Sunset Ridge, Picos de Europa, Spain, the ridge above the Ario camp. Photo by Dan Rose.
Summer is in full swing with the expo season kicking off with members joining the long-standing Ario expedition to northern Spain and a group of non-student cavers heading to southern France for a through trip in the PSM and even a trip to the International Conference in Brazil! Next up will be members joining the equally long-running efforts in Matienzo in Spain, the CUCC trip to Austria and a visit to the Gouffre Berger. Rounding off the summer will be a trip to Ireland led by Dan Runcan.
In the midst of all this, the Students' Union threw something of a curved ball in our direction and whilst this wasn't wholly expected, it has caused quite a bit of extra work. But in true UBSS fashion, we retained a sense of humour, went to the pub, got drunk, had a baby and planned how to how to manage change. The motto is very much DON'T PANIC, it'll all be all right in the end.
You can also read about trips at home and away, with reports from Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Mendip as well as trips to France and Spain. For those looking to buy their own lights, Dan Rose gives the Sofirn a glowing review and for those who will never look at cheese the same way again, we bring you the third chapter of our pungent epic!
We're eagerly await more expedition reports for our next few issues and loads more trip write ups! For those who've promised us things, we know who you are!
If you would like to check out previous issues, you can find them all here, including the scanned archive of all our paper issues.
In the midst of all this, the Students' Union threw something of a curved ball in our direction and whilst this wasn't wholly expected, it has caused quite a bit of extra work. But in true UBSS fashion, we retained a sense of humour, went to the pub, got drunk, had a baby and planned how to how to manage change. The motto is very much DON'T PANIC, it'll all be all right in the end.
You can also read about trips at home and away, with reports from Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Mendip as well as trips to France and Spain. For those looking to buy their own lights, Dan Rose gives the Sofirn a glowing review and for those who will never look at cheese the same way again, we bring you the third chapter of our pungent epic!
We're eagerly await more expedition reports for our next few issues and loads more trip write ups! For those who've promised us things, we know who you are!
If you would like to check out previous issues, you can find them all here, including the scanned archive of all our paper issues.
Linda and Billy
PS As ever, if the text is in blue and underlined, it's a clickable link, so go on, venture in, you know it makes sense. We had a record number of people click links in the last issue, with 71 people venturing out into the big wide world.
DIARY DATES
Here are some early dates for your diary! Details will follow nearer the time. Please also note that we hope to run lots of mid-week freshers' trips between the Welcome Fair and the first freshers' weekend on Mendip so if you are able to help with these by driving, leading or seconding, please contact Joshitha asap!
13th September: Bristol's Brilliant Archaeology. UBSS are having a stand at this annual festival run by Bristol City Museum at Blaise Castle House in Bristol. We are hoping to make a cardboard cave and encourage budding young cave archaeologists to dig for flints and other objects in buckets of sand. If you would like to help out or if you can offer to do any 3D printing of small objects to be given away, this would be much appreciated. Please contact Linda Wilson if you would like to get involved.
27th September: Welcome Fair. Volunteers need to set up and run the stall. Please contact Dan Rose.
30th September: Freshers' Chilli Evening.
12th/13th October: BCRA Cave Science Symposium, Department of Geographical Sciences, Bristol and field trips locally. See below for details.
18th/19th October: Freshers' Weekend at the Hut. Details to follow. Drivers, leaders and seconds needed!
1st/2nd November: Freshers' weekend in South Wales. Drivers, leaders and seconds needed!
8th/9th November: Bonfire Party at the Hut.
Here are some early dates for your diary! Details will follow nearer the time. Please also note that we hope to run lots of mid-week freshers' trips between the Welcome Fair and the first freshers' weekend on Mendip so if you are able to help with these by driving, leading or seconding, please contact Joshitha asap!
13th September: Bristol's Brilliant Archaeology. UBSS are having a stand at this annual festival run by Bristol City Museum at Blaise Castle House in Bristol. We are hoping to make a cardboard cave and encourage budding young cave archaeologists to dig for flints and other objects in buckets of sand. If you would like to help out or if you can offer to do any 3D printing of small objects to be given away, this would be much appreciated. Please contact Linda Wilson if you would like to get involved.
27th September: Welcome Fair. Volunteers need to set up and run the stall. Please contact Dan Rose.
30th September: Freshers' Chilli Evening.
12th/13th October: BCRA Cave Science Symposium, Department of Geographical Sciences, Bristol and field trips locally. See below for details.
18th/19th October: Freshers' Weekend at the Hut. Details to follow. Drivers, leaders and seconds needed!
1st/2nd November: Freshers' weekend in South Wales. Drivers, leaders and seconds needed!
8th/9th November: Bonfire Party at the Hut.
UBSS GOES TO THE PUB, GETS DRUNK HAS BABY
Bristol Students’ Union (the SU) has recently reviewed its Associate membership scheme, and as a result of this, has brought in some changes that have affected all clubs and societies with non-student membership. Linda Wilson has maintained close links with the SU over many years and has been working with them to preserve the historic and very special nature of UBSS whilst enabling the students to continue caving as they always have done. Linda reports on discussions to date, both internally and externally.
The SU’s reasoning for the changes can be found on their website. Whilst this came as an unwelcome surprise to many societies, this has very much been presented as a decision that is not open to challenge and the SU remain adamant that Associate Membership is being dropped as of this summer.
Our non-student members have never formally adopted the Associate Membership route as our constitution has always allowed for the existence of non-student members, this does in effect mean that our anomalous membership structure can no longer be shoe-horned into anything acceptable to the SU, however they indicated immediately that they are keen to work with UBSS to find an acceptable way of preserving what the society has built up over the past 105 years.
A coalition of student clubs promptly banded together to express their views on how the SU have handled the matter and stressed how this decision could adversely affect many clubs and societies. The leaders of this group gained extensive coverage and have had meetings with the SU Chief Executive to work towards securing a more flexible interpretation of some of the SU’s FAQs that have caused the most concern.
At the same time, UBSS has been looking into ways of preserving its special nature and heritage as well as maintaining strong ties with the student body and strengthening our position against other challenges in the future.
A small working group of both students and non-students was set up consisting of Dan Rose, Ben Morgan, Joshitha Shivkumar, Grace Smith, Elliott McCall, Graham Mullan and Linda Wilson with Isaac Neale (BCA Youth and Development Officer) as this all kicked off after the end of the academic year when most students, including most of our committee, were no longer in Bristol. The group, Wormforce, has come up with what is believed to be a workable solution. Much of this still has to be worked out but we wanted to keep the wider membership informed of what’s been happening.
The suggestion is that UBSS will disaffiliate (by agreement) from the Union and a new student caving club (let’s call it Bristol Caving for now) will be formed before Welcome Fair in September. This, however, will continue to have close links with the ‘parent’ society. Students can and will be members of UBSS and students will sit on its committee. The student club will, however, be responsible for its own membership, recruitment, tackle, etc and the SU have agreed that the tackle store will continue to be housed in the Richmond Building as it is now.
The UBSS has a little more time available to sort itself out, but we do have the bones of a plan. We think that the best way forward is for UBSS to become a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) and register with the Charities Commission. Incorporation has a number of benefits, including a significant reduction in liability for both members and, especially, officers and a CIO would be the obvious route for us, as we believe we can demonstrate the necessary charitable aims, including public benefit. It also gives our Museum a simpler route to Arts Council accreditation.
The role of UBSS with regard to the student club would remain would be as it is now, a source of experience, of financial support and of stability. The other aims, maintenance of a museum collection, library, hut, publications, etc would have their charitable objectives strengthened. Management would be in the hands of elected Trustees, with the officers of the student club as ex officio trustees.
As ever, the devil is always in the detail, but internal discussion, as well as meetings with the SU and the university have been positive and we remain hopeful that this provides a roadmap for navigating potentially challenging circumstances. This is a model that has been adopted successfully for several decades by ULSA and there is precedent within Bristol where for example what is commonly known as UBMC (University of Bristol Mountaineering Club) has in fact been Bristol Climbing for many years.
More updates will come when we have firmer proposals for the membership to consider. In the meantime we’ll do our best to answer any questions.
This was best summed up by Jess Brock declaring at the end of a long WhatsApp thread: “Bristol SU declares war on common sense – UBSS Goes to the pub.” To which were added the words: “Gets drunk, has a baby.”
Bristol Students’ Union (the SU) has recently reviewed its Associate membership scheme, and as a result of this, has brought in some changes that have affected all clubs and societies with non-student membership. Linda Wilson has maintained close links with the SU over many years and has been working with them to preserve the historic and very special nature of UBSS whilst enabling the students to continue caving as they always have done. Linda reports on discussions to date, both internally and externally.
The SU’s reasoning for the changes can be found on their website. Whilst this came as an unwelcome surprise to many societies, this has very much been presented as a decision that is not open to challenge and the SU remain adamant that Associate Membership is being dropped as of this summer.
Our non-student members have never formally adopted the Associate Membership route as our constitution has always allowed for the existence of non-student members, this does in effect mean that our anomalous membership structure can no longer be shoe-horned into anything acceptable to the SU, however they indicated immediately that they are keen to work with UBSS to find an acceptable way of preserving what the society has built up over the past 105 years.
A coalition of student clubs promptly banded together to express their views on how the SU have handled the matter and stressed how this decision could adversely affect many clubs and societies. The leaders of this group gained extensive coverage and have had meetings with the SU Chief Executive to work towards securing a more flexible interpretation of some of the SU’s FAQs that have caused the most concern.
At the same time, UBSS has been looking into ways of preserving its special nature and heritage as well as maintaining strong ties with the student body and strengthening our position against other challenges in the future.
A small working group of both students and non-students was set up consisting of Dan Rose, Ben Morgan, Joshitha Shivkumar, Grace Smith, Elliott McCall, Graham Mullan and Linda Wilson with Isaac Neale (BCA Youth and Development Officer) as this all kicked off after the end of the academic year when most students, including most of our committee, were no longer in Bristol. The group, Wormforce, has come up with what is believed to be a workable solution. Much of this still has to be worked out but we wanted to keep the wider membership informed of what’s been happening.
The suggestion is that UBSS will disaffiliate (by agreement) from the Union and a new student caving club (let’s call it Bristol Caving for now) will be formed before Welcome Fair in September. This, however, will continue to have close links with the ‘parent’ society. Students can and will be members of UBSS and students will sit on its committee. The student club will, however, be responsible for its own membership, recruitment, tackle, etc and the SU have agreed that the tackle store will continue to be housed in the Richmond Building as it is now.
The UBSS has a little more time available to sort itself out, but we do have the bones of a plan. We think that the best way forward is for UBSS to become a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO) and register with the Charities Commission. Incorporation has a number of benefits, including a significant reduction in liability for both members and, especially, officers and a CIO would be the obvious route for us, as we believe we can demonstrate the necessary charitable aims, including public benefit. It also gives our Museum a simpler route to Arts Council accreditation.
The role of UBSS with regard to the student club would remain would be as it is now, a source of experience, of financial support and of stability. The other aims, maintenance of a museum collection, library, hut, publications, etc would have their charitable objectives strengthened. Management would be in the hands of elected Trustees, with the officers of the student club as ex officio trustees.
As ever, the devil is always in the detail, but internal discussion, as well as meetings with the SU and the university have been positive and we remain hopeful that this provides a roadmap for navigating potentially challenging circumstances. This is a model that has been adopted successfully for several decades by ULSA and there is precedent within Bristol where for example what is commonly known as UBMC (University of Bristol Mountaineering Club) has in fact been Bristol Climbing for many years.
More updates will come when we have firmer proposals for the membership to consider. In the meantime we’ll do our best to answer any questions.
This was best summed up by Jess Brock declaring at the end of a long WhatsApp thread: “Bristol SU declares war on common sense – UBSS Goes to the pub.” To which were added the words: “Gets drunk, has a baby.”
Linda Wilson,
On behalf of Wormforce
On behalf of Wormforce
TANKED!
Sadly, the hot water tank at the hut didn't survive last winter. Hut Engineer Chris Pepper came to the rescue.
Chris, assisted by Clive Owen removed the old tank and installed a new one, and also replaced any rotten wood under the cylinder. The problem we still have is that we need the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights of rain to replace the water in the tank that drained out after a group who used the hut sometime last year didn't close the system down properly.
In addition, the bath behind the hut has been decommissioned as the last couple of years have proved that our water catchment system can't support that level of water usage, and the tank will need to completely refill again before we can even consider whether the shower will be viable again. The hut's catchment system is overhung by trees so it takes a long time to replenish the tank, and the driest summer since 1976 hasn't helped!
Anyone using the hut needs to remember to take enough water for the weekend. This is likely to be the case until next year at the earliest.
Many thanks to Chris and Clive for all their hard work.
Chris has also acquired and fitted a new double burner for the kitchen.
So please, please remember to pay your hut fees when staying there or using the facilities as otherwise we won't be able to afford the upkeep!
Sadly, the hot water tank at the hut didn't survive last winter. Hut Engineer Chris Pepper came to the rescue.
Chris, assisted by Clive Owen removed the old tank and installed a new one, and also replaced any rotten wood under the cylinder. The problem we still have is that we need the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights of rain to replace the water in the tank that drained out after a group who used the hut sometime last year didn't close the system down properly.
In addition, the bath behind the hut has been decommissioned as the last couple of years have proved that our water catchment system can't support that level of water usage, and the tank will need to completely refill again before we can even consider whether the shower will be viable again. The hut's catchment system is overhung by trees so it takes a long time to replenish the tank, and the driest summer since 1976 hasn't helped!
Anyone using the hut needs to remember to take enough water for the weekend. This is likely to be the case until next year at the earliest.
Many thanks to Chris and Clive for all their hard work.
Chris has also acquired and fitted a new double burner for the kitchen.
So please, please remember to pay your hut fees when staying there or using the facilities as otherwise we won't be able to afford the upkeep!
The British Cave Research Association are pleased to announce details of the 36th Annual Cave Science Symposium and associated field trips. The symposium will be hosted by Professor David Richards, Linda Wilson and Professor Fiona Whitaker at the University of Bristol’s School of Geographical Sciences, University Road Bristol on Saturday 11th October 2025 from 0930h. The programme of oral and poster presentations will be of interest to anyone wishing to learn more about cave and karst research and the underground environment.
We welcome everyone with an interest in caves and cave science. This will be a live in-person event but will also be streamed online, where possible. The BCRA AGM will be held in person and online at the end of the morning session. Following the symposium, an informal evening meal will be arranged for those who are interested. Further details below. Field trips will take place on Sunday 12th October in the wider Bristol area, including the nearby Mendips.
