Present: Anthony, Lisa (RUCC), Julia, Jon B, Jon M (RUCC), Tom (RUCC), Matt (RUCC ish), Andrew
It was a warm haziran gün. We set off together from the Cerberus hut, a Reading car and four of us from Durham. The remaining lot from Durham were off for a touristy day at Cheddar gorge. Obtained permits from the Wessex caving hut to venture down Longwood Swallet. Thievery is rife around the area near the cave, thus after dropping us a short walk from the cave, the cars were driven back to the nearby farm where they would be safer under watch from the farmer.
After a bit of bother unlocking the padlock to the cave we finally descended the 35ft entrance chimney through the coffin shaped concrete entrance. The crawling at the bottom is rather awkward. With some groaning, complaining and contortion we thrutched our way through. Then came a couple of short ladder climbs. The August streamway [Longwood actually – AJD] is entered and we are soon soaked by a torrent of water from above. Entering the Great Chamber we are faced with a climb down the rock with quite a fall beneath. After two of us were belayed down almost in the waterfall an easier route along the side wall was spotted,
The main streamway is decorated by many pretties. You get wet lying in the stream at some points but it is a pleasant passage. Until that is a majority of the group decided the passage onwards had become a bit crap, leaving the remainder of intrepid explorers to continue a crawl in the streamway leading to a rift where a drop down to a passage beneath was taken with slight hesitation since the climb back up could be a bastard. The way on became rather tight so we decided to turn back. The climb back up the rift wasn’t so bad, we swiftly rejoined the others after a bit of frantic thrutching.
On the way back up we had planned to follow the August streamway. However we decided it was a bit too wet so followed our original way back up.
A bit of faffing around occurred up top since we had managed to exchange ladders with a Cambridge group who had also been venturing down the same cave. We waited around a bit for them to exit.
An excellent trip.
Andrew Webber