Peak Cavern Show Cave

[Roger W]

To settle a family discussion - can anyone tell me when the guided tours in the Peak Cavern stopped going beyond Pluto's Dining Room?

 

[Speleotron]

Do they not go to the narnia slide any more?

 

[alastairgott]

Dr tron, afraid the top of the narnia slide where the railings are is technically called plutos dining room.

Afraid i like the sounds of an unresolved argument at home more than i do looking anything up. Get back to you in a few weeks...

 

[martinb]

Do they not go to the narnia slide any more?

I think Roger W means when the tours used to go beyond the railings, down the steps, and followed the streamway on the raised bank through Five Arches towards the junction of Buxton Water Sump.

I'm not even sure myself when the tours through there finished, but I *think* it may have had something to do with an extended period of flooding along that passage.

 

[Roger W]

Correct, Martin.  In the good old days the tours used to go down the steps and along beside the stream to the T-junction.  My daughter recently took her husband and other members of the family on a trip there, and was sure she had gone much further when she was a child.

 

[Kevlar]

You might want to seek out Caves & Caving Issue 91 (Autumn/Winter 2001).
There was an article by Wayne Sheldon about the clean-up of the old show caves rails etc. There might be something in that about trips down past 5 Arches to Buxton Water. I don't have a copy to hand, but I reckon it's the best place to start looking. Or just contact Wayne!

 

[Frog2]

As a somewhat slightly aged 'ex' caver was surprised to recall and have it confirmed that my memory seemed correct - this seemingly was all down to radon.

Sorry but don't know how to link things but the Topic Heading was :
http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=6803.msg92341#msg92341

And SamT's reply (No 7) contains  : "And Peak also had extractor fans fitted that pull air out via the Cave Dale cave entrance. This was also the reason that the show cave now terminates at the devils staircase, rather than at buxton water as it did when I were a lad. It was thought that Radon levels beyond that are too high for the full time guides to be exposed to over the course of the year. "

Hope this doesn't raise an old contentious subject.

Cheers

 

[Roger W]

That would seem to put it some time in the 80's, then...?

 

[SamT]

Yep - late 80s or early 90s.  I was working at Treak Cliff around 89/90 which is when a lot of the Radon Monitoring was happening.  Fairly sure it was radon related.

 

[pwhole]

I certainly went down there in my childhood and up to my early teens, which would be the late 1970s. On a much later trip about ten years ago, I was a bit shocked to see the tour stopped at the new gate, and when I asked about further access, the guy told me to take up caving. So I did. He also told me that the main reason they stopped doing it was that the regular floods covered the steps with so much mud that older people especially found it very difficult to get back up them, and they'd had to call cave rescue once to help get someone back up. Dunno if that's true or not.

 

[Pitlamp]

My five bob's worth - reckon it'd be about 22 or 23 years ago (early 1990s).

 

[grahams]

I remember taking my daughter to the cave when she was a year old, in 1988. I asked the same question as pwhole and received a similar answer. The tours had been shortened the previous year.

 

[Goydenman]

when I was a guide we used to take people through the five arches to the T junction. It was a bit of an effort every morning we had to put a layer of sawdust on the path to get it in a state ok for the public and the steps were always of concern. It was quite soon after the Duchy of Lancaster passed it on that the tour was shortened. When was the show cave passed on?

 

[robjones]

Radon in caves was a news item in the caving press in 1988-89 with Peak Cavern repeatedly mentioned as it was one of the monitoring sites of John Gunn et. al.

Descent 84, Oct/Nov 1988, pp.5 and 28 reported John Gunn and Dave Prime's lecture on radon in caves at that year's BCRA Conference and mentioned that the local press had already picked up the new and run a story titled "Killer radon gas in Peak caves". In the next issue, no.85, Dec 1988 / Jan 1989, p.18 Chris Howes offered extended commentary on the issue. Then in no.86, Feb/Mar 1989, pp.26-7, Gunn & Prime with Stan Fletcher provided a lengthy article which in common with all the previous ones specifically mentioned a few key Peak sites including Peak Cavern and suggested that as cave guides were employees, then radon exposure was legally important to show cave operators in ways that were not relevant to leisure cavers.

I guess that this surge of attention to radon and Peak Cavern being one of the key monitoring sites may have influenced the show cave operators to modify the tour route around this time to ensure that employees did not exceed certain dosages.

 

[Pitlamp]

when I was a guide we used to take people through the five arches to the T junction. It was a bit of an effort every morning we had to put a layer of sawdust on the path to get it in a state ok for the public and the steps were always of concern. It was quite soon after the Duchy of Lancaster passed it on that the tour was shortened. When was the show cave passed on?

March 1997.

Reference is page 21 in the CDG Peak District Sump Index Update 1997. (I knew we'd written it down somewhere!)

 

[Roger W]

March 1997?  That's ten years after Graham's date for the shortening of the tourist route.

Have just dug out my guide book for the Peak Cavern - it's dated 1979 and has the trip going to the T-junction, together with illustrations of visitors in the river passage under Great Tom of Lincoln in 1803 and 1978.  The cave seems to have shrunk considerably since 1803...

(See picture below)

So are we saying that the re were problems with the steps down to the Devil's Cellar back when Goydenman was a lad, but the trip was shortened in 1987 (because of Radon fears?) and the cave was handed over to the Speedwell people in 1997?

 

[grahams]

I'm pretty sure that my date is correct - missing my daughter's birthday would be dangerous Perhaps the 5 Arches section was temporarily reopened?

 

[Pitlamp]

Um, you've got me thinking now Graham.

That March 1997 date was really answering the question about when the show cave was passed on (to the present incumbents). It was written down in a 1997 publication just after the event. I'm confident that's right at least.

My memory is that it was the present incumbents who made the decision from the outset (or very soon after the outset) to shorten the public section. I was extremely active in the Peak system throughout the 1980s and every year we spent the last Sunday before Easter helping Gil Keaton clean up the Five Arches area after each winter's flooding. That's why I thought the abandonment of the Five Arches wasn't till the 1990s.

I wonder if, when you visited, the Five Arches was closed temporarily due to not having been cleaned up after a summer flood? But you may be right of course and my memory may be wrong.

 

[Mrs Trellis]

Ring 'em up and ask Irene.

Fwiw I'll go with late '80's say 1988/9 .

 

[Pitlamp]

I don't think Irene goes back that far. She could ask the present owners of the business of course but, if the public section was shortened before they took over in March 1997, they probably wouldn't know the date.

We ought to get to the bottom of this because it's a useful fact to have on record.

I wonder if it got noted in Descent at the time?

Another way of finding out might be to look in TSG logbooks for the first year when cavers didn't help clean up the Five Arches just before Easter.
"Scud" may be able to help here . . .