For those who don't visit the home page - competition! 

The WONDERS of the Internet never cease to amaze. Recently hooked up via Facebook with the finest Devonshire caver, Mr. Joe, and we liaised to arrange a visit to Pridhamsleigh Cavern. Having visited many many times before I was intrigued by a photograph set I noticed of his which featured bits of the cave that were unknown to me - had I missed out huge chunks of the cave on prior visits?.... had a large amount of new discovery taken place?.... was I even going to the right cave in the first place?....

So, after a short spasm of online messaging we fixed on a day/time and hooked up for a trip. There was mud, there was fun, there was banter, there was hardship.... and shortly after all of that we actually got to the cave and did some rummaging.

For anyone who has not visited Devonshire's Finest cave, here's a quick snippetty-view of just a tiny part of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVzzmLSEsvw

It is quite a labyrinth, all told, and provides much mirth for many multiple minutes, or hours... if you get off-route.

______________

A while back Devon Cave Rescue were on the news with a nice piece about practice rescue, footage (somewhat shamefully spoofily edited) here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Iq-Xl3R50

Are you sure that's not Sump 1 Duck 1 in Swildon's? 

Maj.

Pretty sure, 'cos we wos in Devon.

Forgot that you couldn't see me holding aloft a sarcasm placard.

Maj.

Sarcasm, really? See what I did there

A reminder folks - rope to win and winning trip report will be chosen at random, currently you'd have about a 5 to 1 chance - so if you're caving in November, write it down - you never know, you may own some Spanset Gold by December!!

This is an adit I had stumbled across six to eight months ago. The amount of times I had planned to explore the adit, yet never getting around to it was phenomenal.
I organized it as a club trip on the Tuesday however due to an error of communication only two of us turned up to explore. This was not such a bad thing as only twelve feet into the adit the low oxygen alarm started sounding (19.5%). We kept pressing on into the adit which turned out to be much larger than initially expected, passing through several stopes and past two winze?s until eventually our turnaround level of oxygen was met at 16%. Very few symptoms of oxygen deprivation were present other than a slightly faster breath rate and quicker fatigue.
It is quite scary how this adit had no protection whatsoever to stop people from entering. If we had not have had a gas meter with us we could have happily kept walking until we fell unconscious, never to see daylight again.

It's got to that time of year again. The nights have drawn in, the clocks have altered and evening climbing trips need to be put on the back burner for a few months. Not being able to face Wirksworth Climbing Wall until after the new year, its that time of year where me and my mate Chris usually display our caving incompetence.

This we duly did the other night on a trip to Clatterway Levels, a place where neither of us had been before. After meeting at Chris's house in Matlock we finally manage to summon up enough enthusiasm to drag ourselves away from the wood burning stove and the cups of tea and drive to the Via Fellow.

We parked opposite the Pig O' Lead and before tackling up decided find the path to the upper entrance. The guide book says 'just beyond the Pig O' Lead....'. Here's where the first debate starts, just how far is 'just beyond'? The next ten minutes where spent walking suspiciously up and down the road peering into people's gardens. Could we find the 'footpath between the cottages'?, could we 'eck as like! So it was back to the car for a further read of the guidebook to see if we'd missed anything. We finally decided that we were too far down the hill so we decided to drive slowly up the hill looking for the footpath. After ten minutes of looking decidedly like criminals looking for properties to rob and getting in the way of Bonsall residents going home for their tea, we decided to call it a day on Clatterway Levels and have a quick trip into Wapping/Cumberland. After all we knew how to find the entrance to that one.

So we duly entered Wapping and decided to keep high and go right up through Cumberland. It always surprises me that it used to be a show cave as there couldn't have been much to see back then. Nowadays part of the trips interest comes from al the graffiti supposedly left by the Troggs of the 60's and 70's. Did they really live in Cumberland or just use it for their drug fuelled parties? I can't see why anyone would choose to live down there but it would be a cool place for a party. We spent a while reading the graffiti (who was Arthur Procter?) and taking photos before we heard the subconscious whisper of the pub calling. On the way out we both agreed that not finding our first objective was no big deal as we'd both enjoyed Wapping and that it was a great place for novices. Unfortunately this does have it's downside. Throughout the system we saw qute a lot of litter, some of which we removed.