Register here at the eventbrite page
Keynote lecture
We are pleased to be able to announce that UBSS member Prof. Danielle Schreve (Heather Corrie Chair in Environmental Change, University of Bristol) will give the keynote presentation: “From Caves to Conservation: the making of the modern fauna in Britain".
Zooarchaeological and fossil collections from caves have traditionally supported research and into a diversity of topics, from palaeoenvironmental reconstruction to the interpretation of early human subsistence practices. However, an area of investigation that has been so far less commonly explored concerns the information that these collections can shed on past climate change and biodiversity for future conservation purposes. Data from Quaternary palaeoecological studies are increasingly applied to modern conservation challenges via the emerging field of conservation palaeobiology, a new and integrated approach that draws on fossil and historical records to inform the conservation, management and restoration of species, communities and ecosystems beyond the limited time frame of modern ecological observations. This presentation will illustrate ongoing work at the site of Gully Cave in Somerset, a key archive for our understanding of faunal responses to abrupt climate change over the last 70,000 years, before reviewing the potential of collections such as this to provide critical new information for guiding nature restoration.
Call for Abstracts
This year’s scientific themes will include climate, faunal and archaeological records from caves in addition to karst hydrogeology and geomorphology.
Oral and poster presentations are invited on all areas of cave and karst science, including:
- past climate records from caves
- speleogenesis,
- karst hydrogeology,
- cave archaeology/palaeontology
- cave biology
- cave technology.
Those wishing to present at the Symposium should provide a title and an abstract of up to 300 words and indicate whether an oral presentation or poster presentation would be preferred. This should be sent to David Richards ([email protected]) by 15th August 2025. Please include “BCRA” in the subject line of your email.
Registration
Entry is free of charge, but donations would be appreciated (£5 for students, £10 for non-students) to help cover the cost of the event. Donations can be made on the day or online . Please register using the Eventbrite link.
Student Travel Grants
Support with travel costs will be available for students who provide a talk or poster and, subject to demand, it may be possible to offer travel support to other student attendees.
Further information
Venue: School of Geographical Sciences, University Rd, Bristol, BS3 1SS. https://what3words.com/beam.slim.civic
Parking: Trenchard Street and West End are the closest long-stay car park options (£19.60 daily charge). See Car parking and Park and Ride. On-street parking nearby is expensive and difficult to manage for the whole day (using the 4 hr max options).
Refreshments will be available during the breaks.
Lunch is available at many outlets (Sainsburys, Pret a Manger, Waitrose, Greggs, Eat-a-Pitta and others) within a few minutes of the building.
Evening meal: We will pre-book tables at a local restaurant and walk there via the UBSS Museum for a brief tour for those interested. Please indicate interest in the evening meal and dietary restrictions/requirement when registering for the event.
Posters: A0 poster boards in portrait format will be available.
For enquiries concerning oral or poster presentations please contact David Richards.
Field trips (Sunday 12th October).
GB Cave
This field visit, led by Dr Andy Farrant will focus on the geology and geomorphology of GB Cave, near Charterhouse. It will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about cave formation and what we can discover about palaeo-climate and paleoenvironment from passage geomorphology, and the sediments and speleothems preserved in the cave. The trip is anticipated to last about three hours depending on the group and the level of discussion.
The trip will be limited to the lower part of the cave and will be a relatively easy trip. We are not intending to visit Ladder Dig, so standard caving kit is required. Participants will need to have an up-to-date Charterhouse Caving Company Permit .
Trip numbers are limited to 6 including leader, minimum participants 4 including leader. The trip is not open to novice cavers. A second trip may be run if there is sufficient demand.
Pen Park Hole
Pen Park Hole is a hypogenic cave located in the Southmead housing estate in Bristol. The cave has an unusual geological history being the site of a former thermal spring. It also has fascinating history. Discovered accidentally during quarrying, the first recorded descent inside occurred in July 1669 by Captain Samuel Sturmy. In 1775, Rev. Thomas Newnham died after falling into the hole while trying to measure its depth. It was designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 2016 due to both its unique geology and the presence of the rare cave shrimp (Niphargus kochianus).
The trip will be led by Wayne Starsmore and will last around 2 hours to the top of the pitch in the main chamber. Standard caving kit is required. The pitch will not be descended. Trip numbers are limited to 6 including leader, minimum participants 4 including leader. Depending on leader availability a second trip might be possible with sufficient demand.
Fishmonger’s Swallet, Almondsbury
Fishmonger’s Swallet is a fascinating archaeological site located near Alveston in South Gloucestershire, just north of Bristol. The short cave contains rich assemblages include late Iron Age to Romano-British deposits (circa 200 BC–35 BC). Human remains from at least four individuals (disarticulated and fragmented), along with various animal bones and pottery have been recovered. In 2023, scientists recovered ancient DNA from a human jawbone in Fishmonger’s Swallet—one of four UK samples used to explore the origins and spread of the bacterium Borrelia recurrentis, which causes relapsing fever.
The cave involves an 11m shaft into a chamber where most of the archaeological material was found. Beyond lie a series of muddy chambers and a dig. The trip will be led by David Hardwick and Dr. Adelle Bricking (National Museum Cardiff). Part of the visit will involve a surface discussion, with the option of an underground trip. A trip to the end of the cave and back takes around an hour. Standard caving kit is needed, but no tackle is required. The further reaches beyond the main Bone Idle Chamber are very muddy. Trip numbers are limited to 10 including leader, minimum participants 4 including leader.
Mendip walk
In addition, we can also consider an alternative trip – above ground – in the Mendip region, subject to demand (e.g. Ebbor Gorge).
Please sign-up the event and register interest in field trips and Saturday evening meal at our Eventbrite site.
Any UBSS members who would like to help on the day should contact Linda Wilson. The perks will be free entry, biscuits and a warm fuzzy glow. Help is likely to be needed refilling the water for tea and coffee, keeping the refreshments table clean and stocked, running the registration desk, handing out name badges, running errands etc etc.
Registration
Entry is free of charge, but donations would be appreciated (£5 for students, £10 for non-students) to help cover the cost of the event. Donations can be made on the day or online . Please register using the Eventbrite link.
Student Travel Grants
Support with travel costs will be available for students who provide a talk or poster and, subject to demand, it may be possible to offer travel support to other student attendees.
Further information
Venue: School of Geographical Sciences, University Rd, Bristol, BS3 1SS. https://what3words.com/beam.slim.civic
Parking: Trenchard Street and West End are the closest long-stay car park options (£19.60 daily charge). See Car parking and Park and Ride. On-street parking nearby is expensive and difficult to manage for the whole day (using the 4 hr max options).
Refreshments will be available during the breaks.
Lunch is available at many outlets (Sainsburys, Pret a Manger, Waitrose, Greggs, Eat-a-Pitta and others) within a few minutes of the building.
Evening meal: We will pre-book tables at a local restaurant and walk there via the UBSS Museum for a brief tour for those interested. Please indicate interest in the evening meal and dietary restrictions/requirement when registering for the event.
Posters: A0 poster boards in portrait format will be available.
For enquiries concerning oral or poster presentations please contact David Richards.
Field trips (Sunday 12th October).
GB Cave
This field visit, led by Dr Andy Farrant will focus on the geology and geomorphology of GB Cave, near Charterhouse. It will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about cave formation and what we can discover about palaeo-climate and paleoenvironment from passage geomorphology, and the sediments and speleothems preserved in the cave. The trip is anticipated to last about three hours depending on the group and the level of discussion.
The trip will be limited to the lower part of the cave and will be a relatively easy trip. We are not intending to visit Ladder Dig, so standard caving kit is required. Participants will need to have an up-to-date Charterhouse Caving Company Permit .
Trip numbers are limited to 6 including leader, minimum participants 4 including leader. The trip is not open to novice cavers. A second trip may be run if there is sufficient demand.
Pen Park Hole
Pen Park Hole is a hypogenic cave located in the Southmead housing estate in Bristol. The cave has an unusual geological history being the site of a former thermal spring. It also has fascinating history. Discovered accidentally during quarrying, the first recorded descent inside occurred in July 1669 by Captain Samuel Sturmy. In 1775, Rev. Thomas Newnham died after falling into the hole while trying to measure its depth. It was designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in 2016 due to both its unique geology and the presence of the rare cave shrimp (Niphargus kochianus).
The trip will be led by Wayne Starsmore and will last around 2 hours to the top of the pitch in the main chamber. Standard caving kit is required. The pitch will not be descended. Trip numbers are limited to 6 including leader, minimum participants 4 including leader. Depending on leader availability a second trip might be possible with sufficient demand.
Fishmonger’s Swallet, Almondsbury
Fishmonger’s Swallet is a fascinating archaeological site located near Alveston in South Gloucestershire, just north of Bristol. The short cave contains rich assemblages include late Iron Age to Romano-British deposits (circa 200 BC–35 BC). Human remains from at least four individuals (disarticulated and fragmented), along with various animal bones and pottery have been recovered. In 2023, scientists recovered ancient DNA from a human jawbone in Fishmonger’s Swallet—one of four UK samples used to explore the origins and spread of the bacterium Borrelia recurrentis, which causes relapsing fever.
The cave involves an 11m shaft into a chamber where most of the archaeological material was found. Beyond lie a series of muddy chambers and a dig. The trip will be led by David Hardwick and Dr. Adelle Bricking (National Museum Cardiff). Part of the visit will involve a surface discussion, with the option of an underground trip. A trip to the end of the cave and back takes around an hour. Standard caving kit is needed, but no tackle is required. The further reaches beyond the main Bone Idle Chamber are very muddy. Trip numbers are limited to 10 including leader, minimum participants 4 including leader.
Mendip walk
In addition, we can also consider an alternative trip – above ground – in the Mendip region, subject to demand (e.g. Ebbor Gorge).
Please sign-up the event and register interest in field trips and Saturday evening meal at our Eventbrite site.
Any UBSS members who would like to help on the day should contact Linda Wilson. The perks will be free entry, biscuits and a warm fuzzy glow. Help is likely to be needed refilling the water for tea and coffee, keeping the refreshments table clean and stocked, running the registration desk, handing out name badges, running errands etc etc.
BCRA CAVE ARCHAEOLOGY GROUP
Cave archaeology in action with UBSS members and others at Fishmonger's Swallet, South Gloucestershire, May 2025.
Rick Peterson of the University of Lancashire and Linda Wilson are hoping to revive the Cave Archaeology Group (a special interest group within the British Caving Association) and they would be very grateful if anyone here with an interest in cave archaeology could take a couple of minutes to fill in a survey to help them get an idea of who might be willing to get involved. This could be by helping to answer queries about cave related archaeology, helping to arrange field trips or simply showing an interest in trips arranged by others!
Fill in the survey now ...
Please also pass this on to anyone else you know who might be interested in the group!
Cave archaeology in action with UBSS members and others at Fishmonger's Swallet, South Gloucestershire, May 2025.
Rick Peterson of the University of Lancashire and Linda Wilson are hoping to revive the Cave Archaeology Group (a special interest group within the British Caving Association) and they would be very grateful if anyone here with an interest in cave archaeology could take a couple of minutes to fill in a survey to help them get an idea of who might be willing to get involved. This could be by helping to answer queries about cave related archaeology, helping to arrange field trips or simply showing an interest in trips arranged by others!
Fill in the survey now ...
Please also pass this on to anyone else you know who might be interested in the group!
GEAR REVIEW - SOFIRN HS20
Dan Rose reviews the Sofirn HS20, which he describes as a revolutionary addition to the caving light market.
Up until recently, caving lights have been a significant inhibitor to the student caver’s independent ownership of gear. With the ‘cheaper options’ costing north of £100 at retail, university freshers have been forced to brave their entire first year at the mercy of club lights, whimpering at the roulette spin of battery quality, and the nagging burden of hire fees.
As any appraisal of 2025 UBSS freshers will show you, the Sofirn has changed this. Costing anywhere from £19-£25 new, depending on if you buy during one of Sofirn’s frequent sales, the Sofirn HS20 provides the budget caver with a light just as powerful and nearly as well optimised as a Fenix, at a fifth of the price.
In terms of brightness, the Sofirn pumps out just as many lumens as any Fenix will get you. Caving on the medium throw setting can get you 300 lumens of output for a solid 8-10 hours. Meanwhile, outdoing even the Fenix, the Sofirn Turbo mode, able to run for two hours on a full battery, emits a staggering 2700 lumens when both throw and flood are combined, making it excellent for lighting up large chambers/passages and for photography. The turbo mode on a Sofirn is far brighter than any other light I’ve used underground.
The Sofirn is also rated to IPX68 water and dust resistance – which is more than enough for anything you’ll encounter on UK sport trips, digs or foreign expeditions, making it comfortable in the sandiest of crawls and for any non-suicidal freedive you could think of. I have personally used my Sofirn as a primary light for diving through sumps 2 and 3 in Swildons (8m and 11m free dives respectively), on three separate occasions, have taken it through the Southbank Roundtrip in Eastwater, and have used it on three days digging In Aggy. Throughout all that abuse, it’s shown no signs of damage.
The Sofirn takes 18650 batteries which can be flat top or button top, meaning that the significantly cheaper flattop batteries, that can be bought at under £3.50 per unit if bought in bulk, can be used, making running the light much cheaper. These batteries can be recharged in situ via a USB-C Port that is well covered by a screw on cap that, after heavy use, has kept the port free from all water and grit.
One small flaw of the Sofirn is that it can easily turn itself off by whacking the buttons into the ceiling or rock protrusions, as they do stick out somewhat and are quite pressure sensitive. This is a minor issue as it takes only a short second to reach up and turn it on again, although I can imagine a scenario where this would be annoying if in a tight squeeze/crawl, or if underwater – as Joe Bidie can attest, as he accidentally turned his Sofirn off halfway through Swildon’s Sump 3, banging the top of it into a rib of rock on the way down, forcing him to complete the dive on his backup around his neck. While this is only a minor flaw, it’s worth being aware of it, especially when entering passage where constrictions may prevent the movement of arms to the helmet. When entering these on a Sofirn, it would be well advised to turn on a backup light mounted on your helmet or around your neck before committing to the squeeze as a precaution against blindness.
