Caving in Derbyshire

We were supposed to be going to Yorkshire for the weekend, but the forecast was dire and Penyghent is not the sort of place you want to be when it's raining (plus there's a 1000ft crawl, which makes my knees cringe just thinking about it!).

We wimped out at the last minute at around 6:20 on Friday evening, phoned Jim and Keith to let them know we weren't going, I went to the shop for lashings of chocolate and we settled down in front of the tele for the evening.

Saturday saw us heading for Hitch 'n' Hike to buy me a new Meander suit because my old one was disintegrating rapidly. We then continued via Oxlow Farm - to collect part of Pete Collins' car that he carelessly left behind the previous weekend - to Perryfoot Farm and had a trip into P8. Several other people had the same idea, including Paul Cooper and his friend, Quentin, but we were all in twos and nicely spread out so it was very pleasant. Water levels were surprisingly low with the upstream sump completely dry and noticeably silty at the bottom, certainly compared to other years when I've seen it dry. The downstream sump was even siltier than ever with a large pool leading up to the sump proper.

Back on the surface, we headed for Outside at Calver Crossroads and had sausage and chips (Pat, if you're reading this, it was really lovely!!!!). I had a mug of tea... well almost... I managed to upend it all over the table and had to use a huge bundle of serviettes to mop it up.

Sunday morning and we'd agreed the night before to go to Knotlow Caverns (part mine) for a short trip. The weather, which had stayed dry as forecast the day before, was looking a bit more unsettled, but it was still dry. The first two pitches are straight forward and we then dropped down steeply to the head of the Waterfall Pitch. This is the engine chamber below Knotlow Engine Shaft and you can see big indents in the wall where huge timbers would have supported all sorts of gubbins (technical term!) for hauling lead out of the mine.

To get to a point where you can drop into the chamber without getting soaked - the stream comes out of a very narrow bedding (an inch or two) below the pitch head - you have to traverse a comparatively blank wall, hanging on the traverse line. In the past this has caused me all sorts of problems to the extent that I've had to back off it, unable to get across, but I think I've got it cracked now as I didn't even have to use my footloop.

I gather from various sources that those who went to Yorkshire didn't get far in Penyghent and if they went, they didn't get far in Hunt Pot either!! Thank you Metcheck, you saved us a lot of travelling for nothing.