As all good caving trips should, the trip ended in the pub, this time Whetherspoons in Matlock for a mixed grill and a pint of Ruddle's.

What's a bit of incompetency between friends?

Cap'n Chris said:

the finest Devonshire caver, Mr. Joe,
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Click to expand...

Aw how sweet  :hug: I want to now cash in on my mendip excursion into them there foreign lands of somerset (said in my bestest Debon accent)

Trip report into the Frozen Deep and High Country

Devon SS Participants:
Joe Cartwright
Matt Cookman
Peter Glanvill
Guest Participants:
John 1 and John 2
Description:

this trip came about  a while back when Pete kindly offered me a trip to the frozen deep after i has pestered him sufficiently.

Matt has obviously been on trips to various areas/countries but for me this was to be my first trip outside of Devon! and what a trip it was!

I finally managed to pick up Matt from Exeter after briefly encountering a motorcycle accident in newton abbot and having to immobilize the gentleman on the boot of the car he rode into (great place and most convenient for my posture), we then headed off to chard to meet MRODOC at his house, my made in china tom tom which i have renamed dumb dumb due to its complete refusal to direct you to anywhere that you actually want to go, iphones out and petes finally house located we set off from chard to the deepest darkest mendips quite literally.

Once there and with minimal faff apart from Pete forgetting his socks (i had spares to lend) and the added bonus of pitches being pre rigged by a group the previous day meant we did not have to enter with tackle. we walked up to a small entrance with the bear trap type gate, once in it was a straight forward crawl down to moonmilk and steps chamber my first taste of caves outside of devon wheres the mud? We descended through some impressive vertical boulder chokes that had been made into shafts, you could clearly see that Mr Stanton was a purest digger, as these shafts were lovely to climb later on the way back out each boulder lovingly stacked to create wonderful chimneys. Onwards into grand gallery this then opened up to a walking height passage with some pretty formations and a hidden stream.

walking/crawling a bit further it then opened up into topless aven, which for me that had not been out of Devon was amazed by the shear size of this passage it was huge!!! after much gawping on my part and some excited schoolboy remarks we made our way upwards and were greated by some very impressive totem pole stalagmites and a lovely little grotto.

we then passed through great expectations and hard times, which i believe must of been miserable to dig through, a 60ish meter crawl with some flat out bits kept our temperatures at a warm level. again hard times for a low crawl has some very pretty straws towards the end before coming through into resurrection. This again amazed me at the shear size, this was soon thwarted by a chuckle from the Doc who exclaimed you have seen nothing yet! i don't know about Matt but i started to get the butterfly feeling in my stomach knowing what lay ahead, Pete very knowledgeable was able to us about every part of the cave as we went through from history of discovery, digs, geological aspects and more.

we made are way through resurrection to wish you were here which is the pitch into the frozen deep from the platform we could see white stones (turns out they are bloody great big boulders) that looked like mere shadows in the vast expanse below. From this pitch you can see only a rift type passage down into the chamber, onto the first laddered pitch after a climb down the two stage ladder separated by a platform of scaf poles and planks we were in, the pebbles now obviously boulders, very white boulders! it suddenly struck me with all the crawling and climbing around i was still fairly clean, in devon by now i would of looked like i had been dunked in liquid chocolate.

