David Cooke, Lawrence Wilson, Paul James, Peter Sanders, Richard Nurse, Yvette Jordan, (Danny Burnett)

Parked at the triangle at 19:30, got changed and walked the 5 minutes to the cave. A lot of trees have been felled a number of which are in the stream way and swallet, might need clearing to ease the winter water flow?

It was lovely to get into the cool of the cave, the chimney was totally dry despite a fair stream flowing on the surface. The right angle bend and squeeze at the bottom proved too much for Danny so he headed out. After a bit of a wait due to the restricted nature of the pitch head, the ladder was rigged and down we went. Following the increasingly large passage we turned right at the totally dry Showerbath, down through some vertical squeezes to the balcony above the impressively large Great Chamber. After rigging a lifeline we climbed directly down the dry waterfall. A short diversion was made to have a look down the (actually) Wet Way.

A number of routes where taken to Christmas Crawl then we traversed (easily) over the top of Swing Pitch into the bottom end of August Hole, here we followed the small stream to the bottom of the dry Wet Chimney, up, through a squeeze and the Water Chamber and we were back of the bottom of the 5m ladder. I ran back down to Great Chamber to retrieve our lifeline then back out to the surface, finally emerged at 22:40.

A wonderful cave with lots of different challenges along the way. Now I know the way a bit better I’m very keen to get a bit further and see it with some more water going down. Sadly too late for a debrief.

— Lawrence