Location Derbyshire, Weekend 6-8th June
Attending: Jane, Rob, Helen, Gordon and me.
The purpose of the trip was to access 3 nominally easy caves, to confirm their suitablility for novice trips next time we had some new club members. The idea was to visit the cave/mine Jug Holes, walkover to Brightfleet, and then en route back to the TSG stick our heads in Ashford Black Marble Mine.
Problem 0: Finding Jug holes. The B road is now closed and barriered, a friendly local directed us to the new road that has been built (and consequently isn't on any of our maps) that loops around the back so that we can make the turning up to Jug Holes wood. (Turn right at Sainsburys, then left and you'll arrive at the blockade on the same side as the turning you want to make).
Kitted up and off we go, time of departure 12:00.
Problem 1 finding Jug holes. "Obvious large cave in woods". The first obvious large depression you come to does not have any caves in it. It has a few short scrotty holes. Turning left out of this you suddenly see when the guide siad cave it meant cave, with ceiling, not just a large depression - in fact it's a large arch. The slippery descent leads to a tricky 5' climb down. It's best to walk around the cave and approach from the other side down the easy slope. various small cracks between the boulders are quite tight and don't get you down to the easy entrance. Believe me it's much better to walk round.
Problem 2 finding Jug holes: the mine levels. The enterance furthest from the daylight, is mine workings. We spent a while exporing these going round in circles at different levels even though they are quite short. There is a nicely preserved wooden archway.
It's now gone 13:00 and we finally start entering Jug Holes Upper series. The initial descent down a tube well stacked with deads is not tricky, but any novices will require a rope. A couple of boulders later and we arrived in a small chamber.
Delay 3 : Routefinding. We didn't know that the quick route through Jugholes is to the left and over some boulders. The small hole on the right drops through a slight squeeze which helen wisely declined, twists and turns and eventually steps up through some boulders into the main cavern. There are other ways "on" none of which eventually went anywhere although it was nice to find much water roughened rock in an otherwise mined area. It wasn't quite so nice to lie on being quite rough.
Delay 4. Gardening. IF you're going to deface a cave by spraypainting
yellow arrows in the tricky bits, when you've finished doing so and runout of paint
take your damm spray can home with you! This also includes people who are going to routefind with glowsticks. When you are returning pick them up afterwards. Thanks to Gordon for carrying this out.
Delay 5: Send fox thrutching. The impressive main chamber was finally gained. Rattle down to the end. Climb up the tube. Surprised that no-body else in the group felt like pushing it, I went on from the top of the tube under the flowstone. This was easy and it was fun to see flowstone overhead. The crawl quickly opens to a trench and then a climb down to a liquid mud pit which presumably drains back into the streamway There was a flow of water foming off a stal, but no indications that it was washing the mud away. Anyone fancy a dig?
Delay 6: Find the way back out! A quick detour to "Sugar icing grotto" - "They call this a grotto?!" and we met Helen who'd found the correct way on without the squeeze. While we were poking our heads inot holes (the main stream disappears into pebbles very quickly it's not worth lying in it to find this out) Helen had a look at the end of the cave, but when we re-grouped we weren't quite sure which pile of boulders to climb past! Time for a breather. The climb back up the pitch isn't difficult but again a rope will be required for anyone who isn't comfortable turning around in midspace.
Back into 'daylight' under the arch and just the Lower Series to go, the through trip to the Adit shouldn't be more than 20mins. How long can we take to do this? Answer another couple of hours!
The initial descent again would require a handline for novices, although I'm not sure if there's a suitable belay, but a couple fo easy slithers soon see you to the first big chamber.
Delay 7: routefinding again. The survey shows that the second chamber is connected to the first though a short link. Walking accidently past this without noticing it (it's behind you) we descended down an unsurvey short mining link. That leads to other mining leads, junctions, small chambers, climbs up, and slippery descents down. - "will we get back up that" " don't need to we're going out the Adit" Confidence is a wonderful thing. As is the ability to look at a survey and force the cave to fit... "Maybe those last few chambers really were one big chamber as marked here but with lots of boulders stopping us realising"
Eventually we reached the end of the mine workings. No Adit. There was a deep hole with an impressive brace across it some depth below. The return was uneventuful, the slippery climbs not being too tricky to reverse. Back in the sunlight we wonder if the Adit might be down the hill, maybe we can reverse the cave?
Delay 8: finding the Adit. It is quite obvious, a walk down the hill past the remains of an engine? house. the corregated steel tube is painful to slide down! Large obvious walking passages connect the chambers together as shown exactly on the survey. When you reach the first large chamber the connection is not so obvious. It was now 17:30 and with a callout scheduled for 6 Gordon went ot let Helen know we were safe and "only a few minutes" away. We hunted for the ellusive connection, before resorting to the survey and searching left rather than right. My slightly uncontrolled slither
landed on the ledge I was intending to follow, slip through the crack and what looked like a continuation of the old chamber, was in fact the chamber we were searching for! The exit was only a climb away. If you don't explote the mine workings this through trip really woun't take longer than 20-30 mins, but there is quite a bit of somewhat more arduous mine to explore if you've the desire.
We made it back to the car, carrying about 3kg of mud, for 18:10 and I'll spare Helen's
by only reporting that the AA was uneeded and our callout was unconcerned that we had spent 6 hours in half a mile of Grade II cave.
We didn't even look for Brightfleet, and found Ashford Black Marble mine looked interesting but was gated.
