuinely thought the man knew how to play the flute. The confidence, the poise, the total commitment. Turns out, it was 100% improvisation.
We managed to get back to the bus just before the rain started. Sadly, we had to part ways with Leo, who was going on a little adventure of his own - walking from the NPC to Newcastle to visit a friend. Casual.
The drive back was also surprisingly delightful! Got to catch up with James after basically a year! To no surprise the vans speedometer also stopped working. Naturally, we took full advantage of that and recorded a video—coming soon to ICCC Instagram (Y6 post pending, once I reclaim a sliver of free time this weekend). Anyway, the weekend was slowly coming to an end and next up; Slovenia (albeit 3 weeks away… sigh)
