Present: Lydia Miller, Tom Green-Plumb
Duration: 3 hours and 32 minutes
Maximum faff on this trip!! All was looking to be efficient and well planned when Tom and I set out from Durham at 7:00am sharp. I was checking out options for trips to be done in wet weather as the forecast did say it was meant to rain for the next several days (hooray) and didn’t fancy drowning in any caves!! I made a list of “damp caves” but wasn’t actually set on any particular one. We got to Bullpot Farm at a very reasonable 9:30am (so theoretically should have left us the entire day for caving!), and after unloading the groceries and such, we discovered that the lounge contained a copy of Not for the Faint-Hearted, which almost made me quite literally jump for joy. I flipped through, once again looking for dry trips, and came across Craftsman’s Pot. The description included squeezes in the second sentence, so obviously I was intrigued–it looked to be a relatively short cave with only two ropes needed and seemed perfect for the day. Incredible, we had finally decided on a cave!! except for when we searched up its location and was faced with the glaring red warning on the CNCC website that Craftsman’s Pot had collapsed before the second pitch… So that clearly wasn’t meant to be.
Back to lounge we went, chatting with some Red Rose members who were there as well as we spent the next hour and a half debating different trips (and definitely getting judged by Johnny and Mike for not wanted to walk 50 minutes to get to Jean Pot or drive an hour to get to Yockenthwaite). We finally settled on Bull Pot of the Witches, as I’d never actually gotten around to it and it was after all only a 5 minute walk from the farm, which was definitely appealing. Mike gave us some recommendations for shorter caves also in the area, Casterton and Gale Garth, and basically told us to get going since it was noon by then and we hadn’t managed to get underground !! We did get going, packed the ropes, and set out for the arduous 5 minute journey to Bull Pot of the Witches.
Managed not to fall into the pothole without a handline, faffed a bit with my gloves, and finally got underground. Tom, in normal Tom style, had already free climbed the first pitch, but I rigged it anyways for funsies before free climbing it myself. We followed the daylight and emerged across from the (slightly sad) waterfall. Tom pointed out the passage in front of us that apparently had some interesting squeezes that George had led him into at one point, so we decided to explore around there on our way back. We found the way on and headed there for a short bit before coming to the second pitch. I started rigging when Tom suggested that this would be a perfect opportunity for a photo of me doing the splits underground for our exec posts. Eh, I wasn’t even sure that I could do the splits in an oversuit but what the hell, I’ll do anything for a good cave photo !! I somehow managed to get my legs on opposite walls and do some slightly janky splits, and Tom was a fantastic photographer and snapped some photos. Onwards after the photoshoot!
We descended the second pitch without difficulty then headed on to the third, which was supposed to have a stream cascading down but there wasn’t a single drop of water!! Saved me from getting wet, and I didn’t have to rig an extra deviation, so that was fine by me. There was a deviation from the ledge right next to two bolts for a Y-hang, which was a bit weird, but we decided it’d be fine to just put in the deviation and not rig a rebelay. At the bottom, we climbed up to Long Gallery and took a right, as I vaguely remembered something about the route description saying right. We followed it upstream for awhile, eventually getting to the sump which was only less than waist deep, so we crossed that and kept on going. The next bit ended up being a low crawl through freezing water !! But it shortly opened up to walking height passage again, and we walked on before coming across some diving line. The water was once again not to the roof, so we crossed and kept going until we did reach a bit that definitely had no airspace. As we had not idea how long that dive was, free diving did not seem like a great idea and we turned around to start heading back out. Once back in the open shaft with the waterfall, we left the tackle sacks behind and Tom led us straight forward to explore a more squeezy part of the cave (which George had apparently gotten some poor dude stuck in for several minutes). It involved some very interesting crawling with the ceiling and floor sloping down fairly steeply and Tom swearing there was a way up to a chamber with cool formations if we just kept on going. I eventually reached a part that went slightly upwards, so I went up and found no way on !! Tom came up to have a look as well, and we came to the conclusion that some boulders must have shifted to block that way since he’s been here. Slightly disappointing, but oh well, so we turned around to head back.
Lo and behold, while on the way out, Tom found the way upwards he had remembered!! There was a slight climb up before coming to a squeeze with a sling and a bit of in-situ rope to help you through. I gave it a go, getting myself a bit wedged in the squeeze without having anywhere to push off of with my feet so was just kind of just pulling on the rope to try to pull myself up and out. Tom was able to put my foot in the loop of the sling to act as a foothold, and eventually I got through !! Tom also got through relatively fine (after a bit of sliding back down and looking like he was being sucked into a void from my angle). We had made it to a fairly pretty chamber with quite a few formations to look at. There were also several pools of water which looked far too serene and we decided must be the witches’ pools. We carefully passed them (as who knows what the witches would do if we fell into their pools) and climbed up to find some more formations and a handline we could use to climb up even further (the climb was a tiny bit sketchy). Getting up that rope, there wasn’t any way on, so we headed back down and through the squeeze again. It was much easier going down, as you just breath out and gravity does the rest for you–you slide right down !! It was a satisfying bit of exploration, so we went back up the chimney and back to Bullpot Farm. After changing out of wet clothes, we figured we’d get some food then see if we wanted to do some more caving.
There very much was an intention to go explore Gale Garth and Casterton as Mike had recommended, but that was derailed as soon as we sat down with slices of banana bread and a cup of tea. Because why would you go back underground when you could continue eating banana bread with a warm cup of tea?? We did decide we would go find Johnny in his dig by Lancaster Hole and bring him some banana bread, but he came back too early š We went on a walk to go find his dig anyways, but failed spectacularly and almost got slightly lost on Casterton Fell while attempting to find the entrance to Lancaster Hole. We never did find it (even though according to Mike it should have been easy to follow our nose towards it due to a dead sheep nearby), but we did successfully find our way back to the farm !! All in all a bit of a random day, but it was fun!
Lydia Miller