Andy Sparrow, David Cooke, Lawrence Wilson, Peter Sanders, Seán Tidey, Will Puddy

On Wednesday 26th Andy, Lawrence, Cookie, Will, Peter and I met at the Wessex with the intention of having a fairly leisurely exploration of the upper sections of the cavern, no ropes / SRT involved. Whilst walking out of the carpark Andy suggested going to have a look at the ‘Technical Masterpiece’. This sounded interesting. Cookie had tried to get there a couple of times with no luck, Andy I don’t think had been down it and the rest of us had only seen it on the survey and didn’t have a scooby doo! When Andy suggested we enter the cave in age / size order with him staying firmly at the back the alarm bells should have started ringing, but to me this made the ‘Technical Masterpiece’ sound like a short, tight, tricky feature that we would each have a go at and some may make it and others not, how wrong I was! The start of the trip was the standard Eastwater start following the string down to its end. From there instead of taking the 380 foot way as may normally would we followed Cookie down towards a sideways squeeze. Cookie had a go but tagged out and I went in first, this put me in the front of the line! We continued through this with the floor changing from gravel to concrete! We followed the concrete floor gently down until we reached the top of Mortons Pot, a short pot with some cable in the ceiling ( a remnant of the dig) which led us to an impressive, vertical dig, somewhere in the region of 30ft deep with a lot of wood and scaffolding on one side. There was a double rope hanging down the pitch (from a rusty pully) but integrity of this was unknow. I climbed down, what was a really tricky climb first, at the bottom the passage turns into a crawl and heads off “under” the scaffolding side. I waited for Cookie to come next but 2/3 of the way down the climb he decided it was too tricky of a freeclimb and started heading back up, his parting words were “that’s the Technical Masterpiece through there” and “that’s 3 times I’ve tried to get there now”. Peter made it down next and due to the lack of space I started through the fairly easy crawl into the TM. After a short headfirst belly crawl with a 90deg bend I came to a small pot. After 5 minutes of trying, I still couldn’t get into it feet first so I made Peter back up, to the bottom of the pitch and tried the whole thing again feet first that got me in easily. Peter quickly followed with Will behind. This was the start of the TM! With still no idea of how long or hard it was and whether anyone was behind Will I started heading down with Peter and Will following. The passage was a tight rift downhill stream passage with a small pot you could stand in every few meters. The main feature of the passage was there was no single technique / position you could use to get down. One moment you were right up by ceiling, on your side, 7ft above the floor at a 45-degree head down angle, the next you were down in the trickle of water on the floor going feet first dropping into a slightly bigger (two person pot). Every squeeze was different and required lots of thinking, trial and error and effort! Will, Peter and I continued down for a while until Will made the best decision of the evening and decided to turn back. This left just Peter and I to continue. Why did we continue when it was clear it was not the short, tight, tricky feature I thought it was in the beginning? I was still under the impression that the passage came out somewhere we knew and could get back to the surface from. A short look at the survey would have shown this was an error. The passage also had lots of 90 degree turns and there was always the thought that the end was just round the next corner. Finally, the challenge of seeing the next and the next and the next squeeze made me want to keep going and get through them. I don’t know if this was the same for Peter or whether he was blindly, loyal, following his club chairman assuming (wrongly) he knew what he was doing! After perhaps 45mins of this, during which we descended a long way, I eventually got to a squeeze that no matter how I tried it I could not pass. This was actually the best thing that could happen to us! If we had made it though we would have ended up in the Westend Series somewhere with the only way out involving large vertical pitches. After a bit of discussion between Peter and I, it was decided there was nothing for it but to turn around and head back up! By this time, I think our distinguished colleagues had made it out and decided the best course of action was to head to the pub! Petter and I continued, very slowly to head back up the TM the way we had come. I found this much more physically tiring than the way down (as we were going against gravity) but knowing we had done it all before and taking a slow and steady approach with plenty of mutual encouragement and help we progressed back to the bottom of the dig / pitch at 12am on the dot. The relief I felt when I realised we had made it to the bottom of the pitch and were out of the TM was substantial!! Peter and I, after catching our breath started the climb up (taking full advantage of the rope) and followed the concrete floor back to the squeeze where we retrieved our belts and found the guide rope to the entrance. We emerged at 12:30am precisely to see a relieved Andy, Lawrence, Will and Cookie. Cave rescue had been called out at around 12.10am but Lawrence quickly stood them down before anyone arrived as well as informing wives we were out and safe. We staggered back to the Wessex whilst explaining what had happened, where we had been and what the TM consisted of. Our energy levels were recharged with a Snickers from the Wessex and at about 1am we started making our individual ways home. I don’t know about Peter but I woke up on Thursday covered in bruises and just a little stiff! Although a very hard trip, with a bit of jeopardy thrown in, after a couple of days reflection I would defiantly class it as type 2 fun and something to tick of the caving bucket list. Peter was an absolute machine throughout and thanks to the rest of the team for dealing with everything on the surface.

— Seán Tidey 7/07/2024