Another slight issue comes with the design of the screws that fasten the LEDs to the light. These are exposed to the outside, and so with repeated wet caving, rust rather rapidly – I’ve owned mine since February and significant rusting on the screws has occurred in that time. This doesn’t in any way affect the functionality of the light, and is a negligible problem irrelevant to the user experience. That said, to avoid caving with rusty screws, I’d recommend blobbing a dab of Aquasure (or any neoprene glue alternative) onto both of the screws to prevent them getting wet and rusting. This will mean that you won’t be able to replace the LEDs on your Sofirn should you wish to – but as the light can be bought at retail for £20, I’m not sure why you’d ever want to do that anyway.
Aside from these small drawbacks, the Sofirn provides a reliable, bright and long lasting light at the cost of a few pints. To any freshers, scrambling to secure scarce club lights that barely work at the beginning of every trip, this would make the perfect first purchase of gear. To anyone with gear of their own, it’s the perfect backup light – small, cheap and dependable.
But don’t just take it from me, here’s a few quotes from those in UBSS who have made the plunge and purchased their own Sofirns:
‘Great light & battery.’ Joshitha
‘Sofirns work with flat top 18650 batteries as well as button tops. Flat tops are less than half the price which makes buying a load of batteries for multi day trips far cheaper. This is one of my favourite features and hugely pleases my inner cheap skate.’ Ben Morgan
‘From the moment I turned it on in my living room, I thought… blimey that’s good. The Sofirn compels me to illuminate the stars in the footsteps of Grace. Orion be damned.’ Emily Wormleighton.
And finally, Joe Bidie presented this lyrical tribute to the glory of the Sofirn:
‘This is my Sofirn. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My Sofirn is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
Without me, my Sofirn is useless. Without my Sofirn, I am useless. I must use my Sofirn true. I must shine brighter than my enemy who is trying to blind me. I must enlighten the sump before the sump enlightens me. I will ...
My Sofirn and I know that what counts in the sump is not the water we drink, the cold we face, nor the diseases we catch. We know that it is the Sofirn that counts. We will cave ...
My Sofirn is human, even as I [am human], because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its buttons and its band. I will keep my Sofirn clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will ...
Before God, I swear this creed. My Sofirn and I are the defenders of our caves. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviours of my life.
So be it, until victory is Mendip’s and there is no enemy, but peace!’
Sentimental, but true.
The Sofirn HS20 can be purchased here.
Dan Rose reviews the Sofirn HS20, which he describes as a revolutionary addition to the caving light market.
Up until recently, caving lights have been a significant inhibitor to the student caver’s independent ownership of gear. With the ‘cheaper options’ costing north of £100 at retail, university freshers have been forced to brave their entire first year at the mercy of club lights, whimpering at the roulette spin of battery quality, and the nagging burden of hire fees.
As any appraisal of 2025 UBSS freshers will show you, the Sofirn has changed this. Costing anywhere from £19-£25 new, depending on if you buy during one of Sofirn’s frequent sales, the Sofirn HS20 provides the budget caver with a light just as powerful and nearly as well optimised as a Fenix, at a fifth of the price.
In terms of brightness, the Sofirn pumps out just as many lumens as any Fenix will get you. Caving on the medium throw setting can get you 300 lumens of output for a solid 8-10 hours. Meanwhile, outdoing even the Fenix, the Sofirn Turbo mode, able to run for two hours on a full battery, emits a staggering 2700 lumens when both throw and flood are combined, making it excellent for lighting up large chambers/passages and for photography. The turbo mode on a Sofirn is far brighter than any other light I’ve used underground.
The Sofirn is also rated to IPX68 water and dust resistance – which is more than enough for anything you’ll encounter on UK sport trips, digs or foreign expeditions, making it comfortable in the sandiest of crawls and for any non-suicidal freedive you could think of. I have personally used my Sofirn as a primary light for diving through sumps 2 and 3 in Swildons (8m and 11m free dives respectively), on three separate occasions, have taken it through the Southbank Roundtrip in Eastwater, and have used it on three days digging In Aggy. Throughout all that abuse, it’s shown no signs of damage.
The Sofirn takes 18650 batteries which can be flat top or button top, meaning that the significantly cheaper flattop batteries, that can be bought at under £3.50 per unit if bought in bulk, can be used, making running the light much cheaper. These batteries can be recharged in situ via a USB-C Port that is well covered by a screw on cap that, after heavy use, has kept the port free from all water and grit.
One small flaw of the Sofirn is that it can easily turn itself off by whacking the buttons into the ceiling or rock protrusions, as they do stick out somewhat and are quite pressure sensitive. This is a minor issue as it takes only a short second to reach up and turn it on again, although I can imagine a scenario where this would be annoying if in a tight squeeze/crawl, or if underwater – as Joe Bidie can attest, as he accidentally turned his Sofirn off halfway through Swildon’s Sump 3, banging the top of it into a rib of rock on the way down, forcing him to complete the dive on his backup around his neck. While this is only a minor flaw, it’s worth being aware of it, especially when entering passage where constrictions may prevent the movement of arms to the helmet. When entering these on a Sofirn, it would be well advised to turn on a backup light mounted on your helmet or around your neck before committing to the squeeze as a precaution against blindness.
Another slight issue comes with the design of the screws that fasten the LEDs to the light. These are exposed to the outside, and so with repeated wet caving, rust rather rapidly – I’ve owned mine since February and significant rusting on the screws has occurred in that time. This doesn’t in any way affect the functionality of the light, and is a negligible problem irrelevant to the user experience. That said, to avoid caving with rusty screws, I’d recommend blobbing a dab of Aquasure (or any neoprene glue alternative) onto both of the screws to prevent them getting wet and rusting. This will mean that you won’t be able to replace the LEDs on your Sofirn should you wish to – but as the light can be bought at retail for £20, I’m not sure why you’d ever want to do that anyway.
Aside from these small drawbacks, the Sofirn provides a reliable, bright and long lasting light at the cost of a few pints. To any freshers, scrambling to secure scarce club lights that barely work at the beginning of every trip, this would make the perfect first purchase of gear. To anyone with gear of their own, it’s the perfect backup light – small, cheap and dependable.
But don’t just take it from me, here’s a few quotes from those in UBSS who have made the plunge and purchased their own Sofirns:
‘Great light & battery.’ Joshitha
‘Sofirns work with flat top 18650 batteries as well as button tops. Flat tops are less than half the price which makes buying a load of batteries for multi day trips far cheaper. This is one of my favourite features and hugely pleases my inner cheap skate.’ Ben Morgan
‘From the moment I turned it on in my living room, I thought… blimey that’s good. The Sofirn compels me to illuminate the stars in the footsteps of Grace. Orion be damned.’ Emily Wormleighton.
And finally, Joe Bidie presented this lyrical tribute to the glory of the Sofirn:
‘This is my Sofirn. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My Sofirn is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
Without me, my Sofirn is useless. Without my Sofirn, I am useless. I must use my Sofirn true. I must shine brighter than my enemy who is trying to blind me. I must enlighten the sump before the sump enlightens me. I will ...
My Sofirn and I know that what counts in the sump is not the water we drink, the cold we face, nor the diseases we catch. We know that it is the Sofirn that counts. We will cave ...
My Sofirn is human, even as I [am human], because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its buttons and its band. I will keep my Sofirn clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will ...
Before God, I swear this creed. My Sofirn and I are the defenders of our caves. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviours of my life.
So be it, until victory is Mendip’s and there is no enemy, but peace!’
Sentimental, but true.
The Sofirn HS20 can be purchased here.
Dan Rose
A TRIP TO TITAN
Titan. Photo copyright Mark Burkey, used with his kind permission.
A recent joint UBSS/UBMC weekend to Derbyshire gave Grace Smith the opportunity to experience the deep pitches and wide open spaces of Titan.
On Saturday, the plan was for myself, Dan Rose, Ben Morgan and Joe Bidie to bottom Titan. As always the faff was fantastically long, including a 40 minute walk to the entrance and back to check if anyone was in the cave already but thanks to Ben Marks, we arranged access, had some lunch and went off!
We quickly(ish) reached the entrance pitch. A 45m mine shaft that I rigged and popped down first. We caved on through a shallow pool of water and reached the window…
This was incredibly cool. A huge airy chamber, with 45m above us and a 130m drop straight down into the abyss. The darkness of the chamber seemed to seep up and the chamber made me feel like I could fly, like the darkness would catch me, (obviously not a good idea but it was tempting).
Joe rigged the second 70m pitch from the window down to the Event Horizon. It was a straight pitch and we all descended down to the bottom ledge, where we then had to descend another 60m. Ben rigged the third pitch, Dan descended the 2nd and before we knew it we were sailing to the bottom of Titan.
We all made it down, had a good little boogie to some SGCB tunes, and started ascending and derigging the third pitch. As I lugged the wet rope up the pitch, Ben and Joe had already started the traverse line leading to Absolution, and we followed after. The traverse was a sloping wall, drifting into a harsh drop of darkness, the longest and steepest traverse I had ever experienced. Scary, but equally the best feeling in the world.
Still pools of water, and sleek tall waterfall walls with little to no footholds followed, built as if not wanting to be climbed. We climbed them, some (me) struggling more than others, definitely some of the trickiest climbs I have done, but very fun to slide/fall down on the way back.
Back across the scary traverse, then it was time to ascend the last two pitches. Ben derigged both (thank you) in speedy time, as his torch and spare torch had started to slowly fade and die, luckily he made it up the big second pitch just in time before coming to ask me for my spare light. Meanwhile Dan and Joe had made it out of the cave, throwing cow shit at each other in the wind and rain in the dark (an effective way to stay warm and entertained).
We all headed down the hill in good time, having had such a great day in the cave.
The TSG weekend was so much fun altogether, a joint UBMC and UBSS trip and all the climbers and TSG members were such great company. And I can’t end without a shoutout to the Sexy Girls Caving Brigade for the tunes they provided in the cave xoxo.
Titan. Photo copyright Mark Burkey, used with his kind permission.
A recent joint UBSS/UBMC weekend to Derbyshire gave Grace Smith the opportunity to experience the deep pitches and wide open spaces of Titan.
On Saturday, the plan was for myself, Dan Rose, Ben Morgan and Joe Bidie to bottom Titan. As always the faff was fantastically long, including a 40 minute walk to the entrance and back to check if anyone was in the cave already but thanks to Ben Marks, we arranged access, had some lunch and went off!
We quickly(ish) reached the entrance pitch. A 45m mine shaft that I rigged and popped down first. We caved on through a shallow pool of water and reached the window…
This was incredibly cool. A huge airy chamber, with 45m above us and a 130m drop straight down into the abyss. The darkness of the chamber seemed to seep up and the chamber made me feel like I could fly, like the darkness would catch me, (obviously not a good idea but it was tempting).
Joe rigged the second 70m pitch from the window down to the Event Horizon. It was a straight pitch and we all descended down to the bottom ledge, where we then had to descend another 60m. Ben rigged the third pitch, Dan descended the 2nd and before we knew it we were sailing to the bottom of Titan.
We all made it down, had a good little boogie to some SGCB tunes, and started ascending and derigging the third pitch. As I lugged the wet rope up the pitch, Ben and Joe had already started the traverse line leading to Absolution, and we followed after. The traverse was a sloping wall, drifting into a harsh drop of darkness, the longest and steepest traverse I had ever experienced. Scary, but equally the best feeling in the world.
Still pools of water, and sleek tall waterfall walls with little to no footholds followed, built as if not wanting to be climbed. We climbed them, some (me) struggling more than others, definitely some of the trickiest climbs I have done, but very fun to slide/fall down on the way back.
Back across the scary traverse, then it was time to ascend the last two pitches. Ben derigged both (thank you) in speedy time, as his torch and spare torch had started to slowly fade and die, luckily he made it up the big second pitch just in time before coming to ask me for my spare light. Meanwhile Dan and Joe had made it out of the cave, throwing cow shit at each other in the wind and rain in the dark (an effective way to stay warm and entertained).
We all headed down the hill in good time, having had such a great day in the cave.
The TSG weekend was so much fun altogether, a joint UBMC and UBSS trip and all the climbers and TSG members were such great company. And I can’t end without a shoutout to the Sexy Girls Caving Brigade for the tunes they provided in the cave xoxo.
Grace Smith
DOUBLE BOUNCE AT EASEGILL
Left, Billy Evans in the entrance to Cow Pot. Right, Merryn Matthews in Cow Pot.
Easegill Open House is a new event run by the Red Rose Pothole Club at Bull Pot Farm, where numerous entrances to the Easegill system are rigged for a week. On the first weekend, UBSS members made great use of this by completing various through trips, including a 'double bounce' of Cow Pot to Lancaster Hole as Merryn Matthews explains ...
We had spent the previous evening merrily celebrating the summer solstice by Morris dancing, guided by Billy, our very own expert, and drinking many pints poured by bartender Sioned (thanks for helping with the event!).
Group route finding. Left to right: Jess Brock. Merryn Matthews, Emily Wormleighton, Joshitha Shivkumar.
Despite our evening antics, we were feeling fresh and came up with a plan for me, Lucy Hyde, Jess Brock and Billy Evans to descended Cow Pot, leave Lancaster, then reverse the trip and come out of Cow Pot. Meanwhile, Joshitha, Toby, Emily and Grace would follow us down Cow and explore some side passages on their way out.
Billy Evans practising his modelling skills in Slug World.
We slithered our way down the entrance before reaching the fiddly traverse of the big final pitch. This seemed much easier without rigging it, although still very bold. We zipped down and sped through to Lancaster Hole, where we sang a hilarious mishmash of 'Doline' and showed off some rope walking skills before enjoying a quick break in the surface sunshine.
Grace Smith Looking out to Fall Pot.
Back in the cave it seemed like before we'd blinked we at were at Fall Pot, just in time to watch the other group abseiling down the pitch, to 'It's Raining Men' blasting from a speaker. We had a short disco break inspired by Joshitha's rave mode back-up light before saying goodbye bye to the other group and whizzing out.
Left: Merryn Matthews, Cow Pot. RIght, Jess Brock, Lancaster Hole.
Get the event in your calendar for next year!
Left, Billy Evans in the entrance to Cow Pot. Right, Merryn Matthews in Cow Pot.
Easegill Open House is a new event run by the Red Rose Pothole Club at Bull Pot Farm, where numerous entrances to the Easegill system are rigged for a week. On the first weekend, UBSS members made great use of this by completing various through trips, including a 'double bounce' of Cow Pot to Lancaster Hole as Merryn Matthews explains ...
We had spent the previous evening merrily celebrating the summer solstice by Morris dancing, guided by Billy, our very own expert, and drinking many pints poured by bartender Sioned (thanks for helping with the event!).
Group route finding. Left to right: Jess Brock. Merryn Matthews, Emily Wormleighton, Joshitha Shivkumar.