We then made our way down and around the corner into the chamber proper and wow........! this chamber is huuuuuge! my Omni duo v3 on full whack would barely touch the roof and definitely not the other sides (i now have a nora2 so would of lit the entire chamber  . Three large ice white stalls/columns loomed in the darkness these are very impressive formations and are dwarfed by the shear size of the frozen deep even though they are about 6 meters tall. After many photos and gawping at the hundreds of amazing formations of stals, curtains, mud formations and lots more in the chamber we made our way to the north end where we made our way up Ascension to heavens landing via another lovely ladder pitch (two ladders attached to each other my shoulders were burning) at the top is a scalloped tube roof floor and sides of  loads of very small, deep scallops which looks very impressive and indicates that at one point a vast amount of water flowed through this at one point, at the end of this you can stare down into the blackness which is TFD at this point you get a real sense of how high up you are!

we then made our way through the rarely traveled high country which is again a huge rift which looks very different to the rest of the cave with lots of moonmilk, botryoidal stal and some strange pancake topped stals.

After Me Matt and John  (which is what pete kept calling me) posed for some photos for Pete we made our way back into TFD derigged the ladder and lifeline from accension we made our way up to the south side of the chamber where there is a huge amount of flow, totems, curtains and just lots of very white stuff everywhere!

We then climbed up out of this mind blowing chamber and made our way to the surface luckily we were able to leave the TFD pitches rigged for the diggers so only had rope and ladders to carry out from the Ascension rig.

we finally surfaced around 6/6.5 hours after entering to the looks of some bemused chav's in the carpark, this is made even more interesting as you cant see the entrance from the road so it looks like the gorge face is just expelling muddied, bewildered looking men squinting at the large sky scurion.

back to drop off the keys and back to pete's where we transferred our kit into my car and headed back to sunny ole debon.

overall an amazing trip which was well led with lots of informationon the way round and the privelage of visiting a rarely viewed part of cave. Thank you Pete for taking me and Matt down and also for the laminated reservoir hole survey

Competition closes Monday 

Short list so far: (If I've missed any please let me know, thanks)

Cap'n Chris - Pridhamsleigh

D.Snaith - Oxygen (or lack of!)

Madness - Clatterway Levels

Cartwright26 - The Frozen Deep

ianball11 - Valley Entrance

RichardB1983 - P8

JoshW - Early Rise

bagpuss - Compton Martin Ochre Mine

Chunky - Gnome Passage

MarkS - The Flatmate

Christine - Girls do mid week

Pete Hall - Rod's Pot

leclused - Chantoir

Meanderthal - 2015 Treviso

14 entries, winner chosen at random - so if you've been underground recently, write a trip report (by Monday  ) and maybe win some Spanset Gold 

Good luck!!

It was my fault I had missed getting on the DYO trip although after seeing the group return & reading the report I think it was fortunate.  So I opted for a womble round the top of OFD with a survey.  I have always been lead in OFD so it was a bit of a novelty just 2 of us with no great agenda but to get out before call out. Damian had never lead either so he had first dibs at the survey.
The Big Chamber Near The Entrance seemed inviting and can you get out through the boulders in the end? So we follows the left wall up over the bolder strewed floor. The gaps getting smaller until there was a definite no, no holes to get through here. So we worked our way round the top wall to a promising squeeze up. Damian said he didn?t fit so I stuck my head in. There were possibilities if I went backwards, stood on his head and squirmed a bit but as that would leave Damian underneath me I backed out.  Mmmm lets see if we can get through from the other end.
So turning back to ?square one? to make sure we didn?t miss any passages we started off again and almost missed the small (everything in OFD is big isn?t it! We almost had to stoop down to get into it passage behind a boulder. It was beautiful. Well at least from head height.  The walls were white with Moon Milk (I think it is) but at people level it was all a muddy brown. The passage then opened up to a high sandy floored chamber with a great echo that was fun to play with. Taking the right fork, further up the passage water dripped showing up the sharp black rock. A climb lead up on our right only to drop back into the passage. Then it turned muddy and we were slowly going up. A squirm through to the next chamber and tantalising another gap between the boulders, then into a chamber with a lovely mud floor, glooped, some crystals & some smooth all taped off. I tip toed between the tape, looking round the edges for any holes but there was none. So you can?t get through to the The Big Chamber Near The Entrance this way at least.
So back again to square one. Let?s see if we can get to Gnome Chamber. Not difficult that I remember, just straight line. Well according to the map you got right, straight on bear right. But relaying that to what you see in front of you started great debates as to ?is this a cross roads or off-set?? Are we here or here on the map? ?Yes I think we have found it? said Damian as the passage opened up as I said ?no we are back where we started? next to the big drips.



