Our club attempted the round trip in Sylvester pot but we did not get very far. The reason being at the bottom of the second pitch, down through the boulders there is a climb up in a small shattered chamber. We found the chamber exactly as the description explains but the climb looks impossible! The book describes it as a 3.5m awkward climb, but this was beyond awkward.

If it was outside it would be HVS and that's not when its on wet limestone in wellies. The bottom meter overhung and there was no holds to use at all, just a smooth crack, which only the best rock-climbers would get up (or someone with a drill!). We free climbed the 2nd pitch so its not like we are rubbish climbers.

Is this truly the way on? We looked all over the chamber and could not find anywhere else to climb up?

It would have been doable with a knotted rope with foot loops, so is this one of the ropes the red rose removed? if so how are we meant to get up there now? The reason why I suspect it used to have a hand line there was a lot of in-situ slings on other climbs such as the "3rd pitch" and a climb lower down that don't have any rope on them but looked like they used to.

Can anyone shine any light? (P.s. You can't do the round trip backwards to get to the top of the climb as you have to pull down 3 pitches, which would be up pitches going the other way), so this section of the cave is un-accessible.

Sounds like it. I recall an implausible looking climb up into a small horizontal slot passage. I don't think there has ever been a fixed rope on it, and there wasn't then. We managed to get up eventually, and i'm not a good climber, so it is doable. It was years ago (and my memory is not great), but I think we managed to hook a spike with a sling somewhere high on the left which helped. Also think I climbed further to the left where the passage is a bit narrower, then moved across into the passage nearer the top.

That might be the way of doing it, it looked possible to back and foot it up the left-hand side of the passage but then it looked like an awful long reach across to get to it. It was also loose as something that could have been used as a hold at the bottom fell off. I guess if I want to do this trip, I will have to bring a scaling pole!

Climbing shoes?

They don't work too well in the wet!

Better than wellies?

Just trying to remember what we did when we first explored it. The whole area is quite loose so may have moved around since our original exploration