Despite our evening antics, we were feeling fresh and came up with a plan for me, Lucy Hyde, Jess Brock and Billy Evans to descended Cow Pot, leave Lancaster, then reverse the trip and come out of Cow Pot. Meanwhile, Joshitha, Toby, Emily and Grace would follow us down Cow and explore some side passages on their way out.
Billy Evans practising his modelling skills in Slug World.
We slithered our way down the entrance before reaching the fiddly traverse of the big final pitch. This seemed much easier without rigging it, although still very bold. We zipped down and sped through to Lancaster Hole, where we sang a hilarious mishmash of 'Doline' and showed off some rope walking skills before enjoying a quick break in the surface sunshine.
Grace Smith Looking out to Fall Pot.
Back in the cave it seemed like before we'd blinked we at were at Fall Pot, just in time to watch the other group abseiling down the pitch, to 'It's Raining Men' blasting from a speaker. We had a short disco break inspired by Joshitha's rave mode back-up light before saying goodbye bye to the other group and whizzing out.
Left: Merryn Matthews, Cow Pot. RIght, Jess Brock, Lancaster Hole.
Get the event in your calendar for next year!
Merryn Matthews
SUNRISE AFTER SOUTHBANK
Dan Rose, doing his best to pretend he was engaged in Type 1 Fun.
Like all fun trips, Ben Morgan and Dan Rose started their trip to Southbank in Eastwater the right way, fitting in a sneaky 11pm freediving trip to Swildon’s 4 and back (in Ben's case after a full 9 to 5 of work in the lab), followed by a UBSS hut drinking session which lasted until well after the sun came up. Yes, of course that was sensible, we chorus, but as for the rest, we leave it to you to judge after reading Ben's account.
Dan and I went to sleep in our respective cars and woke up at about 2pm on Saturday. The original plan had been to do Swildon’s on Saturday and Southbank on Sunday, but the forecast briefly changed to thunderstorms on Sunday so we moved everything forwards by a day to avoid the nightmare a storm would cause for cavers deep in Eastwater.
We stumbled out of our cars and forced down an ungodly quantity of Billy's leftover curry to fuel us for the trip. We drove to Eastwater and then our disarray was palpable. Dan had promised to pick up all of the cave snacks on Friday as I'd been working. Alas, he revealed he’d forgotten the lot, meaning the trip would need to be completed on zero rations. We then also discovered one of the ladders was too short so I went to the Wessex to commandeer the CHECC ladder. By this point it was about 4pm and when I walked past Tony Seddon and Andrew Atkinson they expressed their pride on seeing students waking up at the crack of dawn for a nice trip.
I drove back to Eastwater and we stumbled about the car readying gear. The prospects for the trip looked dire. We picked up the tackle sacks and started to climb the gate.
Before we entered the field a Volvo sped up and pulled in in front of us. A man jumped out and asked us if we were doing Southbank. He told us that he was doing the trip tomorrow and had left ladders rigged in preparation. He said that if we left a ladder at the first pitch of the 13 Pots trip that would be the only tackle we'd need. This was music to our ears. As he left he said, "Make sure you have a snack before you start Tekky or you’ll be miserable." I laughed at this. Dan had guaranteed that this would be a luxury we would not have.
We headed through the Woggle Press and the boulder choke and made great progress through the 13 Pots section of the trip.
Navigation - the hard way! See below.
We ran into our first navigation issue near the Organ Grinder. We were confused by the description of which left turn we should take before the arch and I went down a very tight squeeze. It felt as tight as I could manage and I told Dan that he wouldn't make it through. This was upsetting and we thought we might have blown the trip. Dan started to try to get through. It was horrible to watch. He crushed himself with his full force but couldn't manage. He thought if he couldn't make it through that would be game over for the trip, so he spent over an hour and a half trying to force himself through in increasingly dire ways. We eventually agreed that this was not going to work and that we would head back.
A little way back from the squeeze we decided that seeing as we were there we might as well have a little look around to see if we'd made a mistake. We consulted Mendip Underground again and realised there was another possible way. We tried this and it appeared promising. We passed through another squeeze so roomy that it was clearly unsuitable to grind even the weakest of organs. It became apparent that this was in fact the true Organ Grinder and we were on the right track. We pushed on and climbed down the two larger ladders. These were impressive and quite serious as there turned out to be only very trashed ropes hanging a single length down the pitches meaning the first person down could be belayed but the other would have to solo. The rope was so poor and stiff that we both soloed these pitches.
RTFM! Dan decides to read the manual.
We continued the trip and enjoyed its intensity. The mud became thicker with the worst part being a slope so thick with mud that you could only move centimetre by centimetre. I felt this was reminiscent of some cruel place a rat might crawl into and die in a sewer.
The dodgiest part of the trip was the ladder climb out of one of the pits at the bottom. The in situ ladder was in horrible condition and blue with corrosion. I climbed it first wondering in the back of my mind about how strong it could be in this state of disrepair. I got to the top and Dan started to climb. I heard a crash and a shout and spun around. The wire on one side of the ladder had snapped. Luckily this happened only a few rungs off the ground and Dan managed to keep hold so he was unhurt. This was sobering as we both knew that a serious injury this deep in Eastwater would have dire consequences. Dan was at the bottom of the ladder and had to climb it. There was a single length of rope up the climb. I was already at the top so I was able to put him on belay. He climbed without further incident.
We continued through the cave and enjoyed the ‘cricket ball’ formation. Neither of us had done the trip before so we found Mendip Underground a little opaque. The duck near the Blackwell Tunnel was fairly empty and not too bad.
At some point Dan’s light got caught on the roof and broke both the clips off his Ecrin Rock helmet. We fashioned a replacement attachment out of a very muddy sling which preceded to flap in Dans’ eyes for the remainder of the trip. He also had some light issues and I lent him my spare Fenix (a dangerous decision as it turned out)
Before we knew it, we found ourselves on home turf at the bottom of Tekky. "I’ve eaten an egg here before," Dan remarked. I wistfully thought of the food that Dan had misplaced. More than a little rage filled me.
Ben, not realising his Fenix had just been left behind.
We worked our way up the Technical Masterpiece. Unluckily for Dan, my Fenix had ended up with a trashed UBSS battery in it and despite being fully charged lasted less than an hour. I was a little ahead him so went down to give him another battery. He was clearly hungover to the point of zombification and putting the battery in the light appeared to pretty much be his intellectual limit. Unbeknownst to me at this point he dropped my Fenix on the ground and forgot it leaving it behind. :(
Tekky dragged on but after a while we found ourselves back at the boulders and climbed our way towards the sweet fresh air. We walked back towards the car thinking we were pretty much done for the night. We couldn't have been more wrong. The car was gone!
"What the fuck," we screamed. "Some dickhead’s nicked the car". We saw a note on the ground however giving us some cheeky directions. It turned out that in an attempt at humour, Billy and Joe had stolen Dan’s car and moved it to the Wessex. A cruel trick to play on weary cavers emerging from such a taxing trip. My luck worsened. At this point I was pretty cold and was desperate to put on some dry clothes. When I reached into the foot well, I discovered that a two litre bottle of lemonade had been left on my clothes. However, this bottle had punctured when we were driving to the cave and we had left it next to the car. When Joe and Billy stole the car, they’d chucked all our stuff into the car and unbeknownst to them at least a litre of lemonade had leaked onto my clothes, turning them into a soggy disgusting mess. I sent a expletive filled tirade to the weekend group chat.
At this point we were coated in mud and were desperate for a warm shower so we headed to the BEC. It was their maintenance weekend, so we shared a couple of pints with them at about 2am and had a shower which after the cold and roughness of Eastwater was nothing short of bliss.
We drove back to the hut and received a heroes’ welcome mixed with many lemonade related excuses. Joe best be careful in the future with where he leaves his car keys ...
Now it's time for the nice bit!
We then proceeded to drink the night away and walked up the hill to watch a beautiful Mendip sunrise. As I walked back to my car it was about 7am and I watched Krisz Kormos vomit out of his car window. He had just woken up was about to start a shift teaching abseiling at Mendip Outdoors. Poor bastard. I got into my sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep to the lullaby of Krisz’s retches.
All in all a very tiring weekend but filled with great caving.
The next day we woke up and drove back to the Wessex to put back the CHECC ladder. On the way we passed Sioned from UBSS along with the man with the Volvo. They had found my Fenix in Tekky and returned it to me. Up until this point Dan had been trying to convince me that there was no way he had dropped it and I just needed to look harder in my car boot ...
Dan Rose, doing his best to pretend he was engaged in Type 1 Fun.
Like all fun trips, Ben Morgan and Dan Rose started their trip to Southbank in Eastwater the right way, fitting in a sneaky 11pm freediving trip to Swildon’s 4 and back (in Ben's case after a full 9 to 5 of work in the lab), followed by a UBSS hut drinking session which lasted until well after the sun came up. Yes, of course that was sensible, we chorus, but as for the rest, we leave it to you to judge after reading Ben's account.
Dan and I went to sleep in our respective cars and woke up at about 2pm on Saturday. The original plan had been to do Swildon’s on Saturday and Southbank on Sunday, but the forecast briefly changed to thunderstorms on Sunday so we moved everything forwards by a day to avoid the nightmare a storm would cause for cavers deep in Eastwater.
We stumbled out of our cars and forced down an ungodly quantity of Billy's leftover curry to fuel us for the trip. We drove to Eastwater and then our disarray was palpable. Dan had promised to pick up all of the cave snacks on Friday as I'd been working. Alas, he revealed he’d forgotten the lot, meaning the trip would need to be completed on zero rations. We then also discovered one of the ladders was too short so I went to the Wessex to commandeer the CHECC ladder. By this point it was about 4pm and when I walked past Tony Seddon and Andrew Atkinson they expressed their pride on seeing students waking up at the crack of dawn for a nice trip.
I drove back to Eastwater and we stumbled about the car readying gear. The prospects for the trip looked dire. We picked up the tackle sacks and started to climb the gate.
Before we entered the field a Volvo sped up and pulled in in front of us. A man jumped out and asked us if we were doing Southbank. He told us that he was doing the trip tomorrow and had left ladders rigged in preparation. He said that if we left a ladder at the first pitch of the 13 Pots trip that would be the only tackle we'd need. This was music to our ears. As he left he said, "Make sure you have a snack before you start Tekky or you’ll be miserable." I laughed at this. Dan had guaranteed that this would be a luxury we would not have.
We headed through the Woggle Press and the boulder choke and made great progress through the 13 Pots section of the trip.
Navigation - the hard way! See below.
We ran into our first navigation issue near the Organ Grinder. We were confused by the description of which left turn we should take before the arch and I went down a very tight squeeze. It felt as tight as I could manage and I told Dan that he wouldn't make it through. This was upsetting and we thought we might have blown the trip. Dan started to try to get through. It was horrible to watch. He crushed himself with his full force but couldn't manage. He thought if he couldn't make it through that would be game over for the trip, so he spent over an hour and a half trying to force himself through in increasingly dire ways. We eventually agreed that this was not going to work and that we would head back.
A little way back from the squeeze we decided that seeing as we were there we might as well have a little look around to see if we'd made a mistake. We consulted Mendip Underground again and realised there was another possible way. We tried this and it appeared promising. We passed through another squeeze so roomy that it was clearly unsuitable to grind even the weakest of organs. It became apparent that this was in fact the true Organ Grinder and we were on the right track. We pushed on and climbed down the two larger ladders. These were impressive and quite serious as there turned out to be only very trashed ropes hanging a single length down the pitches meaning the first person down could be belayed but the other would have to solo. The rope was so poor and stiff that we both soloed these pitches.
RTFM! Dan decides to read the manual.
We continued the trip and enjoyed its intensity. The mud became thicker with the worst part being a slope so thick with mud that you could only move centimetre by centimetre. I felt this was reminiscent of some cruel place a rat might crawl into and die in a sewer.
The dodgiest part of the trip was the ladder climb out of one of the pits at the bottom. The in situ ladder was in horrible condition and blue with corrosion. I climbed it first wondering in the back of my mind about how strong it could be in this state of disrepair. I got to the top and Dan started to climb. I heard a crash and a shout and spun around. The wire on one side of the ladder had snapped. Luckily this happened only a few rungs off the ground and Dan managed to keep hold so he was unhurt. This was sobering as we both knew that a serious injury this deep in Eastwater would have dire consequences. Dan was at the bottom of the ladder and had to climb it. There was a single length of rope up the climb. I was already at the top so I was able to put him on belay. He climbed without further incident.
We continued through the cave and enjoyed the ‘cricket ball’ formation. Neither of us had done the trip before so we found Mendip Underground a little opaque. The duck near the Blackwell Tunnel was fairly empty and not too bad.
At some point Dan’s light got caught on the roof and broke both the clips off his Ecrin Rock helmet. We fashioned a replacement attachment out of a very muddy sling which preceded to flap in Dans’ eyes for the remainder of the trip. He also had some light issues and I lent him my spare Fenix (a dangerous decision as it turned out)
Before we knew it, we found ourselves on home turf at the bottom of Tekky. "I’ve eaten an egg here before," Dan remarked. I wistfully thought of the food that Dan had misplaced. More than a little rage filled me.
Ben, not realising his Fenix had just been left behind.
We worked our way up the Technical Masterpiece. Unluckily for Dan, my Fenix had ended up with a trashed UBSS battery in it and despite being fully charged lasted less than an hour. I was a little ahead him so went down to give him another battery. He was clearly hungover to the point of zombification and putting the battery in the light appeared to pretty much be his intellectual limit. Unbeknownst to me at this point he dropped my Fenix on the ground and forgot it leaving it behind. :(
Tekky dragged on but after a while we found ourselves back at the boulders and climbed our way towards the sweet fresh air. We walked back towards the car thinking we were pretty much done for the night. We couldn't have been more wrong. The car was gone!
"What the fuck," we screamed. "Some dickhead’s nicked the car". We saw a note on the ground however giving us some cheeky directions. It turned out that in an attempt at humour, Billy and Joe had stolen Dan’s car and moved it to the Wessex. A cruel trick to play on weary cavers emerging from such a taxing trip. My luck worsened. At this point I was pretty cold and was desperate to put on some dry clothes. When I reached into the foot well, I discovered that a two litre bottle of lemonade had been left on my clothes. However, this bottle had punctured when we were driving to the cave and we had left it next to the car. When Joe and Billy stole the car, they’d chucked all our stuff into the car and unbeknownst to them at least a litre of lemonade had leaked onto my clothes, turning them into a soggy disgusting mess. I sent a expletive filled tirade to the weekend group chat.
