Hi everyone,
Last week I was doing a bit of climbing in the Avon gorge, I knew there was a few caves there but this time I had a torch, so I decided to have a bit of a nosey about, after going in through the fairly awkward entrance past a metric sh*t ton of Meta menardi spiders it opened out slightly then abruptly got very tight again, I'm not a big guy but even I couldn't fit through it.
Now, not having my helmet or any caving gear other than a small bike light (not that that counts as caving gear of course) I decided it would probably be best to get out of there, when I noticed a strange little leathery ball dangling a foot from my face, (how I didn't notice it on the way in i've no idea) can you guess what it is yet? yep it was, of course, a bat. At this point we just tried to exit as quickly as possible without disturbing the little feller. Obviously bats are protected and I wouldn't want to go back if I knew it was doing any potential harm to the animals however the end of that passage looked pretty tempting to try to dig out a bit being mostly mud that was blocking it from the looks of it. So whats the score on the bats thing? best to just leave 'em alone and stay out or worth trying to see where the passage goes? of course if i did try to dig it I wouldn't be trying to smash through limestone, i'm just talking about shifting some of that mud out. I respect you guys opinions a lot and as far as I'm concerned whatever you say goes, i've been lurking for years but have only now got a reason to join.
Cavebeast
Last week I was doing a bit of climbing in the Avon gorge, I knew there was a few caves there but this time I had a torch, so I decided to have a bit of a nosey about, after going in through the fairly awkward entrance past a metric sh*t ton of Meta menardi spiders it opened out slightly then abruptly got very tight again, I'm not a big guy but even I couldn't fit through it.
Now, not having my helmet or any caving gear other than a small bike light (not that that counts as caving gear of course) I decided it would probably be best to get out of there, when I noticed a strange little leathery ball dangling a foot from my face, (how I didn't notice it on the way in i've no idea) can you guess what it is yet? yep it was, of course, a bat. At this point we just tried to exit as quickly as possible without disturbing the little feller. Obviously bats are protected and I wouldn't want to go back if I knew it was doing any potential harm to the animals however the end of that passage looked pretty tempting to try to dig out a bit being mostly mud that was blocking it from the looks of it. So whats the score on the bats thing? best to just leave 'em alone and stay out or worth trying to see where the passage goes? of course if i did try to dig it I wouldn't be trying to smash through limestone, i'm just talking about shifting some of that mud out. I respect you guys opinions a lot and as far as I'm concerned whatever you say goes, i've been lurking for years but have only now got a reason to join.
Cavebeast
