Adam Fletcher, Andy Sparrow, David Cooke, Judi Durber, Lawrence Wilson, Peter Sanders, Rachel Sparrow (surface support)

At 7:15, the appointed hour, caving royalty from Cheddar swept into Bristol, well, “Saafmeed” anyway and more importantly, Pen Park Rd.

Having located a suitable parking place for their limousine, the occupants along with the other Cheddar caving serfs, followed our anointed leader Cookie, across the road and disappeared into the bushes in the park opposite. We were relieved to be part of a mixed sex group getting changed into our caving kit in that quiet scrub, concerned that the local Constabulary may have otherwise thought they had stumbled on a “cottaging” group …

Our esteemed leader in true James Herriot style, inserted his arm into the small hole in the entrance gate right up to his shoulder and began to fiddle around with the various keys, desperately trying to match the two locks that secured the gate. After what seemed an age or at least two good cigarette smokes later, the gate was magically undone, and the intrepid crew began to descend the concrete shaft inside.

A short climb of two metres into the detritus below, followed by a feet first descent through a small aperture lead us downhill amongst the rock, using an interesting combination of short fixed ladders, (just step left at the end of each section) and into the mud and debris, in the passage below where fortunately “Ernie” or the “Corona” man had been before and kindly deposited some plastic crates into the floor, making our progress significantly drier and a lot less muddy than it would otherwise have been.

We popped out into a small Aven, prettily decorated with a band of large crystals and unusual geological cave features which we looked at and photographed The quantity and quality of the crystal is really surprising but many of the deep seems are overlaid by mud and where they have delaminated from the seam created crystal arches or shelves.

Andy, who had descended first and had 10 minutes to push on ahead in the direction of the pitch head, suggested that he had concerns about the air quality. We all agreed that it wasn’t very nice but decided to push on anyway and the passage of several bodies had the effect of moving enough air around, dispersing the CO2 to improve its quality from ‘horrid’ to just about ‘OK’ … A few minutes of easy squeezes and passage lead us to the main chamber and pitch head where the air could best be described as “tolerable”…

Two ladders and tethers were quickly deployed along with a lifeline, enabling Lawrence to descend first to the shelf 10+ mts below. Here a short roped and cows tail traverse enabled us to walk a quarter of the way around the rim to a landing overlooking the chamber and water below. Despite all of us using headlights on full beam we could just about see the water 20M below us but the light just could not penetrate the surface of the water … To overcome this the odd pebble was lobbed in which resulted in a resounding splash but little could be seen. It was almost as if there was a mist above the water or was it just a CO2 cloud …!

Concerned that the air quality was still sub-optimum we decided to make a hasty exit rather than investigate some uninviting looking passages on the ledge. We climbed back up the ladder and judging by all the huffing and puffing at the top of the climb our concerns over CO2 levels, either real or imagined, were I suspect in reality a little of both …

A short time later we were out of Pen Park Hole breathing what passes for clean air in ‘Brizzle’, whilst poor Cookie again wrestled with the damn locks on the gate. Quite why the locks are so complex is a mystery …

Having changed from our muddy kit, returned the keys, the intrepid team headed for a local pub for sustenance and to ‘put the world to rights’ … Having wanted to visit Pen Park Hole for many years I was a little disappointed that it didn’t live up to my expectations … The geology and features are unusual and very interesting but it would really benefit from being bolted and rigged properly for SRT access so that it’s possible to quickly descend to the water at the bottom of the main chamber and investigate the passages beyond … However that’s probably more than could be reasonably achieved in an evening and the CO2 levels may well have been significantly worse at lower levels …So a return trip with gas monitor, buoyancy aids and an inflatable boat beckons …

A big “Thank You” to Lawrence and Cookie for organising and leading another great ‘Wednesday Nights FUN’ with the Cheddar crew …!

Happy caving, Adam

— Adam Fletcher 28/03/2023