At this point we were coated in mud and were desperate for a warm shower so we headed to the BEC. It was their maintenance weekend, so we shared a couple of pints with them at about 2am and had a shower which after the cold and roughness of Eastwater was nothing short of bliss.
We drove back to the hut and received a heroes’ welcome mixed with many lemonade related excuses. Joe best be careful in the future with where he leaves his car keys ...
Now it's time for the nice bit!
We then proceeded to drink the night away and walked up the hill to watch a beautiful Mendip sunrise. As I walked back to my car it was about 7am and I watched Krisz Kormos vomit out of his car window. He had just woken up was about to start a shift teaching abseiling at Mendip Outdoors. Poor bastard. I got into my sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep to the lullaby of Krisz’s retches.
All in all a very tiring weekend but filled with great caving.
The next day we woke up and drove back to the Wessex to put back the CHECC ladder. On the way we passed Sioned from UBSS along with the man with the Volvo. They had found my Fenix in Tekky and returned it to me. Up until this point Dan had been trying to convince me that there was no way he had dropped it and I just needed to look harder in my car boot ...
ISAAC'S HOLIDAY IN FRANCE
To set the scene ...
Much to the despair of Isaac Neale’s boss at Wookey Hole, he was unable to interact with the British general public for two weeks this summer as he was busy being a tourist in the Ardeche. Much to his own surprise, Isaac did an awful lot of caving and not much else, as he relates …
In my mind I had a picture of a holiday where we’d go caving a handful of times then blend in some hikes with a smattering of classic touristy sightseeing, a bit of kayaking and an awful lot of sitting around drinking wine and eating cheese at our leisure. In reality, after arriving on the afternoon of the 15th June, I went caving for the following six days in a row, had a single day off then went caving again followed by a final day off to pack kit before leaving the following morning. Wine and cheese were savoured as an event only once, at other times their consumption was crammed into the remaining hours of the day as it was a necessity to speed through the relaxing activities in between preparing the next day’s tackle, cooking, and sprinting off to the nearby river to cool down. Please do not think I say this with any note of remorse however! To have the opportunity to sample so many caves was a privilege indeed, and I came away with an extremely memorable first trip to the area. Additionally, to be able to say with some confidence that I was amongst the people on the trip who spent the most amount of time underground gives me a great sense of pride.
Helictites in Aven de Armourie.
The first trip we went on was a through trip from Event Superieur to Event de Foussoubie. Finding the first of the caves was a lovely introduction to the area as the hike up the hill in blistering heat and caving kit provided lovely views over the Ardeche river and the famous Pont-d’Arc archway. We had been blessed with some meticulous descriptions lovingly translated by Google but after with a bit of effortful bodging ,we eventually scrapped them in favour of some coordinates on a French caving blog and then we found the entrance in a short two hours. There was a slight bit of anxiety present that we’d be leaving the other group to get cold and wet at the bottom of the pitches (we were doing an exchange with the other group going up), however, we were relieved to hear that upon finding our entrance and ringing them they still had not found theirs either. For a picture of what the trip itself was like I’d describe it as a French Simpson’s to Valley. It is even set up to be rigged as a pull through and is scarily similar in terms of themes and passage type throughout the trip – even the aqueous parts at the end. I highly recommend this.
The most fun trip I did was the through trip from Grotte Babette to Grotte Estavan (or Grotty Estavan as we knew it). This was also our first introduction to French cavers! To those of you well read up on Ardeche trip reports, this is the trip infamous for a 37m crawl that made a French caver burst into tears. I am happy to report (with a great sense of national pride) that all in our party agreed this was one of the most joyous crawls we’d ever completed underground. Similar to the crawl in Cwm Dwr going from Divers' Pitch towards OFD1.5 but wider and with no nasty potholes. Slightly damp so slippery the whole way and all the gour pools align with your direction of movement providing the best handholds to drag yourself along with. After we did the crawl we stopped in a couple of chambers for pictures (amazing helictites covering all the walls) and it was here we were passed by the French caving party doing the trip from the other direction. We gifted them one of our surveys (tut tut, 7 p’s, etc etc) and then a little later moved on ourselves. About 20 minutes after we packed up and continued on we heard voices behind us. Three of the French group had decided to back track the entire through trip rather than doing 37m of crawling. Oh dear. We were dreadfully amused.
The most impactful trip, or maybe the one which I think I should probably remember as having the greatest impact must be Aven Du Noel. The size of the passage reached once descending a series of pitches the same height as Titan is hard to imagine if you haven’t visited. As a general rule of thumb, 50m high, 20m wide throughout. It felt more like walking on the moon than being in a cave. One great moment was when after walking across a passage we realised we’d actually been walking in the bottom of a dried up gour pool the size and depth of an Olympic swimming pool.
Left: Big Stalagmite in Aven De Noel. Right: Formations in Grotte Babette.
Finally it’d be silly not to mention the prettiest cave we visited. I am aware it does have a proper name but for the trip we all referred to it amongst each other as ‘Clive's secret cave’. This cave was mentally well decorated. Walls meters long full of helictites. Visiting this cave is generally discouraged and we found it from a hand drawn map that Mr Westlake had with him. A hand drawn map drawn for Mr Westlake by a French Speleologist a few years ago. Mr Chauvet himself. It still had his wine stains on.
So. trips aside, though, what were the caves actually like?
Well, they’re a fair bit older than our caves here, meaning there’s a lot more dry fossil passage to traverse. We didn’t see any active streamways whilst we were there, and the formations are far larger, more common, and packed at a greater density to the average UK cave. The caves are also a few degrees warmer, so coupled with the dryness it is generally a hotter experience completing trips. Kit wise in terms of clothing I took with me an MTDE Butron, a B&Q boiler suit, and my regular Warmbac Digger. For completely dry trips I wore the boiler suit and when there would be a wet section or the possibility of drippy pitches or waiting around the digger suit came out. This generally did me quite well throughout and I don’t think I got my kit choice wrong at any point. Other people with Cordura over suits and thicker undersuits gradually ditched their thicker undersuits though the week, instead preferring to use just a t shirt or leggings. One person I went with had an orange Llangoff, they found the suspenders a very useful feature and did a lot of caving with the Cordura on around the legs but leaving their torso and arms open and letting the rest of the suit drape around. Again, the passage is so large that this generally isn’t a hindrance at all.
A hot caver! (Hey, don't blame us, that was his caption, not ours!)
As a note on boiler suits, they are generally referred to as ‘cotton boiler suits’. Mine is 80% polyester and 20% cotton, it is still suitably thin and cool and did me very well. It did not to too well getting briefly wet in a short crawl and I can imagine a full immersion wouldn’t produce the best result. Puddles fine, ducks it’d be better to take your Cordura. They also don’t have the Velcro closures around the wrists, but a snoopy loop around the arms and legs can produce a fine result – or just sew your own in! Sewing a popper into each sleeve isn’t a lot of work is it?
To set the scene ...
Much to the despair of Isaac Neale’s boss at Wookey Hole, he was unable to interact with the British general public for two weeks this summer as he was busy being a tourist in the Ardeche. Much to his own surprise, Isaac did an awful lot of caving and not much else, as he relates …
In my mind I had a picture of a holiday where we’d go caving a handful of times then blend in some hikes with a smattering of classic touristy sightseeing, a bit of kayaking and an awful lot of sitting around drinking wine and eating cheese at our leisure. In reality, after arriving on the afternoon of the 15th June, I went caving for the following six days in a row, had a single day off then went caving again followed by a final day off to pack kit before leaving the following morning. Wine and cheese were savoured as an event only once, at other times their consumption was crammed into the remaining hours of the day as it was a necessity to speed through the relaxing activities in between preparing the next day’s tackle, cooking, and sprinting off to the nearby river to cool down. Please do not think I say this with any note of remorse however! To have the opportunity to sample so many caves was a privilege indeed, and I came away with an extremely memorable first trip to the area. Additionally, to be able to say with some confidence that I was amongst the people on the trip who spent the most amount of time underground gives me a great sense of pride.
Helictites in Aven de Armourie.
The first trip we went on was a through trip from Event Superieur to Event de Foussoubie. Finding the first of the caves was a lovely introduction to the area as the hike up the hill in blistering heat and caving kit provided lovely views over the Ardeche river and the famous Pont-d’Arc archway. We had been blessed with some meticulous descriptions lovingly translated by Google but after with a bit of effortful bodging ,we eventually scrapped them in favour of some coordinates on a French caving blog and then we found the entrance in a short two hours. There was a slight bit of anxiety present that we’d be leaving the other group to get cold and wet at the bottom of the pitches (we were doing an exchange with the other group going up), however, we were relieved to hear that upon finding our entrance and ringing them they still had not found theirs either. For a picture of what the trip itself was like I’d describe it as a French Simpson’s to Valley. It is even set up to be rigged as a pull through and is scarily similar in terms of themes and passage type throughout the trip – even the aqueous parts at the end. I highly recommend this.
The most fun trip I did was the through trip from Grotte Babette to Grotte Estavan (or Grotty Estavan as we knew it). This was also our first introduction to French cavers! To those of you well read up on Ardeche trip reports, this is the trip infamous for a 37m crawl that made a French caver burst into tears. I am happy to report (with a great sense of national pride) that all in our party agreed this was one of the most joyous crawls we’d ever completed underground. Similar to the crawl in Cwm Dwr going from Divers' Pitch towards OFD1.5 but wider and with no nasty potholes. Slightly damp so slippery the whole way and all the gour pools align with your direction of movement providing the best handholds to drag yourself along with. After we did the crawl we stopped in a couple of chambers for pictures (amazing helictites covering all the walls) and it was here we were passed by the French caving party doing the trip from the other direction. We gifted them one of our surveys (tut tut, 7 p’s, etc etc) and then a little later moved on ourselves. About 20 minutes after we packed up and continued on we heard voices behind us. Three of the French group had decided to back track the entire through trip rather than doing 37m of crawling. Oh dear. We were dreadfully amused.
The most impactful trip, or maybe the one which I think I should probably remember as having the greatest impact must be Aven Du Noel. The size of the passage reached once descending a series of pitches the same height as Titan is hard to imagine if you haven’t visited. As a general rule of thumb, 50m high, 20m wide throughout. It felt more like walking on the moon than being in a cave. One great moment was when after walking across a passage we realised we’d actually been walking in the bottom of a dried up gour pool the size and depth of an Olympic swimming pool.
Left: Big Stalagmite in Aven De Noel. Right: Formations in Grotte Babette.
Finally it’d be silly not to mention the prettiest cave we visited. I am aware it does have a proper name but for the trip we all referred to it amongst each other as ‘Clive's secret cave’. This cave was mentally well decorated. Walls meters long full of helictites. Visiting this cave is generally discouraged and we found it from a hand drawn map that Mr Westlake had with him. A hand drawn map drawn for Mr Westlake by a French Speleologist a few years ago. Mr Chauvet himself. It still had his wine stains on.
So. trips aside, though, what were the caves actually like?
Well, they’re a fair bit older than our caves here, meaning there’s a lot more dry fossil passage to traverse. We didn’t see any active streamways whilst we were there, and the formations are far larger, more common, and packed at a greater density to the average UK cave. The caves are also a few degrees warmer, so coupled with the dryness it is generally a hotter experience completing trips. Kit wise in terms of clothing I took with me an MTDE Butron, a B&Q boiler suit, and my regular Warmbac Digger. For completely dry trips I wore the boiler suit and when there would be a wet section or the possibility of drippy pitches or waiting around the digger suit came out. This generally did me quite well throughout and I don’t think I got my kit choice wrong at any point. Other people with Cordura over suits and thicker undersuits gradually ditched their thicker undersuits though the week, instead preferring to use just a t shirt or leggings. One person I went with had an orange Llangoff, they found the suspenders a very useful feature and did a lot of caving with the Cordura on around the legs but leaving their torso and arms open and letting the rest of the suit drape around. Again, the passage is so large that this generally isn’t a hindrance at all.
A hot caver! (Hey, don't blame us, that was his caption, not ours!)
As a note on boiler suits, they are generally referred to as ‘cotton boiler suits’. Mine is 80% polyester and 20% cotton, it is still suitably thin and cool and did me very well. It did not to too well getting briefly wet in a short crawl and I can imagine a full immersion wouldn’t produce the best result. Puddles fine, ducks it’d be better to take your Cordura. They also don’t have the Velcro closures around the wrists, but a snoopy loop around the arms and legs can produce a fine result – or just sew your own in! Sewing a popper into each sleeve isn’t a lot of work is it?
Isaac Neale
THE GREAT 2025 LIZARD RESCUE
A friend in need...
Isaac isn't the only one who holidayed in France this year. Jess Brock was in the Hérault and whilst there, had an interesting encounter with the local wildlife!
Nearing the end of our holiday Northern Pennine Club members Ben, my brother Thomas, and I, ventured on our own to the Aven de L’Esquirol. After a short walk in the midday sun, following cairns, through what can only be described as beaucoup de vegetation we found the aven nestled underneath some small oak trees. We huddled in the shade desperate to escape the baking heat of yet another 35 degree celsius day.
Expecting to use spits, we were happily met with a P-bolted cave and climbed down into a somewhat cooler atmosphere. Ben led the way rigging and leaned out over a mossy 30m pitch to set up a lovely Y-hang. There wasn’t any need to turn our lights on until we reached the bottom which was actually the top of a calcified rubble heap. There were plenty of bones, many of which were being very slowly absorbed by the calcite.
Ben Making a new friend.
We didn’t just see a plethora of bones but also an array of creatures (beside the cavers). All sorts of bugs and beasties had fallen down the aven and survived their fall and seemed to be happy in the damp drippy den. We saw two tiny brown salamanders around 2 inches long, a huge beetle with large mandibles and incredible grippy legs. After handling the bug and watching it rear up at us, I turned around and spotted a bright green thing in the darkness. As I cautiously approached I saw that there was a lizard in the cave! Around 25cm long, it barely moved or blinked, but otherwise seemed unharmed. We affectionately named him Jean Lézard (John Lizard).
Thomas and the smaller columns.
The cave itself didn’t go very far and offered a left and right large passage. Up one end there were enormous calcite deposits of flowstone, glittering minerals, curtains, and tall columns. My brother is 6ft tall and these columns were fairly small in comparison to other columns we had seen this year.
Jess and the larger columns.
