Roger Kirk
Bob C, Scott, Tom C, Jason
The trip started with a bit of confusion – I’d said to meet at the Ribblehead Car Park, thinking of the lay-by on the road, unaware of the proper car park down a track, almost underneath the arches.
When we were finally assembled, we wandered over the moor, led by my Garmin – finding the cave without its assistance in the dark would have been a struggle. Navigation is straightforward, you just follow the water through the cave, pretty much all crawling at first.
After a while you have to lower yourself into a low crawl half-full of water (brrr!). Turning right out of this leads you – oh! back where you started… I tried again (double-brrr!), this time noticing the unattractive snug continuation to the left (“The Tube”). As the water was not too high, I found this ok in my right side, and after a couple of metres you get to a slightly roomier passage. Tom found this awkward, and after briefly wallowing without the benefit of neoprene, decided to back out.
The cave does improve a lot after this (sorry, Tom!) – though never spacious, there are some nice meanders and traverses and some attractive flowstone formations. Arriving at the middle entrance, Scott popped out to see if Tom was around. Surely he’d have gone back to the warmth of the car? But no, he was nearby the lower entrance, so he came back in to have a look upstream, while the remaining three continued following the water.
The next section is reasonably short, which was good as it consisted mainly of crawling in water (which hadn’t got any warmer). Meanwhile, Tom had exited and hopped overground to the third entrance, and his light at the end of the tunnel of was a welcome sight.
One more section, to entrance 4 – shall we do it? Might as well tick all the boxes… It was only 20 or so metres, but it was more crawling, in cold water on sharp rocks, a test of the knee pads. Mercifully soon over, and it wasn’t long before we were sat in the Railway Inn, as near as we could get to the fire. Joy!
This is actually a nice cave, short but with plenty of interest, but probably best done in the Summer, and not forgetting the neoprene!