A Grand Day Out - Goatchurch and Sidcot

[Duncan S]

Start em young
This was my third trip with 8 year old Charlie and his Dad Matt.
My first trip with them was to Swildons Sump 1, and the second trip was Bath to Rods through trip.
I think it's fair to say that today's foray into Goatchurch and Sidcot was going to be relatively easy for Charlie, but less so for his deep chested Dad
And it was the perfect test drive for my new caving camera, a bright red Olympus Tough TG-4.

Here's Matt and Charlie emerging from Sidcot after completing two decent caving trips.

We descended into the depths of Goatchurch. Here's Matt and Charlie climbing down the Coffin Lid.

The Drainpipe was as entertaining as ever - as you can see, Charlie was designated bag carrier

Charlie and I got the furthest I've ever been into the Dexion Extensions. My poor navigation resulted in me trying to dig through a gravel bank into a ridiculously tight squeeze, which having re-read Mendip Undergound wasn't the main way on. I chickened out and we retraced our steps.
Here's Charlie climbing back up the Coffin Lid.

Charlie and I slipped through a tiny crack in the Boulder Maze giving us a good chuckle while we watched Matt trying to follow us. He eventually gave up and found an alternative route.

We exited Goatchurch by climbing the Coal Chute. Charlie was top-roped and did an amazing job of getting up considering his reach is woefully inadequate for a climb like this.

Over in Sidcot, I was convinced Matt was going to struggle with the Tai Press; but he breezed it.

The infamous Sidcot Ducks gave us a warm welcome.

But the Lobster Pot had the last laugh; I wriggled and squirmed and just managed to escape its clutches.
This photo shows the farthest point Matt managed to reach unaided. I dropped back into the Lobster Pot allowing Matt to stand on my back which did the trick, and I re-exited far more easily with Matt's generous assistance from above.

A decidedly sporting trip!
Matt pushed himself to his limits and I've got a fresh set of bruises. 8 year old Charlie thought it was huge fun.
The new camera isn't perfect, but I can't complain about the results; the TG-4 and I are going to get on just fine

 

[rhychydwr1]

Did Matt go through the Drainpipe?

 

[mattyblount38]

Great trip. Charlie has had a big smile all day.

 

[mattyblount38]

Of course I did..... lol

 

[Judi Durber]

Did Matt go through the Drainpipe?

Of course I did..... lol

AND the rat run?

 

[cap n chris]

Is the Drainpipe the same thing as The Tunnel? Is the Rat Run the same thing as the Smartie Tube? Is the OMG Slide the same thing as the Slab bypass? We may never know.

 

[ZombieCake]

Goatchurch is a most underrated cave with lots to see and some pretties are still there if you look hard enough.  It is very slippy though.

 

[rhychydwr1]

Of course I did..... lol

Brave fellow    I went through it about 20 years ago.  Had quite a fright as I found the entrance very tight.  Never went back 

 

[Duncan S]

Is the Drainpipe the same thing as The Tunnel? Is the Rat Run the same thing as the Smartie Tube? Is the OMG Slide the same thing as the Slab bypass? We may never know.

One of the most confusing I know of is Dolphin Pot and Dolphin Pitch in Eastwater, those are the Mendip Underground names.
The same features are also known as Dolphin Chimney and Dolphin Pot, which occasionally causes huge confusion and alarm when proposing to free-climbing Dolphin Pot.
Dolphin Pitch is also known as the 35ft Pitch, even Mendip Underground uses this on one of its surveys making the Upper and Lower surveys very hard to fit together!

For simplicity, I stick with Mendip Underground terminology

 

[cap n chris]

When working with young(er) people (or the psychologically less robust) it isn't a bad plan to tailor the terminology to suit the trip. So with kids' groups it's not called Fucking Tight, or Drunkard's Alley etc.. How many people in the C21st know what a Coal Chute is (and even how to spell it)? Why is a Drainpipe horizontal? It's not the coughing that carried him off, it was the coffin they carried him off in. Slab Slide, Angled Ascent... whatever springs to mind that 'makes sense' - it's your choice.

 

[Peter Burgess]

Everything must have a name. It's the nature of humans, that having evolved to the point where we have a reasonably consistent means of communicating, and invented this thing called language to do it, sticking labels on everything is the next step. Jolly good thing too, I say. On a trip recently, we realised that a junction, somewhere between Mouldy Glove and St Pauls, didn't have a name. Shocked by this oversight of some 50 years, I promptly christened the junction. It's now called Percy.

 

[andrewmcleod]

One of the most confusing I know of is Dolphin Pot and Dolphin Pitch in Eastwater, those are the Mendip Underground names.
The same features are also known as Dolphin Chimney and Dolphin Pot, which occasionally causes huge confusion and alarm when proposing to free-climbing Dolphin Pot.
Dolphin Pitch is also known as the 35ft Pitch, even Mendip Underground uses this on one of its surveys making the Upper and Lower surveys very hard to fit together!

For simplicity, I stick with Mendip Underground terminology

I don't know about earlier versions, but I thought I remembered MU5 telling me there was confusion and clearly separating Dolphin Pot and the 35ft pitch. I have just checked and the only time I can find MU5 using the phrase 'Dolphin Pitch' is in the sentence "A sharp left turn and a drop down through boulders reaches the head of the 35ft Pitch (commonly referred to as Dolphin Pitch)". The surveys also label 'Dolphin Pot' and '35ft Pitch', so if there was confusion in earlier editions it has been corrected (if you accept the names 'Dolphin Pot' and '35ft Pitch').

 

[mrodoc]

I have realised that people don't buy surveys very often now and often don't know a cave's history so different names get stuck on by different groups. It does matter when reference is made to them in reports. It is always best to stick to the original name and perhaps put it in brackets by your preferred name. The Plymouth extension in Baker's Pit had chamber names given by the original explorers but in the absence of a survey they acquired a variety of different names.

 

[andrewmcleod]

I have realised that people don't buy surveys very often now

A bit (further) off-topic but these days if something isn't available online (e.g. the surveys Hitch n' Hike sell which you have to phone up for, the fantastic OFD survey that can only be acquired by actually going to SWCC) then I consider them hard to acquire. Perhaps more people would buy surveys if they were easier to get? (the collection of ~20 climbing guidebooks on my shelves suggests that I at least would certainly pick up a few).

What would be even better, of course, would be if they were readily available in waterproof map or laminated sheet form (instead of having to track down who sells a survey, acquire it through non-trivial means, scan it, reorganize it onto sheets, print and laminate it)...

but perhaps I (being new to caving) am doing it all wrong and I'm not really supposed to know where I am going (in the 'spirit of adventure' or something) slight issue is I have a terrible terrible memory and will not remember the way out...

 

[Fulk]

The problem is, Andrew, that surveys have been produced 'piece-meal' ? i.e. when the cave was explored and surveyed ? over donkey's years, by all sorts of different people, and published (or not, as the case may be) in club journals, to all sorts of different standards, and there never has (to my knowledge) been a sort-of 'central collating place' for cave surveys.

Thus there must be several surveys that got only limited exposure in small-print-run journals, possibly even by clubs that are no longer in existence ? and, of course, until relatively recently all the data were kept on paper (maybe in a shoe-box in the attic, or some such), rather than in a modern computerized system.

(By the way does anybody know how to turn off the spell-checker (which keeps 'correcting' my spelling, which is fair enough as I'm a crap typist, but most of the time it comes up with the wrong word?)