The other side of the chamber held less impressive calcite formations but it did show off three magnificent columns. I recently bought a Sofirn and can highly recommend it for photography trips. Its brightness is unparalleled, except perhaps the sun. After a few minutes on turbo mode it does get quite hot which came in handy on a long SRT trip where I got cold hands. I’ve got into the habit of calling it the Retina Killer as looking directly at the Sofirn on turbo mode will leave you desperately wishing you hadn't. A very lightweight and powerful back up light.
Ben and Jean at the top of the pitch.
After exploring the small (only in length) cave we had the task of the great lizard rescue. Jean wouldn’t have survived down in L’Esquirol. Ben took it upon himself to gently gather Jean into the pocket of his boiler suit and very carefully prussik up the aven. Very quickly the lizard was having none of it and nearly tried to jump ship. Jean crawled all over Ben as he carefully navigated the pitch (hard to do with a lizard on your arm). Eventually Jean found a comfy spot on Ben’s chest, using his spare light like a hammock. At the top of the pitch Jean crawled onto me and I had to cave out with a lizard on my arm. It was hard to navigate a 2m climb with Jean clinging on. When I made it to the top of the climb I stretched out my hand and Jean Lézard scurried away, already perked up by the heat of the day.
Jess and Jean after a successful rescue.
We later learned that Jean was an Ocellated Lizard which are the largest lizards in Europe and grow up to 60cm (which would be a bit harder to prussik with).
Wishing Jean and everyone a good summer!
A friend in need...
Isaac isn't the only one who holidayed in France this year. Jess Brock was in the Hérault and whilst there, had an interesting encounter with the local wildlife!
Nearing the end of our holiday Northern Pennine Club members Ben, my brother Thomas, and I, ventured on our own to the Aven de L’Esquirol. After a short walk in the midday sun, following cairns, through what can only be described as beaucoup de vegetation we found the aven nestled underneath some small oak trees. We huddled in the shade desperate to escape the baking heat of yet another 35 degree celsius day.
Expecting to use spits, we were happily met with a P-bolted cave and climbed down into a somewhat cooler atmosphere. Ben led the way rigging and leaned out over a mossy 30m pitch to set up a lovely Y-hang. There wasn’t any need to turn our lights on until we reached the bottom which was actually the top of a calcified rubble heap. There were plenty of bones, many of which were being very slowly absorbed by the calcite.
Ben Making a new friend.
We didn’t just see a plethora of bones but also an array of creatures (beside the cavers). All sorts of bugs and beasties had fallen down the aven and survived their fall and seemed to be happy in the damp drippy den. We saw two tiny brown salamanders around 2 inches long, a huge beetle with large mandibles and incredible grippy legs. After handling the bug and watching it rear up at us, I turned around and spotted a bright green thing in the darkness. As I cautiously approached I saw that there was a lizard in the cave! Around 25cm long, it barely moved or blinked, but otherwise seemed unharmed. We affectionately named him Jean Lézard (John Lizard).
Thomas and the smaller columns.
The cave itself didn’t go very far and offered a left and right large passage. Up one end there were enormous calcite deposits of flowstone, glittering minerals, curtains, and tall columns. My brother is 6ft tall and these columns were fairly small in comparison to other columns we had seen this year.
Jess and the larger columns.
The other side of the chamber held less impressive calcite formations but it did show off three magnificent columns. I recently bought a Sofirn and can highly recommend it for photography trips. Its brightness is unparalleled, except perhaps the sun. After a few minutes on turbo mode it does get quite hot which came in handy on a long SRT trip where I got cold hands. I’ve got into the habit of calling it the Retina Killer as looking directly at the Sofirn on turbo mode will leave you desperately wishing you hadn't. A very lightweight and powerful back up light.
Ben and Jean at the top of the pitch.
After exploring the small (only in length) cave we had the task of the great lizard rescue. Jean wouldn’t have survived down in L’Esquirol. Ben took it upon himself to gently gather Jean into the pocket of his boiler suit and very carefully prussik up the aven. Very quickly the lizard was having none of it and nearly tried to jump ship. Jean crawled all over Ben as he carefully navigated the pitch (hard to do with a lizard on your arm). Eventually Jean found a comfy spot on Ben’s chest, using his spare light like a hammock. At the top of the pitch Jean crawled onto me and I had to cave out with a lizard on my arm. It was hard to navigate a 2m climb with Jean clinging on. When I made it to the top of the climb I stretched out my hand and Jean Lézard scurried away, already perked up by the heat of the day.
Jess and Jean after a successful rescue.
We later learned that Jean was an Ocellated Lizard which are the largest lizards in Europe and grow up to 60cm (which would be a bit harder to prussik with).
Wishing Jean and everyone a good summer!
Jess Brock
DON'T DISTURB THE CHOUGHS!
Tras la Layada. Photo copyright Bartek Biela and used with his kind permission.
Dan Rose joined an expedition to the Picos de Europa in Spain and reports on the success of a previously elusive connection…
A melodious ‘mooo’ and the clinking sound of cowbells welcomed my waking to the world on an oppressively hot Spanish morning. The inevitable smile that follows the warmth of a cow’s innocence nestled discreetly on my face as I sat down for breakfast: toast, granola and a fried egg perfectly cooked by Carlotta, the big boss of the Refugio de Ario. Today was the big day when a team of four of us would connect the long-known, long-ignored entrance of Tras la Jayada to the main Pozu Jultayu, commonly referred to as 2/7, cave system.
This system, first explored in the 1980s, is one of the many caves in the Picos de Europa with streamways that reach their resurgence at Culiembro, 1500m below its highest entrance, giving it immense depth potential. Since then, countless expeditions have explored its large pitches and vast horizontal passages but the cave stayed at a depth of 811m for decades, until it was extended by 92m when Tony Seddon linked it via diving to the neighbouring C4 system to create a 903m deep system. Yet, in theory, another 550m of depth might lay undiscovered past the illusive Choke Egbert that multiple expeditions in the late 1990s and early 2000s attempted but failed to pass.
Tras la Jayada, meanwhile, is a 300m entrance pitch that was first descended by Spanish cavers in the 1970s, then by OUCC in the 1980s. Neither group had managed to find a way on, and the pitch was discarded as a mildly interesting curiosity. As the upstream end of 2/7 continued to be pushed in the 2000s, all the way up to the sump that we now know connects to C4, it became clear that Tras La Jayada lay within spitting distance of the upstream 2/7 end on the survey. Hence, last year, the pitch was descended once again, and this time, with LED lights, Mark Sims pushed a narrow rift, and found the way on to a new 100m pitch. Thus, on the 18th June, Becka Lawson, Chris Curry, Viki Smyth and I set off to make the connection, hoping to open a route into upstream 2/7 that would be far easier and shorter than the existing entrances, making further exploration more feasible.
After a 40 minute walk in the sweltering sun, we arrived at the magnificent mouth of Tras La Jayada, and I slotted into my increasingly disheveled oversuit, tattered from the expensively sharp rift known as the Ario Reality that I had lugged camping gear through the day before. Chris was the only one of us who had previously descended the pitch, having helped bolt it over the prior two days. He warned us of the terrifyingly loose rocks that some of the rebelays were perched near, and the stomach churning thought of dislodging a boulder above a fellow caver, listening to it reach terminal velocity through its multi hundred metre fall in a dicey spin of death, informed my slightly disgusted expression.
‘Oh, and try not to disturb the choughs’, we were told. Apparently nesting birds on the upper rebelays were known to kick rocks down onto unsuspecting speleologists in revenge for disturbing their natural habitat. Descending third, after Chris and Becka, I tentatively threaded my descender and allowed gravity to slowly pull me into darkness, inspecting every bit of wall for looseness, and remaining almost comically slow to curb the risk of rope glazing that comes with the heat of such long descents.
The descent of Tras la Jayada is one of compounding amazement. Beginning in a fairly modest shaft, perhaps Lost Johns’ Centipede size, passing a lip and traversing a jutting out ‘nose’ of rock, you drop into immense, free hanging void, where only a Sofirn’s Turbo Mode may catch glimpses of the walls that you must believe still surround you. It feels like you’re outside. As you perch at one of the 20-something rebelays, gazing into the glimmer of the Raumer hanger you’ve decided to entrust your life to, you look out to the impenetrable darkness and your mind falls into disbelief that you could possibly be underground. It feels like you’re retreating off a nighttime ascent of a peak in the Dolomites. Hanging at the rebelays was my favourite part of the pitch’s ascent and descent. The scale of the sublime is astounding and it’s impossible to ignore the excited euphoria of how much potential amazement exists in the world. ‘Rope free!... Rope free!... Rope free!’ – the shouts just kept coming. At what I now know was about 100m down, I was sure that I must have been near the bottom, but each time I thought I’d caught sight of ground, it turned out to be just another rub point turned rebelay. Like the endless generation of a Mandelbrot set zoom, the pitch kept going.
Try a Little Harder, the rift connecting Tras La Jayada to Like and Subscribe. Photo copyright Bartek Biela and used with his kind permission.
We finally reached the bottom - a rocky cathedral with a pretty pond at the far end. We followed Chris through a short crawl and a climb up to the rift that had been pushed the year earlier, aptly named Try a Little Harder in rhyming reference to Tras La Jayada. This contained three rather tight squeezes that required the removal of my SRT kit, but I soon reached the 100m pitch discovered by last year’s expedition, but not descended, named ‘Like and Subscribe’, after Martin Hoff’s alleged OnlyFans presence.
Chris and Becka spent some time bolting the pitch while Viki and I started the work of enlarging the squeezes in preparation for any larger cavers should our potential connection become a trade route. Once bolted, we became the first party to descend to the bottom of the 100m pitch, dropping into a large chamber. To the left was the obvious way – a climb down that led to a large rift that went around a corner. It was spacious and alluring. Becka and I, however, felt attracted to a small hole in the wall. We crawled into it until I reached a downward sloping squeeze that, after removal of SRT kit (again), I could just about fit through. With a decent effort, I wriggled my way through it headfirst, descending sharply after popping out to a more friendly-sized crawl. Looking behind me, I realised that the squeeze I had just pushed through was entirely situated over a cobbly false floor with a metre drop below it.
Expecting the crawl to soon choke, we pushed forward to confirm its end, yet it kept going, getting gradually larger until it turned into a pristine phreatic tube, mudless and pretty, with curved indents dotting its walls. Excited by the discovery of virgin passage, Becka and I hurried on a few more metres until deciding we’d better turn back and inform the others. Once back, the squeeze feeling even tighter on the upward return, we found Chris attempting the free climb down into the obvious way, gardening a number of loose balconies before reaching the floor without fuss. The climb turned out to be a doddle, and we followed him through the obvious way, which soon degenerated into cold crawling. Here a howling draught made the already chilly air of Picos caves feel arctic. The cold was compounded by the fact that Becka and I had volunteered to survey as we went along, stopping every few metres to shoot lasers and draw lines, shivering at each station.
Shortly after making the connection between Tras la Jayada and 2/7. Left to right: Dan Rose, Viki Smyth, Becka Lawson. Photo copyright Chris Curry and used with his kind permission.
As we progressed we discovered networks of phreatic tubes that went off in various directions, but the way of the draught remained obvious. After a long time surveying, Viki and Chris rushed off into the distance, until Becka and I heard a faint scream. Not far beyond us, they had emerged into a chamber, where a large carbide inscription marked the furthest survey station that explorers in the early 2000s had reached when exploring upstream 2/7. We had made the connection!
As we basked in our shared euphoria, we divvied up our tasks. Becka and Chris volunteered to finish off the surveying of the connecting passage, while Viki and I would go off to begin bolting and rigging the short pitch that, from the 2000s trip reports, we knew led from where we were to the 2/7 streamway. We only had three bolts left over from Like and Subscribe, however, so although we tried to use naturals where possible, we could only get the first rebelay done.
Like and Subscribe. Photo by Bartek Biela and used with his kind permission.
After that we had a look around some of the phreatic tubes we had found, which led us to the previously discovered ‘Moonlight Rising’ sump, which Tony dived later on in the expedition. The phreatic tube that Becka and I discovered, meanwhile, was pushed to connect via a short pitch to the end of the main way on, bypassing much of the awkward cold crawling, and forming a potential shortcut. Following these discoveries, we prussiked up Like and Subscribe and Tras La Jayada, which felt like scaling, rather than descending, a mountain, and emerged on the surface around midnight, in states of tired excitement.
While eating the fridge cake I had left on the surface that morning, I smiled at what had been a very special day of caving. With access to the 2/7 streamway now so easy, who knows what will be found in coming years!
Dan Rose
Tras la Layada. Photo copyright Bartek Biela and used with his kind permission.
Dan Rose joined an expedition to the Picos de Europa in Spain and reports on the success of a previously elusive connection…
A melodious ‘mooo’ and the clinking sound of cowbells welcomed my waking to the world on an oppressively hot Spanish morning. The inevitable smile that follows the warmth of a cow’s innocence nestled discreetly on my face as I sat down for breakfast: toast, granola and a fried egg perfectly cooked by Carlotta, the big boss of the Refugio de Ario. Today was the big day when a team of four of us would connect the long-known, long-ignored entrance of Tras la Jayada to the main Pozu Jultayu, commonly referred to as 2/7, cave system.
This system, first explored in the 1980s, is one of the many caves in the Picos de Europa with streamways that reach their resurgence at Culiembro, 1500m below its highest entrance, giving it immense depth potential. Since then, countless expeditions have explored its large pitches and vast horizontal passages but the cave stayed at a depth of 811m for decades, until it was extended by 92m when Tony Seddon linked it via diving to the neighbouring C4 system to create a 903m deep system. Yet, in theory, another 550m of depth might lay undiscovered past the illusive Choke Egbert that multiple expeditions in the late 1990s and early 2000s attempted but failed to pass.
Tras la Jayada, meanwhile, is a 300m entrance pitch that was first descended by Spanish cavers in the 1970s, then by OUCC in the 1980s. Neither group had managed to find a way on, and the pitch was discarded as a mildly interesting curiosity. As the upstream end of 2/7 continued to be pushed in the 2000s, all the way up to the sump that we now know connects to C4, it became clear that Tras La Jayada lay within spitting distance of the upstream 2/7 end on the survey. Hence, last year, the pitch was descended once again, and this time, with LED lights, Mark Sims pushed a narrow rift, and found the way on to a new 100m pitch. Thus, on the 18th June, Becka Lawson, Chris Curry, Viki Smyth and I set off to make the connection, hoping to open a route into upstream 2/7 that would be far easier and shorter than the existing entrances, making further exploration more feasible.