Ok let?s get the compass out. The bit of map we had didn?t indicate north though. So we started down a different passage, a smooth scooped climb up before a small mud lined rabbit hole.  No going too high.  All our passage is on the same level. Down again and then voices above us so we waited for them to appear. They had been to see the mini Columns and were off to gnome chamber and yes we could follow. So we had picked the right branch out of the main passage turn the correct corner & over the cross road but we had missed turning left instead of right. Darn! And had to duck down to flatten out under a bolder before stomping past the ?Gnomes? yellow and rounded.
I wanted to go down the spiral to Salubrious without the map see if I remembered how to do it.  So past the Wedding Cake, yes I remember this, to the steep bolder ruckle, very warn and the big drop if you go the wrong way. We followed the left wall down the bolder slope before crossing to the head of the corkscrew, sliding over the bolder trusting your feet will reach the ledge, sitting down and sliding through the hole to the next level. There are so many fossils here. Rounds & scoops and part moon shapes.  A whole layer in the rock. Below we climb down to the stream and then follow it, (I am NOT going to get my feet wet) It opens out and yes soon we are in Salubrious, there is the hole.  Lovely ledges before the wide bit but neither wanted to go on and I wanted to poke a little way into all the side passages on the way back. High, some drippy, a few formations and then we were back in Gnome. A stop for a late lunch meant that I had time to look around. There are lots of small straws and a couple of ?Gnomes? above the slope down to the corkscrew. Further along a round ?crown? of stal dripping from a large hole. Must come with the camera.  And then it was time to get out as we were meeting some-one else for a Photo trip. So a 2 ? hr bimble into a tiny tiny bit of OFD but very enjoyable, to emerge into hot sunshine. In the lounge later the new coloured survey was up and on close inspection there is now a distinct gap at the end of The Big Chamber Near The Entrance and the parallel passage so we didn?t miss anything. Rather satisfying.

This weekend saw Yorkshire flooded both with water and student cavers, for the CHECC Forum, held at Dalesbridge.

Exeter managed to get (almost) everyone caving this weekend; one member joined Aberystwyth in Lancaster Hole, eight headed out to Bar Pot, and the remaining seven set off to Great Douk. The weather had been, and continued to be, absolutely dire, with extreme weather warnings in place for the Friday night, so the caves were wet and walking to and from them was unpleasant to say the least.

After faffing for an inordinate length of time (as is traditional and seemingly unavoidable), the seven in team Bar Pot set off walking from the Clapham car park, got completely lost, and found that they'd brought the wrong kit anyway, which either didn't fit or didn't work. They turned up at the entrance to the cave about 3 hours later than expected, only to find a group of about 15 just starting the ascent up the entrances pitches. After waiting patiently for another hour and descending the entrance pitches, they realised that they would miss their call out if they actually did any caving, so were forced to ascend straight back out again. I cannot imagine how frustrating this must have been to those freezing cavers, and offer my most sincere condolences, whilst reminding them to check that they have the kit that they think they have before they put it in the car...

The seven cavers in team Great Douk set off with even more faffing, but after briefly popping into a service station, managed to get to the entrance without too much difficulty (albeit, by this time, in the dark). The stream was in heavy flood, with foam and debris all over the place, and the entrance waterfall completely impassable to those with legs too short to straddle it entirely. Once past this the cavers enjoyed a very wet, but thoroughly enjoyable, trip up to the start of the Middle Washfold entrances, by which point the team decided that it'd be more fun to retrace their steps. So with a little walking, a lot of wading, and even some fluming (def: flume, verb, to ride like a flume), the team returned successful, although had to be rescued from the main road outside Dalesbridge after breaking down 5 minutes away from home.

