Ray, Tom, Maz, Scott, Yolanda.
On Wednesday we went on a trip to my favourite cave – Notts 2. As we’d all done Notts 2 several times before, we decided to take a different route and leave the main streamway to explore Inlet 5. As the designated trip leader, it was apparently my duty to be at the front, slithering on my belly through the mud. To me, after a couple of minutes of slithering it looked as though we’d reached the end of Inlet 5 – the tunnel seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and muddier and muddier. However, I could hear some mutterings from behind me – something about how I hadn’t spent enough time crawling through mud to really know that there was nothing at the end of the tunnel – so I carried on slithering out of pride. To my considerable surprise, it turned out that there was something at the end of the tunnel – a little chamber with some very pretty calcite formations.
The next hour continued along similar lines. We’d wriggle through the tunnels for a few minutes at a time before stumbling upon chambers with various beautiful formations. We’d spend a couple of minutes getting our breath back and admiring the pretties before slithering further and further into the cave. Eventually, we came across a huge chamber with various different tunnels splintering off from it. We hoped that one of the tunnels would lead us back to the main streamway, but there had been a rockfall. The only way out was to lead everyone in crawling back through a load of muddy tunnels. Everyone was caked from head to toe in mud by the time we emerged. They were sorry they’d ever mocked my commitment to caving…
Having said that, they can’t have been too put off because there’s talk of trying to dig through from the huge chamber to the main streamway, so we may yet be able to turn Inlet 5 into a satisfying little round trip rather than a long muddy crawl. Watch this space!