After a 40 minute walk in the sweltering sun, we arrived at the magnificent mouth of Tras La Jayada, and I slotted into my increasingly disheveled oversuit, tattered from the expensively sharp rift known as the Ario Reality that I had lugged camping gear through the day before. Chris was the only one of us who had previously descended the pitch, having helped bolt it over the prior two days. He warned us of the terrifyingly loose rocks that some of the rebelays were perched near, and the stomach churning thought of dislodging a boulder above a fellow caver, listening to it reach terminal velocity through its multi hundred metre fall in a dicey spin of death, informed my slightly disgusted expression.
‘Oh, and try not to disturb the choughs’, we were told. Apparently nesting birds on the upper rebelays were known to kick rocks down onto unsuspecting speleologists in revenge for disturbing their natural habitat. Descending third, after Chris and Becka, I tentatively threaded my descender and allowed gravity to slowly pull me into darkness, inspecting every bit of wall for looseness, and remaining almost comically slow to curb the risk of rope glazing that comes with the heat of such long descents.
The descent of Tras la Jayada is one of compounding amazement. Beginning in a fairly modest shaft, perhaps Lost Johns’ Centipede size, passing a lip and traversing a jutting out ‘nose’ of rock, you drop into immense, free hanging void, where only a Sofirn’s Turbo Mode may catch glimpses of the walls that you must believe still surround you. It feels like you’re outside. As you perch at one of the 20-something rebelays, gazing into the glimmer of the Raumer hanger you’ve decided to entrust your life to, you look out to the impenetrable darkness and your mind falls into disbelief that you could possibly be underground. It feels like you’re retreating off a nighttime ascent of a peak in the Dolomites. Hanging at the rebelays was my favourite part of the pitch’s ascent and descent. The scale of the sublime is astounding and it’s impossible to ignore the excited euphoria of how much potential amazement exists in the world. ‘Rope free!... Rope free!... Rope free!’ – the shouts just kept coming. At what I now know was about 100m down, I was sure that I must have been near the bottom, but each time I thought I’d caught sight of ground, it turned out to be just another rub point turned rebelay. Like the endless generation of a Mandelbrot set zoom, the pitch kept going.
Try a Little Harder, the rift connecting Tras La Jayada to Like and Subscribe. Photo copyright Bartek Biela and used with his kind permission.
We finally reached the bottom - a rocky cathedral with a pretty pond at the far end. We followed Chris through a short crawl and a climb up to the rift that had been pushed the year earlier, aptly named Try a Little Harder in rhyming reference to Tras La Jayada. This contained three rather tight squeezes that required the removal of my SRT kit, but I soon reached the 100m pitch discovered by last year’s expedition, but not descended, named ‘Like and Subscribe’, after Martin Hoff’s alleged OnlyFans presence.
Chris and Becka spent some time bolting the pitch while Viki and I started the work of enlarging the squeezes in preparation for any larger cavers should our potential connection become a trade route. Once bolted, we became the first party to descend to the bottom of the 100m pitch, dropping into a large chamber. To the left was the obvious way – a climb down that led to a large rift that went around a corner. It was spacious and alluring. Becka and I, however, felt attracted to a small hole in the wall. We crawled into it until I reached a downward sloping squeeze that, after removal of SRT kit (again), I could just about fit through. With a decent effort, I wriggled my way through it headfirst, descending sharply after popping out to a more friendly-sized crawl. Looking behind me, I realised that the squeeze I had just pushed through was entirely situated over a cobbly false floor with a metre drop below it.
Expecting the crawl to soon choke, we pushed forward to confirm its end, yet it kept going, getting gradually larger until it turned into a pristine phreatic tube, mudless and pretty, with curved indents dotting its walls. Excited by the discovery of virgin passage, Becka and I hurried on a few more metres until deciding we’d better turn back and inform the others. Once back, the squeeze feeling even tighter on the upward return, we found Chris attempting the free climb down into the obvious way, gardening a number of loose balconies before reaching the floor without fuss. The climb turned out to be a doddle, and we followed him through the obvious way, which soon degenerated into cold crawling. Here a howling draught made the already chilly air of Picos caves feel arctic. The cold was compounded by the fact that Becka and I had volunteered to survey as we went along, stopping every few metres to shoot lasers and draw lines, shivering at each station.
Shortly after making the connection between Tras la Jayada and 2/7. Left to right: Dan Rose, Viki Smyth, Becka Lawson. Photo copyright Chris Curry and used with his kind permission.
As we progressed we discovered networks of phreatic tubes that went off in various directions, but the way of the draught remained obvious. After a long time surveying, Viki and Chris rushed off into the distance, until Becka and I heard a faint scream. Not far beyond us, they had emerged into a chamber, where a large carbide inscription marked the furthest survey station that explorers in the early 2000s had reached when exploring upstream 2/7. We had made the connection!
As we basked in our shared euphoria, we divvied up our tasks. Becka and Chris volunteered to finish off the surveying of the connecting passage, while Viki and I would go off to begin bolting and rigging the short pitch that, from the 2000s trip reports, we knew led from where we were to the 2/7 streamway. We only had three bolts left over from Like and Subscribe, however, so although we tried to use naturals where possible, we could only get the first rebelay done.
Like and Subscribe. Photo by Bartek Biela and used with his kind permission.
After that we had a look around some of the phreatic tubes we had found, which led us to the previously discovered ‘Moonlight Rising’ sump, which Tony dived later on in the expedition. The phreatic tube that Becka and I discovered, meanwhile, was pushed to connect via a short pitch to the end of the main way on, bypassing much of the awkward cold crawling, and forming a potential shortcut. Following these discoveries, we prussiked up Like and Subscribe and Tras La Jayada, which felt like scaling, rather than descending, a mountain, and emerged on the surface around midnight, in states of tired excitement.
While eating the fridge cake I had left on the surface that morning, I smiled at what had been a very special day of caving. With access to the 2/7 streamway now so easy, who knows what will be found in coming years!
Dan Rose
CATCHING UP WITH OLD FRIENDS
Bob and Renate Taylor. Photo by Dick Marsh, a UBSS member of the same generation.
Julian and Carol Walford recently had the pleasure of a visit from an old UBSS friend who they hadn’t seen for about 50 years as Carol relates …
Bob Taylor was a year ahead of me, so I guess he arrived in Bristol in 1967. He was already well established in UBSS when I turned up a year later and discovered UBSS at freshers. I recall turning up and asking the lads behind the table something along of lines of: “Do you accept women”? The answer was a positive yes and the rest is history.
Anyway, as far as I recall, Bob took me on my first caving trip, which was down GB. I loved it, though I committed the unpardonable sin of picking up a nice chunk of fallen stal at the end and carrying it all the way out. It probably weighed 2kg, so I was pretty determined. I found out later that you really weren’t supposed to do that. Julian turned up in 1969 and recalls that Bob took him caving a lot in his first term.
After uni, Bob moved to Cheltenham where he met a German au pair called Renate. He duly followed her back to Germany where they married and raised a family of three. They’ve been settled in Munich for years, and that’s where we last met up, in 1975 or 1976 when we drove overland to Turkey for a caving expedition. I can’t remember, but I imagine we stayed with him and Renate overnight. We kept in touch with Christmas cards for a few years, then lost touch.
We got news of him recently and sent an email which generated a quick response, and a suggestion of adding us to their itinerary when they came to the UK on holiday. We said yes, of course, though with some trepidation about having people who were effectively complete strangers to stay for a couple of nights.
We needn’t have worried. Bob is one of those wonderful people who can talk for Britain, so the conversation and catching-up romped along. Renata couldn’t always get a word in edgeways, but was also extremely good company.
We asked Bob if there was anything he particularly wanted to do while he was up in the Inverness area. Without hesitation he said the lock ladder at Fort Augustus which he’d visited with his parents at the age of seven. That was Day Two sorted. For the afternoon of Day One, I suggested dolphin watching on the basis that they probably couldn’t do much of that around land-locked Munich.
The dolphin watching was successful as it always is if you go to the right place – Channonry Point on the Moray Firth. If you turn up at half tide on a rising tide, viewing is pretty much guaranteed. The strong flow round the point sweeps fish in and the dolphins turn up right on time for a feast. I don’t know how they cope with tide tables, but they’re never late. We saw lots of them, and even a couple of large silver salmon being caught.
The Fort Augustus trip was also very successful – the lock ladder was still as large and impressive as it had seemed to seven-year-old Bob all those years ago.
We said a fond farewell on the morning of Day Three, with a promise not to wait 50 years before we next meet up. None of us can wait that long.
Carol Walford
Bob and Renate Taylor. Photo by Dick Marsh, a UBSS member of the same generation.
Julian and Carol Walford recently had the pleasure of a visit from an old UBSS friend who they hadn’t seen for about 50 years as Carol relates …
Bob Taylor was a year ahead of me, so I guess he arrived in Bristol in 1967. He was already well established in UBSS when I turned up a year later and discovered UBSS at freshers. I recall turning up and asking the lads behind the table something along of lines of: “Do you accept women”? The answer was a positive yes and the rest is history.
Anyway, as far as I recall, Bob took me on my first caving trip, which was down GB. I loved it, though I committed the unpardonable sin of picking up a nice chunk of fallen stal at the end and carrying it all the way out. It probably weighed 2kg, so I was pretty determined. I found out later that you really weren’t supposed to do that. Julian turned up in 1969 and recalls that Bob took him caving a lot in his first term.
After uni, Bob moved to Cheltenham where he met a German au pair called Renate. He duly followed her back to Germany where they married and raised a family of three. They’ve been settled in Munich for years, and that’s where we last met up, in 1975 or 1976 when we drove overland to Turkey for a caving expedition. I can’t remember, but I imagine we stayed with him and Renate overnight. We kept in touch with Christmas cards for a few years, then lost touch.
We got news of him recently and sent an email which generated a quick response, and a suggestion of adding us to their itinerary when they came to the UK on holiday. We said yes, of course, though with some trepidation about having people who were effectively complete strangers to stay for a couple of nights.
We needn’t have worried. Bob is one of those wonderful people who can talk for Britain, so the conversation and catching-up romped along. Renata couldn’t always get a word in edgeways, but was also extremely good company.
We asked Bob if there was anything he particularly wanted to do while he was up in the Inverness area. Without hesitation he said the lock ladder at Fort Augustus which he’d visited with his parents at the age of seven. That was Day Two sorted. For the afternoon of Day One, I suggested dolphin watching on the basis that they probably couldn’t do much of that around land-locked Munich.
The dolphin watching was successful as it always is if you go to the right place – Channonry Point on the Moray Firth. If you turn up at half tide on a rising tide, viewing is pretty much guaranteed. The strong flow round the point sweeps fish in and the dolphins turn up right on time for a feast. I don’t know how they cope with tide tables, but they’re never late. We saw lots of them, and even a couple of large silver salmon being caught.
The Fort Augustus trip was also very successful – the lock ladder was still as large and impressive as it had seemed to seven-year-old Bob all those years ago.
We said a fond farewell on the morning of Day Three, with a promise not to wait 50 years before we next meet up. None of us can wait that long.
Carol Walford
DEEP INTO THE VOID - A Belgian Thriller
The story so far ... An expedition from the Mendip University Caving Society (MUCS) or as they prefer to be known the Underworld's Best Bruisers (UBBs) is engaged in the hazardous exploration of Belgium's infamous Grotte du Fromage. Armed with a somewhat cavalier attitude to risk and a couple of hapless freshers, Prof Olivia Witty is now hoping to 'make cheese history' and possibly also discover the fate of a missing expedition ...
Chapter 3: Clear and Pungent Danger
Even by the warped standards of the Grotte du Fromage, the transition from cheese-encrusted scree to Parmesan sand was abrupt enough to halt conversation; even Fulbright shut up, though he kept one hand on his phone, ever the hopeful influencer.
The group shuffled into a great, yawning vault festering with slumping, gooey stalactites of extra-aged Camembert. The air buzzed with a sharp, ammonia tang that spoke of unregulated over-maturation, and before them, shining in the collective blaze of eight mismatched headlamps, stretched a stream the color of buttermilk that would fetch a fortune on the open market amongst health freaks searching for the next great dairy substitute for their over-priced and over-complicated coffees.
Suraya sniffed the air like a Basset Hound on the trail of a sausage roll and proclaimed the aroma to be perfect. Professor Olivia Witty thought she heard the far off ching of cash falling like golden rain into the gaping maw of her bank account. She had been right all along - there were fortunes to be made in this malodorous place …
Two wooden canoes with battered hulls and peeling paint rested incongruously on the grated Parmesan beach. Each was helpfully numbered – Canot Un and Canot Deux.
“Well, this isn’t ominous at all,” Lucille observed, eyeing the water and its peculiar transparency, in which shrimp the size of her big toe - each a gentle blue with minute red claws - skittered beneath the surface.
Olivia quietly mused that it was like the River Acheron - if Charon had a serious dairy - fetish then barked instructions: “Lifejackets on. Ignore any suspicious creamy lumps in the hulls. And no one, I repeat no one, is to lick anything.” She ushered them in with brisk, practiced despair. There weren’t enough risk assessments in the world to deal with this place, and if the SU ever caught wind of what their precious little darlings were up to, they could kiss goodbye to their re-affiliation faster than a starving undergrad could say brie.
Fulbright and Suraya squeezed into Canot Deux; Lucille, by calculated dithering, found herself with Olivia in Canot Un. They pushed off, paddling into the buttermilk stream.
The silence was cheesier than most silences at a freshers’ meet and greet. The gentle plonk of curd shrimps (‘neocaridina caesum’, Suraya whispered reverently) leaping out between paddle strokes punctuated their progress. Occasionally, Fulbright waved a GoPro at the shrimp, and the shrimp, showing a refreshing lack of regard for internet fame, simply backflipped away.
About 50 metres downstream, the water thickened. It was subtle at first—a yellowish cast and a faint cloudiness. Olivia sniffed. “Don’t drink it,” she ordered. “Not unless you’ve got a passion for experimental microbiology and a higher than average tolerance for gastrointestinal distress.”
By the time the Parmesan beaches were lost to the gloom, both canoes were sculling through something approximating concentrated whey, thick enough now for paddle strokes to make farting noises that echoed magnificently beneath the Brie arches overhead. Snotolite tendrils quivered as the group passed beneath them.
Suraya pursed her lips and talked into her phone: “Whey opacity: increasing. Scent: lactic, with a note of existential regret.”
Olivia thought that to mean that the entire cave smelled like the underbelly of a Parisian brothel.
Lucille, in her ever-present quest for wildlife, was the first to notice the eyes.