The one brave caver who joined Aberystwyth seemed to enjoy their first underground SRT experience, so thanks for that Aber  ! They returned to CHECC tired, but very satisfied, and a little more confident in their abilities.

Thanks to all the organisers for such a superb CHECC, every member of the club returned home tired but happy.

I thought this was an interesting trip for me certainly my most interesting this trip this year even if the cave near killed me. Although I posted a few photos on here before, I don't think I ever posted the trip report, I certainly can't find it. My mate Chris Scaife wrote the first section and I added my bit at the bottom.

P.s. I am Xander if anyone is confused by that. Only Chris refers to me by that name.


Cavers: Chris Scaife and Alex Ritchie
16/5/15
Weather: Dry for most of the week, very light rain forecast

With Strans Gill sitting right at the very top of our to-do lists for a while, when the weather looked favourable for this Saturday Xander and I had no hesitation in eschewing the opportunity to take advantage of the BPC winch meet. The walk up to the entrance is one of the most enjoyable approaches in the Dales, with a fantastic limestone gorge to scramble up, which we did in places; and some very pleasant woodland, with pied flycatchers on show for anyone interested. The entrance was covered with a piece of mesh and some big rocks and, after moving these, we looked down Faith pitch, thinking the narrow constriction did not look too bad.
With descenders on our short cows tails, we got down the pitch quite quickly; although knowing this was not one of the tightest parts of the cave, the slight stuck feeling I had near the top was rather unsettling. The first 3m of Faith Pitch are a bit narrow, then there?s a ledge that caused a few issues with our tackle sacks, but after that it is fine. At the foot of the pitch there is a short crawl around a corner, leading to the head of Hope Pitch. This pitch was the bit we were most wary about, because it is described in NFTFH as a ?tight struggle?. Xander went through the crawl first, with the pitch rope, and rigged Hope Pitch by tying a 10m rope around a big flake on the left. He then returned through the crawl and went back in feet first, with a tackle sack, and I was behind him going head first, with the other tackle sack. Just above the pitch head there was room for the tackle sacks and for me to watch Xander?s tight struggle. He huffed and he puffed and it all looked painful and at one point I had to help him out, but eventually he got through. I was having doubts about whether I?d fit, as I have always thought of young Xander as a svelter man than me, and I imagine he was having worries about getting back through; so he came back up and, after even more of a struggle, he popped through. We retreated through the crawl, saying we might have to call it a day and go and do Yockenthwaite Pot, but I thought I should at least see if I fit through Hope Pitch, so I got down onto my right hand side and slid through the crawl one more time, feet first. At the pitch I had my left hand down and my right hand above my head and I felt around for the least tight part with my feet. I went in up to my waist and my waist slipped through easily, so I just breathed in and slid down. Once through the squeeze, the pitch is a simple free climb. The rope is useful however as a handline for the top section and to haul gear back up to the squeeze on the way out.
Xander followed me down much faster than before and we pushed on. The next section of the cave involved a bit of crawling and traversing, then an upward sloping crawl in a rift, leading up to a tight squeeze. Xander went first and was certainly giving it his all but getting nowhere, so I volunteered to try it. I went in head first on my left hand side and at first it was difficult to get my head through, but I kept my helmet on, got my head through at the lowest part of the squeeze, then scraped my face against bare rock (an unusual feeling) and pushed myself through. Xander pushed the tackle sacks through to me, then with a similar amount of effort he was through. As he was coming through this squeeze I realised that there was a huge drop behind me, although the rift was narrow enough that we were unlikely to fall down it. This tight squeeze was followed by a short, awkward crawl to the Opera Box ? the head of Charity Pitch.
Xander rigged this pitch with only one decent spit at the pitch head, although it was backed up by two ancient-looking bolts. He went down the first 15m to the large ledge and then turned the air blue. Unable to find a decent hang for the remaining 34m he came back up and suggested I have a look. At the ledge I could see one spit on the far wall, which could only be reached by a huge pendulum and would have given us unacceptable rope rub on our one-bolt-wonder. I knew though that there was an alternative pitch down a wet fissure on the ledge, which looked feasible, so shouted up to Xander to come down. He went down this wet fissure, using a sling deviation to stay fairly dry. He was down there a while and after he disappeared from sight I heard a loud crashing noise and knew something big had fallen down the pitch.
?I need help!?
?I?m hurt!?
Not the most pleasant things to hear from a caving companion, but before I?d worked out what I could do to rescue him (I still don?t think I?ve worked that out) a wounded-looking rigger appeared in the fissure below and told me to head out. Once we were both back in the Opera Box, I was told that Xander had rigged a Y-hang and was about to descend the pitch, when a boulder had slapped him in the face. Miraculously he appeared OK. We had been agonisingly close to the Passage of Time, but knowing that concussion often only rears its ugly head after the passage of time, we decided to retreat.
Xander went first on the way out; the squeezes were just as tight, but with a bit of effort we got through them and were soon at the foot of Faith Pitch. Getting tackle up this pitch was hard work, but eventually we were out. We then went to a pub in Hubberholme, which was far too busy, so we ended up eating in Kettlewell. I should have finished this trip report with that wordplay on the Passage of Time, because the rest has been a bit pointless. Sorry.

