Present: Chris F, Stacey, Louise, Lucia, Jamie, James C, Katherine, George
After a lot of faffing, even by DUSA standards, we finally got out of Bernies, after having persuaded James that no, bright yellow PVC isn’t his colour, no nobody’s thinking that red cordura makes his bum look big and no, it doesn’t come in a nicer shade to match his complexion. Arrived in Kingsdale about 1.30ish and started to get ready. The weather was a bit shitty – it couldn’t decide if it wanted to rain or snow or sleet or what. Luckily we didn’t get any of that while we were getting changed. Walked up to Jingling and it was merciful and didn’t try to soak us to the bone. After we got to the top of the valley we ran into a large generating device. There was a team of cavers digging a new hole next door to Jingling. Waited at the top for the three peo ple who were down Jingling to come up. I tried to rig the tree from an “alternative” branch but didn’t end up having an awful lot of luck. Got laughed at LOTS by the woman and her daughter who thought I was an incompetent git, funnily enough, so did every body else on the trip! Just as we were going to go down the final caver emerged and said “Hmm, they’re blasting next door in the new pot. I wouldn’t go down there if I were you” “Why not?” “Well, apart from the likely rock fall, icicle fall, ear shatterin g blast and poisonous fumes……” After about two seconds of thinking we all decided that Bull Pot would be a much better line of attack for the afternoon. By that point everybody was getting cold as we were sat at the top of Jingling for a good hour or so. Oh well!
We wandered off along to Bull Pot. Got there and started to rig after finally remembering what a Y-hang should look like and, more importantly, how to actually rig one! Me and George went on and rigged, the others followed. Some people beat a retreat b ack to the cars as they were too cold. Short trip down Bull Pot for a couple of hours, getting down the 3rd (?) pitch. A bit of a cock up on my part but made better by the fact we actually got to go down a pot in the end!
Got moaned at by the miserable old women in the chippie in Leyburn. “What, you want fish and chips, now? What, at eight o’clock on a Saturday.” Gee, how unreasonable of us.
Chris