Present: Ralph L, Leon W, Pete H, Hannah B, Ian W, The Van
This trip was delightful. Here ends the summary.
We left Durham late, but at the respectably early time of around 10ish. Without having the need to stop at Tesco’s for breakfast we sped off out of Durham. I say ‘sped off’, but Ralph was driving much more slowly this time. ‘The Layby’ was reached in fair time and we all changed in the light breeze. Hannah put on all her shiny new gear and Ralph stood on the puddle – it was a bit chilly. The weather was beautiful (explaining the amassed army of walkers’ cars) and we set off up the hill (Ingleborough) in a glorious sun-drenched frost. The cave mouth was reached with ease, helped by Ian’s battered OS map.
It starts as a winding passage, leading down from a sizable shakehole, and a twisting canyon descent leads to the first pitch. This is a nice cave for pitches, and we all showed ourselves to be proficient in SRT! Ralph’s rigging (including the use of a tacklesack as a deviation) was commendable as ever. More meandering and crawling leads to the third pitch (no, I haven’t missed out pitch no.2) which was a mix of the freely-hung, deviated, slotted & sloped! The ‘ramp’ (i.e. the sloping bit) shows the angle of the fault very clearly and it is easiest to descend by sliding / rubbing down it. Once at the bottom of this, it wasn’t far to the duck – a short drag through a part-air, part-water, part-choked passage. Thoroughly soaked, we all stood on the other side in a convenient enlargement to eat snacks before heading back through the duck and towards the third pitch. Ralph, Hannah and Pete formed a breakaway group and raced off ahead, leaving Leon and Ian to share the derigging. No problems were encountered until reaching the second pitch, whereupon it became clear that someone didn’t want us to follow them: the breakaway group had pulled the rope up onto the rock ledge part-way up. Some imaginative climbing, simulating both a mother giving birth and a high-alpine dam at the same time, got Leon onto the ledge. The ledge was less than 4m from the bottom, but evidently slightly trickier without SRT! Ian followed in the normal fashion. “Careful rope-packing makes for neat tackle sacks,” goes the age-old saying, and it certainly held true this time (other memories of Rowten were brought back for Ian whilst derigging the deviation on the first pitch – a pendulum / waterfall combo on a laughably small scale!).
We made excellent time on the return to the surface, and we were all-too-soon in the night air. With Pete confidently leading the way, we set of across the moors. Once we’d adjusted for Pete’s (slight) navigational error, we descended the escarpments to the grassy slopes below. Incidentally, we made full use of the high-slip properties of frosty grass and waterproofs – skid marks down the hillside seemingly a mark of Dusa’s visits (Cliff Force, Stainforth, et al.!). The weather was actually freezing and we laughed at frozen hair / cowstails / waterproofs before changing as vigorously as possible. Ah! – the cosy, warm hug of a thick woolly! Luckily, ‘The Layby’ is only a couple of miles from The Station Inn, where we stopped for a pint by the fireside to warm up and eat chips (Thanks Leon). The Van journey home was easy-going, with the heater (supposedly) on and the engine purring away in the back. It was so relaxing and easy-going that Hannah and Ian fell asleep in the back – never before has the trip back to Durham gone so quickly. As a sad finale, The Van broke down on South Road between Grey and Collingwood due to coolant leakage. It couldn’t have done to have broken down in a far-flung outpost on a hill somewhere – The Van at least helped us in that respect.
Hereafter is another brief summary: A silky-smooth trip to Yorkshire led by The Ginger One, involving scenery, walking, caving and beer.
Ian