My bit Filling in the bits Chris could not see. My description starts from reaching the bottom of charity:

I landed on a rather wet ledge, with a dry shaft awaiting to be rigged, unfortunately all the bolts appeared to be on the ledge and bugger all over the drop itself. I don't understand the placement of those bolts. Worse still due to all the water and the age, the bolts were useless, I could not even get half a turn. I went back up the pitch defeated by the rigging. Chris, however was not ready to call it a day, not after we had done all the hard parts!

So he went down to look for anything better to rig off. Maybe there was something across the shaft, but to get there we would have caused massive rub above so that was not an option either. Still he coaxed me back down and we considered our options. The only way we could see was to follow the water down the slot in the floor, the alternative pitch described in NFTFH. After 5 minutes trying to find a suitable deviation to make it more pleasant I gave up and abseiled down trying to find something better below, which I did.

I landed on solid floor after about 8 meters only to be confronted with the continuation of the shaft a few meters ahead. This shaft had two waterfalls tumbling down it, making nether side particularity dry. A ledge led across to the aven, and if I was feeling brave or stupid it would have been possible for me traverse to the other-side, however I spotted something below that could be used as a devi and found some naturals on my side to rig from as the book described. The first anchor was a small rock bridge just back from the pitch, the second was jammed chock stone/rock directly above the pitch. A bit of thumbling in the cold and I had a Y-hang I was happyish with, backed up to the previous rope.

I threaded my descender and slowly got on to the rope keeping my eyes on the belays. Wallop! Had my belay broke? As they often say in these things it all happened so fast. A large slab of rock had peeled off between the two anchor points and had crashed into me. It pushed me to one side and I caught the glimpse of a flat screen sized boulder smash it self to death on the floor below me. I had a lot of pain on the side of my head and my shoulder and thought I was done for. Injured here, I would by hypo in 30 minutes.

For a moment or two I just hung there in the spray, I instinctively shouted for help before checking my self. Was there blood? - I did not dare touch the impact site but no blood obvious. Is my helmet intact? - yes. Did I lose conciousness at any point? - No. Can I still move my shoulder too? - yes
So relived I got off the rope and surveyed the scene just for a moment. It appears the rock between both my anchor points (the only options) had broken by my weight, the anchors themselves were fine and had not moved. The rock had hit the ledge to my side first before pushing me out of the way.

With both anchors intact, if I wanted to I could have continued, but there was no bloody way I was going to! Hurt and lesson learned I met a rather cold and relieved Chris. After getting him to check me over for injuries in the Opera box we squeezed out of the cave after another hour or so moving at what must be an average pace of 1 meter a minute. The only thing I had to show for my encounter was a slight scratch behind my ear!

