Manor Vale Cave, North York Moors

GarDouth

Administrator
We've been back at Manor Vale Cave for a few weeks now after a 10 year gap and the difficult removal of a troublesome badger that had taken up residence in the mean time. (Yes we did have a licence to evict it!)  Unfortunately the badger had made it's self a rather cosy home and 10 years of leaves and twigs had filled up lots of the digging efforts over a decade ago so most of the last few weeks have been spent removing the badger's home comforts.

Finally we are now back to the point gained in 2007 and have started to progress in to new ground. The way on is small at the moment but looks promising with more work and it has some great potential. The cave must have been very active in the past but totally dry now.

The sizeable entrance passage has been used as a rubbish tip for many tens of years and as such makes for some interesting digging with many nice finds of old pottery, bottles and other household items. According to our bottle expert, some are worth a fair bit too!

Follow our club Facebook page for more snippets but I'll try to remember to post on UKC too! http://www.facebook.com/yorkcavingclub

Short video of work last night... https://youtu.be/nUGsOeZLjtI

 

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MarkS

Moderator
Nice to see an update, and what a great video. :clap: I bet no one watching anticipates what happens in the middle!
 

Simon Wilson

New member
We've just lost a favourite one-legged caver so I'm glad to see monopeds are still represented in the caving community.
 

GarDouth

Administrator
Progress continues at Manor Vale although as usual for the North York Moors it has turned into a mud fest!

We had a good strong draught this week so it's just a case of working through the mud in some pretty squalid conditions to hopefully get to some new passage. It's now getting too awkward to haul drag buckets all the way to the entrance so we've started to back-fill for now and maybe move it out later.

Not surprisingly, as the mud deepens, the digger attendance wanes but had 5 on Wednesday so not too bad...
 

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tamarmole

Active member
Proper North York Moors dig. (y) (y) (y) 

Reminds me of digging in Lingmoor when we were trying to find a back door into the then postulated subterranean course of Hodge Beck.  I seem to recall that one of the digging team had an unfortunate lavatorial incident in the Lingmoor dig because the gloop was so sticky that it prevented him from crawling out in time.

Keep the reports coming.
 

Cavematt

Well-known member
Hi Tamarmole; A connection from Lingmoor to Hodge Beck would be something pretty special (I think you mean Hutton Beck) ;)

Indeed, the said lavatorial incident was only disclosed to us AFTER we had surveyed Lingmoor about eight years ago and I had spent several minutes lying in some suspiciously sloppy mud at the end. I don't imagine anyone has ever been back since we broke through into Excalibur. If you were one of the people who dug in Dowson Pot then you got even closer there!

Manor Vale is certainly an interesting dig; it is actually quite a sizable passage; 2m wide, but unfortunately the entire passage is filled with mud and covered in a calcite crust with a 10 inch gap over the top disappearing off into the distance; the strong draught is extremely encouraging. Manor Vale would certainly have once been a big player in the subterranean hydrology of the area and there will be a substantial amount of cave there somewhere; the question is whether, as at various other fossil phreatic sites such as Kirkdale, it is entirely filled with mud or large enough to explore. We have another dig half a mile up the hill from Manor Vale at an active sink so it's not impossible that any such system is not entirely fossil.

Time will tell whether we can get through the mud and into any explorable passage; without the draught we would be giving up, but with the draught we are prepared to keep pushing it for a little longer. The potential rewards are significant!
 

tamarmole

Active member
Cavematt said:
Hi Tamarmole; A connection from Lingmoor to Hodge Beck would be something pretty special (I think you mean Hutton Beck) ;)

Indeed, the said lavatorial incident was only disclosed to us AFTER we had surveyed Lingmoor about eight years ago and I had spent several minutes lying in some suspiciously sloppy mud at the end. I don't imagine anyone has ever been back since we broke through into Excalibur. If you were one of the people who dug in Dowson Pot then you got even closer there!

Manor Vale is certainly an interesting dig; it is actually quite a sizable passage; 2m wide, but unfortunately the entire passage is filled with mud and covered in a calcite crust with a 10 inch gap over the top disappearing off into the distance; the strong draught is extremely encouraging. Manor Vale would certainly have once been a big player in the subterranean hydrology of the area and there will be a substantial amount of cave there somewhere; the question is whether, as at various other fossil phreatic sites such as Kirkdale, it is entirely filled with mud or large enough to explore. We have another dig half a mile up the hill from Manor Vale at an active sink so it's not impossible that any such system is not entirely fossil.

Time will tell whether we can get through the mud and into any explorable passage; without the draught we would be giving up, but with the draught we are prepared to keep pushing it for a little longer. The potential rewards are significant!

Hutton Beck. 

Lingmoor is one of those places you only go if you've got a good reason to.

Yes I was one of the Dowson's diggers, again the intention was to get into Hutton Beck.  We knew there was cave down there we just couldn't get into the bloody thing.  As a matter of academic interest how close did we get?


 

richardg

Active member
Fascinating area and Hodge Beck looks so good where it sinks at Cat Scar.
Please keep these progress reports coming Matt.

Richard.
 
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