Lawrence Wilson, Will Puddy, Yvette Mayo

In the midst of storm Noa we met in Burrington Coombe got changed quickly and disappeared underground and 19:45.

Neither Will or Yvette had been down before and decided to explore the lower series. With a bit of searching we found the bypass squeeze and struggled through it, picking up a “Christmas Capers” answer card from the far side. The next two squeezes where swiftly dispatched and we arrived at the streamway that unsurprisingly was impressively high.

Following the water downstream we had a quick look at the distinctly unappealing sump before turning around and going upstream, past our entry point, and an awkward crawl into impressive streamway passage.

A slightly awkward climb up found us on a ledge with no obvious way on, luckily I remembered this from last time and located the tight “horse collar” squeeze through stal, we then arrived at the bottom of a moonmilk covered rift that was climbed to a horizontal roof tube, soon afterwards we arrived in the beautiful Hanging Gardens that we admired and discussed for five minutes.

Leaving the Hanging Gardens at 20:45 we made our way out via our inward route finally exiting the cave at 21:15. A pleasant debrief was enjoyed at the Woodborough.

This is a fantastic cave and the lower series is possibly the most full on trip on Mendip that doesn’t require an access fee, key or tackle (discuss!)

— Lawrence Wilson 13/04/2023