In retrospect we should have called it a day when we found there was no usable spits for the conventional route but with so much effort to get there we felt compelled to continue. The cave does not take kindly to visitors and is well protected.

CHECC 2015

What a good weekend. One trip that weekend definitely had its up and downs though!

The aim was to do Lancaster Hole through to Cow Pot. After walking up to the entrance hungover in the rain and cold we got to the entramce to find a queue of 16 people. NOPE.

Instead, being told Cow Pot was empty, we joyfully skipped our way over (literally, too) to Cow Pot to find.... a queue. Only 3 people this time though, unfortunately two cavers had descended and disliked it and were (slowly) on their way out.

Almost an hour later, we were absolutely freezing and finally were able to descend. One poor chap waiting with us lost the use of his hands due to the cold and his attempt to pass the ledge right at the start was met with discomfort when he didn't realise straight away that his finger was jammed between the rock and his stop, fully body weight on it. Thinking our day wasn't actually that bad we headed in.

A lovely descent into the system was made, Cow Pot is a very nice entrance! The final pitch is wonderful and highly recommended. The route through to Lancaster is easy to find and we met our friends who finally got into Lancaster with the aim of exiting through there. We decided to have a look at some column formations on the way and were amazed at just how good they were! Unfortunately this also meant that during our pretties delay we were overtaken by a large group looking to leave via Lancaster like us, there were 6 in our group and 6 in theirs. More waiting was to follow!

The next hour or so was spent waiting again, getting cold. In the end I persuaded people to shuttle up the rope, eventually getting everyone out in much more rapid time as 3 midgets on a rope at once really does make it faster, and keeps everyone warm!

A hasty retreat was made in the cold and dark (AND WET) to Bullpot Farm before another night of partying for CHECC Saturday night!

Josh

Cumberland-Wapping Halloween special
On the face of it, not a very successful evening, but that's only part of the story.
Firstly, only two of us turn up at the New Bath in time to liven up the PDMHS official trip. Poor excuses on the whole, given that this trip was planned over two weeks ago.
Subdued kit tonight, but with an added bag of halloween goodies. We can't hang around too long for fear of spoiling the surprise so head straight for the entrance and in.  It is so quiet and Lampwick and I do nothing to disturb the silence, even talking in hushed voices.
Following the long stope we take the first entrance to the maze. Lampwick loses his bearings a bit (he's not fully fit) but we soon find our way to the lantern and play with a couple of battery powered tealights to get the desired effect.
Up out of the maze we select a site for an 'appearance' and stash the outfit (cape and mask) ready. We carry on along the top passage until after the last exit from the maze and then select a site for the severed hand.  We find an ideal spot - overlooked on the way in it should be obvious on the way out.
Last thing to do is find a suitable place for the emerging skeleton. After the steps up there is a lovely mud bank where he looks completely at home. We even add a tealight for extra glowing effect. Alas, poor Yorick, it seems a shame to leave him there.
The party should be in by now so we creep back to the appearance site, stopping to listen for any sound of them. Nothing.
Lampwick tries on the cape and mask and experiments with lighting effects and possible movements. Still no sign.
We go down into the maze again to see if they have got past us. Nothing. Disappointed, we decide to derig. First the ghostly lantern - really pleased with that, quite minimal. We take the long underneath route out of the maze and pop up just before the severed hand. Very realistic.
On to the end to recover Yorick. He does look effective. Again we creep along, ready to make an appearance but none is necessary. The beer magnet is dragging Lampwick out when we see lights in the maze. Hastily we deposit Yorick in the rocks and follow them down. It takes a while to locate them but finally we find them in the Selenite grotto.
Lampwick recognises a few from his SRT training. We go with them to the end of this stope, planting the severed hand en route and then waiting for them to return first.
And NOT ONE OF THEM notices it.
Well that's it then. We part company, retrieve Yorick and make our way back out.  Well we had fun anyway.
We review the photos at the Barley Mow, no-one else in to share our tale with but it made us laugh anyway.

Details of who won here: http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=19440.msg249596;topicseen#new