They were small at first - two curious yellow orbs bobbing near the surface, blinking owlishly. Then, as the canoes drifted into a shadowed bay, a snout surfaced, shambled toward them, then dipped away with a plop.
“A baby Gator de Fromage!” Lucille whispered, rapt. “Textbook habitat. White Stilton scales, Edam teeth, probably snappish when startled.”
“Aren’t we all?” Olivia muttered.
As if summoned by her muted enthusiasm, another surfaced nearby. This one, was larger, its jaws set with sharp teeth the colour and texture of cave-aged Cheddar. By the time the third and fourth turned up - grown adults, eyes the size of cider bottle caps - neither canoe was making jokes about wildlife documentaries.
The stream forked suddenly. Olivia and Suraya immediately called conflicting directions.
“Left!” Suraya insisted, seeing the painted arrow in Roquefort blue.
“Right!” Olivia retorted, “Ignore the vandalism!”
In the resulting confusion, the canoes separated, Canot Un veering right, Canot Deux left.
A moment later, a gator surged at Fullbright and Suraya’s unsteady craft. There was a scream, an ugly crunch, and lumps of curd exploded upward.
“Whey ingress!” Suraya screamed, producing a neoprene patch from her gear, yelling and cursing as she slapped it over the ragged hole in the hull and tried to hold it in place with her boot as lumpy yellow liquid sloshed around their feet.
Fullbright’s only contribution was not crying but when treated to the full force of Suraya’s disdain, he pulled his phone out and started filming again, muttering, “… under control now … #hastag heroism.”
The professor’s canoe - along with Lucille and any sense of security - was now long gone.
Silence.
The whey stream curled into a sluggish eddy beside a beach of pocked Castello and what, in the increasing dim light of their Fenixes, might have been fossilized footprints in the Brie.
The damaged canoe rasped onto the cheese-studded shingle.
Fullbright shook his head, sending drops of whey everywhere. “You okay?” He unwisely poked his phone into his companion’s face.
“Fucking peachy!” Suraya snapped, waving her compass in the air. The needle spun madly like a roulette wheel at closing time. “We’re lost!” She glared balefully at him in the dim glow. “The fucking Fenixes are going, too! Didn’t you charge the sodding things? They should have been good for whey longer than this.”
When Fullbright failed to laugh, she muttered darkly about the perils of bringing fucking freshers on expo.
The light jittered across the cave in seizure-inducing bursts making the underworld alternate between sickly yellow gloom and Stygian pitch. Around them eyes stared with an eerie light and from somewhere in the gloom a faint, sibilant voice could be heard to mutter, “Preciousss…”
Suraya, ever practical, rummaged for a snack and offered Fulbright a half-fused stroopwafel. They chewed in glum silence. Somewhere, deep in the darkness, something growled.
Fulbright tensed. “That… didn’t sound like a gator.”
The darkness obligingly growled again.
“Cheese ocelot?” Fullbright whispered into his phone. “#hashtag weird.”
Suraya scoffed. “Myth. Lucille says they were dreamed up by regional dairy festivals for credulous punters.”
The growl sounded again, closer, clearly taking exception to having its bona fides dissed.
Both torches flickered. For a moment, everything was shadow and moving, oozing things—eyes gleaming, a glimpse of velvet paws out of the corner of their eyes, a tail perhaps, gliding across the edge of reason …
For the first time, Fulbright turned off his phone and stuffed it into his oversuit. Ratings could go fuck themselves.
The cheese cave seemed to hold its breath, waiting. Just waiting.
“Run?” Suraya mouthed. “Or pretend to be French enough it leaves us alone?”
The stench of Brie intensified. And somewhere near the wailing streamway, something - real or not - hunted, and two lost students clutched at the forlorn hope that myths would stay that whey.
The story so far ... An expedition from the Mendip University Caving Society (MUCS) or as they prefer to be known the Underworld's Best Bruisers (UBBs) is engaged in the hazardous exploration of Belgium's infamous Grotte du Fromage. Armed with a somewhat cavalier attitude to risk and a couple of hapless freshers, Prof Olivia Witty is now hoping to 'make cheese history' and possibly also discover the fate of a missing expedition ...
Chapter 3: Clear and Pungent Danger
Even by the warped standards of the Grotte du Fromage, the transition from cheese-encrusted scree to Parmesan sand was abrupt enough to halt conversation; even Fulbright shut up, though he kept one hand on his phone, ever the hopeful influencer.
The group shuffled into a great, yawning vault festering with slumping, gooey stalactites of extra-aged Camembert. The air buzzed with a sharp, ammonia tang that spoke of unregulated over-maturation, and before them, shining in the collective blaze of eight mismatched headlamps, stretched a stream the color of buttermilk that would fetch a fortune on the open market amongst health freaks searching for the next great dairy substitute for their over-priced and over-complicated coffees.
Suraya sniffed the air like a Basset Hound on the trail of a sausage roll and proclaimed the aroma to be perfect. Professor Olivia Witty thought she heard the far off ching of cash falling like golden rain into the gaping maw of her bank account. She had been right all along - there were fortunes to be made in this malodorous place …
Two wooden canoes with battered hulls and peeling paint rested incongruously on the grated Parmesan beach. Each was helpfully numbered – Canot Un and Canot Deux.
“Well, this isn’t ominous at all,” Lucille observed, eyeing the water and its peculiar transparency, in which shrimp the size of her big toe - each a gentle blue with minute red claws - skittered beneath the surface.
Olivia quietly mused that it was like the River Acheron - if Charon had a serious dairy - fetish then barked instructions: “Lifejackets on. Ignore any suspicious creamy lumps in the hulls. And no one, I repeat no one, is to lick anything.” She ushered them in with brisk, practiced despair. There weren’t enough risk assessments in the world to deal with this place, and if the SU ever caught wind of what their precious little darlings were up to, they could kiss goodbye to their re-affiliation faster than a starving undergrad could say brie.
Fulbright and Suraya squeezed into Canot Deux; Lucille, by calculated dithering, found herself with Olivia in Canot Un. They pushed off, paddling into the buttermilk stream.
The silence was cheesier than most silences at a freshers’ meet and greet. The gentle plonk of curd shrimps (‘neocaridina caesum’, Suraya whispered reverently) leaping out between paddle strokes punctuated their progress. Occasionally, Fulbright waved a GoPro at the shrimp, and the shrimp, showing a refreshing lack of regard for internet fame, simply backflipped away.
About 50 metres downstream, the water thickened. It was subtle at first—a yellowish cast and a faint cloudiness. Olivia sniffed. “Don’t drink it,” she ordered. “Not unless you’ve got a passion for experimental microbiology and a higher than average tolerance for gastrointestinal distress.”
By the time the Parmesan beaches were lost to the gloom, both canoes were sculling through something approximating concentrated whey, thick enough now for paddle strokes to make farting noises that echoed magnificently beneath the Brie arches overhead. Snotolite tendrils quivered as the group passed beneath them.
Suraya pursed her lips and talked into her phone: “Whey opacity: increasing. Scent: lactic, with a note of existential regret.”
Olivia thought that to mean that the entire cave smelled like the underbelly of a Parisian brothel.
Lucille, in her ever-present quest for wildlife, was the first to notice the eyes.
They were small at first - two curious yellow orbs bobbing near the surface, blinking owlishly. Then, as the canoes drifted into a shadowed bay, a snout surfaced, shambled toward them, then dipped away with a plop.
“A baby Gator de Fromage!” Lucille whispered, rapt. “Textbook habitat. White Stilton scales, Edam teeth, probably snappish when startled.”
“Aren’t we all?” Olivia muttered.
As if summoned by her muted enthusiasm, another surfaced nearby. This one, was larger, its jaws set with sharp teeth the colour and texture of cave-aged Cheddar. By the time the third and fourth turned up - grown adults, eyes the size of cider bottle caps - neither canoe was making jokes about wildlife documentaries.
The stream forked suddenly. Olivia and Suraya immediately called conflicting directions.
“Left!” Suraya insisted, seeing the painted arrow in Roquefort blue.
“Right!” Olivia retorted, “Ignore the vandalism!”
In the resulting confusion, the canoes separated, Canot Un veering right, Canot Deux left.
A moment later, a gator surged at Fullbright and Suraya’s unsteady craft. There was a scream, an ugly crunch, and lumps of curd exploded upward.
“Whey ingress!” Suraya screamed, producing a neoprene patch from her gear, yelling and cursing as she slapped it over the ragged hole in the hull and tried to hold it in place with her boot as lumpy yellow liquid sloshed around their feet.
Fullbright’s only contribution was not crying but when treated to the full force of Suraya’s disdain, he pulled his phone out and started filming again, muttering, “… under control now … #hastag heroism.”
The professor’s canoe - along with Lucille and any sense of security - was now long gone.
Silence.
The whey stream curled into a sluggish eddy beside a beach of pocked Castello and what, in the increasing dim light of their Fenixes, might have been fossilized footprints in the Brie.
The damaged canoe rasped onto the cheese-studded shingle.
Fullbright shook his head, sending drops of whey everywhere. “You okay?” He unwisely poked his phone into his companion’s face.
“Fucking peachy!” Suraya snapped, waving her compass in the air. The needle spun madly like a roulette wheel at closing time. “We’re lost!” She glared balefully at him in the dim glow. “The fucking Fenixes are going, too! Didn’t you charge the sodding things? They should have been good for whey longer than this.”
When Fullbright failed to laugh, she muttered darkly about the perils of bringing fucking freshers on expo.
The light jittered across the cave in seizure-inducing bursts making the underworld alternate between sickly yellow gloom and Stygian pitch. Around them eyes stared with an eerie light and from somewhere in the gloom a faint, sibilant voice could be heard to mutter, “Preciousss…”
Suraya, ever practical, rummaged for a snack and offered Fulbright a half-fused stroopwafel. They chewed in glum silence. Somewhere, deep in the darkness, something growled.
Fulbright tensed. “That… didn’t sound like a gator.”
The darkness obligingly growled again.
“Cheese ocelot?” Fullbright whispered into his phone. “#hashtag weird.”
Suraya scoffed. “Myth. Lucille says they were dreamed up by regional dairy festivals for credulous punters.”
The growl sounded again, closer, clearly taking exception to having its bona fides dissed.
Both torches flickered. For a moment, everything was shadow and moving, oozing things—eyes gleaming, a glimpse of velvet paws out of the corner of their eyes, a tail perhaps, gliding across the edge of reason …
For the first time, Fulbright turned off his phone and stuffed it into his oversuit. Ratings could go fuck themselves.
The cheese cave seemed to hold its breath, waiting. Just waiting.
“Run?” Suraya mouthed. “Or pretend to be French enough it leaves us alone?”
The stench of Brie intensified. And somewhere near the wailing streamway, something - real or not - hunted, and two lost students clutched at the forlorn hope that myths would stay that whey.
PENGY CHILLED OUT TO THE END, DID YOU?
We haven't had a penguin before, so this one's for anyone who might be shivering up a mountain on expo at the moment! If anyone would like to nominate an animal, or even supply an image, do get in contact!
Thank you to everyone who took advantage of the link at the end or who reacted on WhatsApp (in response to some shameless begging)! We do love hearing from you all.
- We wiggly Highland worms liked this newsletter very much, so many exciting adventures abroad! I particularly appreciated Billy's bit about maintenance weekend, it felt like I was there. [Thanks from Kat Osei-Mensah and Jakob Annerdal]
- “award an annual Dick of the Year Prize at the annual dinner” – Oi!!! Stop taking my name in vain. [Dick Willis] [Editors: This could also be the annual Cock-Up of the Year Prize. Is that better, Dick?]
- Delightful newsletter, as always. Superb trip reports, and only one thing to say about the cheese-cavern story: Ewwwww! [Jan Walker]
- I read to the end! Nice work. [Stu Walker]
- I like cheese, but.... [Hans Friederich]
- Splendid reports, although enquiring minds do want to know what happened next after Elaine accidentally skied off the small (how small?) cliff. Unboxing is definitely the happening thing for fancy skincare products and also stationery porn! Yay for the return of the Belgians (cue the obligatory “is it because I iz …?”) And I may have tittered at the account of the locked gate incident in Slovenia. I also recall being rather bemused by AB (Dr)’s sat nav throwing out directions to Cheshire in Italian! [Sharon Wheeler and the equally bemused FT Bear]
- Expo leader: "Hey fresher, where would you like to go surveying this summer?" Fresher: "Don't know..." Expo Leader: Cool! Ahh, that's what we like to hear. You're all signed up now!" [Dan Runcan]
- And via WhatsApp ...
PS: Paul Savage, you owe us a trip report for Planinska Jama!
Brrr ... Pengy, lovely to be on Expo with you. Pass me a cold beer, please!
THE END
We haven't had a penguin before, so this one's for anyone who might be shivering up a mountain on expo at the moment! If anyone would like to nominate an animal, or even supply an image, do get in contact!
Thank you to everyone who took advantage of the link at the end or who reacted on WhatsApp (in response to some shameless begging)! We do love hearing from you all.
- We wiggly Highland worms liked this newsletter very much, so many exciting adventures abroad! I particularly appreciated Billy's bit about maintenance weekend, it felt like I was there. [Thanks from Kat Osei-Mensah and Jakob Annerdal]
- “award an annual Dick of the Year Prize at the annual dinner” – Oi!!! Stop taking my name in vain. [Dick Willis] [Editors: This could also be the annual Cock-Up of the Year Prize. Is that better, Dick?]
- Delightful newsletter, as always. Superb trip reports, and only one thing to say about the cheese-cavern story: Ewwwww! [Jan Walker]
- I read to the end! Nice work. [Stu Walker]
- I like cheese, but.... [Hans Friederich]
- Splendid reports, although enquiring minds do want to know what happened next after Elaine accidentally skied off the small (how small?) cliff. Unboxing is definitely the happening thing for fancy skincare products and also stationery porn! Yay for the return of the Belgians (cue the obligatory “is it because I iz …?”) And I may have tittered at the account of the locked gate incident in Slovenia. I also recall being rather bemused by AB (Dr)’s sat nav throwing out directions to Cheshire in Italian! [Sharon Wheeler and the equally bemused FT Bear]
- Expo leader: "Hey fresher, where would you like to go surveying this summer?" Fresher: "Don't know..." Expo Leader: Cool! Ahh, that's what we like to hear. You're all signed up now!" [Dan Runcan]
- And via WhatsApp ...
PS: Paul Savage, you owe us a trip report for Planinska Jama!
Brrr ... Pengy, lovely to be on Expo with you. Pass me a cold beer, please!
THE END