Robinson’s Pot – 7th May 2016
Andy G, Tim K, Josh E, Jason
It was a beautiful day on Darnbrook Fell. Normal people were gawping at the view or on their bikes, but we kitted up and made ourselves known to the farmress (is this a word? ‘Farmer’s wife’ sounds a bit un-PC). “It’s down there”, she said pointing to a manhole (tsk, un-PC again) and shaking her head.
Andy and Tim rigged up a fancy life-lining system despite which we were soon down the short pitch. A short bit of crawling leads to 1862 chamber, named after a fine bit of graffiti carved into the wall with a name and that date. I’d printed out a nice sketch map of the cave (thanks to Cave Mapper) which I was glad of, as none of us had visited the cave before. This showed the way on was a crawl low on the left, leading to a sequence of crawly passages. At one point, you have to ignore the obvious well-worn passage straight on in favour of another low crawl on the left. Apart from that, the way is fairly obvious, though there are a number of distracting inlets.
The sketch shows ‘Dry Mud Tube’ which is exactly what it is – muddy but comfortable enough. This ends with a little drop into the ‘Low Wet Crawl’ – again, exactly that. Less comfortable, but with today’s low water levels, easily navigated. This pops out into McColl’s Rift, a high gallery which was a welcome relief after the grovelling. Going left starts promisingly, then abruptly stops. The way on is to the right, with the high rift giving way to smaller but easy-going passage. Andy located the start of Crossover Passage (another low crawl on the left) while Tim explored the rest of the rift before joining us.
Crossover soon finishes at what Northern Caves describes as a 3m pitch into the main stream passage. It’s even less than that, but on Chris’s advice we rigged a whole ladder for the return – the stream undercuts the pitch, so the senior members of the party might have found the climb up a little too challenging!
Where should we go first? Downstream is a fine passage which lowers towards the water. This must be the sump – but no, I crawled along in gravel to the left to a low chamber, which was clearly the end. But no, Andy had other ideas and found another low crawl – and a dive line. Sump located! But wait, didn’t the map show another sump off to the left? Sure enough, yet more low wet crawling led to another sump pool. Lovely.
Fully sated with the downstream end, we returned to the main passage to go upstream. This was a very fine passage, high and fairly narrow with lots of flowstone, gour pools and mud formations. At the end the roof lowers, the water deepens and clearly the upstream sump is close. The only part of the cave we hadn’t visited was the Worm Series, reached from the sump chamber. Nobody fancied this – it wasn’t on the map but it was clearly not called after small, wriggly things for nothing.
Still, while we’re here, we might as well look at the start, so we waded through the duck and into the sump pool (bracing!), but no sign of a passage off. Good, we can be off then! Oh wait – there it is, an uninviting muddy tube with water lapping its entrance… Well, I’ll just have a quick look. After wallowing a few feet, I realised Josh was following me, so I carried on rather than look a complete wuss. Then – glory be – a chamber! Small, but at least we could all stand up. Ok, have we done it now? Tim looked down an even lower, muddier crawl going off. Did I think it went anywhere? To be honest, I didn’t much care, so suggested that Tim have a look if he was curious!
He did, and we soon got a call “there’s a chamber”. Really? Ok then, let us imitate the actions of a worm again…. In fact, it was not just a chamber but a substantial cross passage. Suddenly we were glad we’d made the effort. Tim went left, Josh and I went right, he took the main passage, I checked out yet another unpromising muddy tube which went, and went, eventually ending in a muddy, bouldery ramp.
Meeting up again, we concluded that we’d pretty much been everywhere (which was confirmed by consulting the full survey later), so headed uneventfully for the exit – and it was still a beautiful day on Darnbrook Fell.
We were underground only a little over 3 hours and Robinsons’ probably only rates about ‘Calcite’ on the caving Mohs scale, but there was plenty of variety and plenty of fun, and you can’t say fairer than that!