Present: James, George, (Martin driving)
The original plan for the night had been to do The Mistral- Wretched Rabbit but due to our ‘delay’ in Nick Pot this looked unlikely to happen. I wasn’t really too bothered by this because I was pretty knackered after our mini epic. I should have known James would be thinking differently though!
We arrived at Bull Pot Farm some time after midnight, and we started to prepare some vintage DUSA slop; baked beans on toast with cheese and bacon, the toast was both burnt and cold, the baked beans had turned to mush (with the consistency of something found in the bottom of Craftsman’s Pot), the bacon was undercooked and the cheese hadn’t melted. Haute Cuisine, who needs it?
A couple of hours of bullshitting followed the meal, mainly by me, trying to get out of going caving at 3.00am.Unfortunately James was still very keen on the idea of going caving, and didn’t like the idea of doing Long Kin West the next day instead. Besides Mark S reckoned it would only take us about half an hour to do Link-Lancs, in fact we may as well do Maracaibo whilst we’re there. We’d also have to pay an extra £2 in hut fees if we slept overnight at the farm.
Due not least to the previous factor we finally set off from the farm at 3.30am after a minimal amount of faffing by DUSA standards this was probably due to the soft (grade I) change, and our incredible keenness to go caving.
James nobly volunteered to carry the really shit tackle sack across the moor to Lancaster Hole, this he did with the minimum amount of whinging, well he only mentioned it a few times anyway. I volunteered to rig the entrance to Lancaster Hole, mainly because I was feeling guilty for pussying out of rigging the big pitch in Nick Pot. This went fine helped by the fact that I’d rigged it a couple of weeks previously under the guidance of Teacher. After that we traipsed across to Link Pot in the ever increasing light, the midges feasted on my wrists briefly whilst James rigged the entrance I wasn’t very happy about this situation and so explained this to James in a gentlemanly and civilised manner- “get a fucking move on you bastard”. This was probably what I deserved after diverting water onto his head whilst he was rigging Bull Pot two weeks previously. We crawled and squeezed our way through into the top of Echo Aven where we discovered a shiny looking rope in place, with maillons, we thought this a bit odd because of the unlikely possibility of anybody else passing through the Wormway at 4.00am. We descended the new rope because the other one looked a bit shit. At the bottom there was a shiny new petzl tackle sack waiting for us, very odd indeed. We then dashed through the Wormway in about 10 minutes due mainly to the fact that it regularly floods to the roof, and also we were both thinking about possible reasons why the kit may have been abandoned. We did stop to have a quick look up the grind though, and decided it looks really shit, and definitely does flood!
We arrived at the bottom of the 88’ pitch to find another shiny tackle sack and rope, but we decided to climb up the old one this time! I was nominated to go first on the basis that James had descended Echo Aven first, confidence eh?
Last time we had come this way a few weeks before we hadn’t had time to really explore around Cape Kennedy, luckily it was even better than I remembered, the brilliant white stals looked extremely surreal in the light from my now dodgy carbide (the air hole had filled with mud). We went through to Fire Hydrant chamber, and then on to Straw chamber, which was absolutely fantastic, similar to Manchester bypass but in pristine condition, due to the fact that it’s a long way from anywhere, and felt very remote. We went up to Redhead Aven at the end of the Earby Series, which was impressive because there were stemples there from where some nutter had tried to climb the bugger.
We then dashed back through Earby after James found the calcified bat next to the fire hydrant, the only scary bits were when I went down the wrong hole in the floor leaving Cape Kennedy Chamber, it didn’t feel quite right so I had a look down first, and realised there was a big hole beneath my feet, oops. The wall of the cave also decided it didn’t like me in the Long Gallery, so it decided to fall down as I was walking through, James looked round and assumed I’d tried to jump down yet another hole.
We arrived in the high level route after a brief detour into the Rabbit Warren, and I was feeling lightly tired, by the time we reached Fall Pot I was feeling very tired and was hallucinating, whilst this was really cool it wasn’t very helpful for reading the Survey, so I announced to James that he was going the wrong way and was taking the climb up to ‘Aardvark Country’ I think this may have worried him slightly but luckily common sense prevailed (Note to self- must not use that phrase again, makes you sound like a Daily Mail journalist). He was of course going the right way so we reached the rope at Lancaster Hole not long after. Due to being absolutely knackered it took me 15minutes to ascend the 35m rope, I then fell asleep almost as soon as I reached the surface, James wasn’t very impressed because I was sleeping whilst he was packing away the ropes. After de-rigging Link we got back to the farm at about mid day. Needless to say we didn’t really add much to the conversation at the farm once we got back, being a bit tired and all, we did manage to cook up a bit more slop before going to sleep though.
All in all one of the best trips so far, if a little on the tiring side!
George