Present: Julia, Anthony, Al
Martin didn’t show, he went climbing instead, the heretic. So then there were 3…
Me and Anthony drove to Bowes, wandered down the only street looking for a house to ask permission at. Preferably the right house. Asked an old bloke if we could go down the cave and he said “Ooh, I’ve seen them coming out of God’s Bridge covered in mud…” Combined with that and the description of “A crawl through liquid mud” in the guidebook, we figured that we’d not stay clean for that long. We didn’t.
God’s Bridge is ace, don’t ask me about it ‘cos I’m a dossy arts student, but I think it looked like an outdoor cave. Went down the wrong cave (it was the resurgence cave) but eventually found the correct cave and headed down. Lots of mud. Lots of fucking cold mud, especially when you’ve got no gloves. Al declared that if this was God’s Bridge then God was a bit crap. Think he regretted this later. Eventually got to the end of the crawl and found the river, lots of flies and a few spiders’ webs. “Oooh, there’s a whole ecosystem down here.”
Sat in the river and me and Al dammed (curse you river) it with our legs. Al was playing with his stinky, trying to get a brighter flame when it suddenly became rather too bright for his liking. After sitting there for a long time he decided that his sight wasn’t permanently damaged and the only casualty was his eyelashes which, just like the cave, weren’t there. Stomped downstream until it got too wet, so went the other way.
The only pretty bit was a stal that wasn’t attached to anything. So some interesting photos were taken (some enjoyed this more than others) then tried to find an alternative to the shitty, mud filled entrance. But no, we simply found another mud filled passage with even less room, so we went out the way we came in.
Out in the sunshine so we went and sat (swam/floated) in the outside river and cleaned our gear. Then to a pub in Bowes and home.
One day I’ll do a sober write up.
Julia Bradshaw