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

Following the sad news that Jackie Dors had died earlier in the day we rapidly changed from the planned Hunters Hole trip to Sludge Pit.

After arriving at the Wessex and changing we walked across to the cave and abseiled down into Boulder Chamber before negotiating the squeeze at the top of Fault Passage to get into the Shale Series. We soon got to the site of our first breakthrough that was a lot less muddy than when first passed.

Following Tributary Passage we arrived at the crossroads and opted for the challenging Four Pots Rift which was negotiated with only a little swearing. A bolt was replaced for the newly installed traverse line by Will and Andy.

A little time was spent in “Dig Chamber” looking at the old and new dig sites before we moved off towards Triple Arch where we went through our second breakthrough “Link Passage”, although snug I found it fine, even with a harness on. At the other end Sean, Will and Myself chose to descend Link Pitch whilst the rest continued along Aragonite Rift.

We all met up at the bottom of the rope before climbing out.

This is a great round trip that’s full of challenges and extremely varied, a wonderful test piece, also nice to have a non digging trip down Sludge.

Obviously the Hunters was closed as, it turned out, was the Queen Vic and the White Hart, thankfully the Riverside was welcoming and glad to see us as we where the only customers at 22:15!

— Lawrence Wilson 23/11/2023