Wormy
New member
After spending all day saturday digging in a particularly dirty hole we decided to have a good yomp out over the moors to look at an area I've been meaning to go to for ages. As usual this has lead to finding far more than I expected and another trip planned for this weekend.
Firstly the area we decided to head to was (very roughly) between Lunehead and Brough, I'm also glad to say we found far beck bridge cave on the way but exploration of that will have to wait for another day. We had the almost obligatory fruitless poke about around Lunehead mines and then decided to walk up the hill to the east of the road, interestingly theres a stream sinking about 40 meters from the road on to the north of the track with a lovely echoey sound, the pile of boulders beside it gave way enough for us to be able to see into a streamway, but as we had no tools that had to be left. after this we walked on up the road, the amount of risings in that valley is mind boggling and the majority of them are pretty big, some valleys being entirely dry.
Luckily the flag was down at the edge of Warcop range so we headed on down into Coalgill sike, its also worth mentioning that there are many shakeholes to the north of the bridleway that have holes leading off the bottom of them, one big enough for me to slide down into but it was only about 3.5 meters deep and barely a meter across. Eventually we got to Coalgill sike pot, which for some reason I did not take a picture of, its about 9 meters deep although the farmer has liberally sprinkled dead sheep into it, in fact that many that it must alter the depth of the pot. AS we had no SRT gear with us we pushed on to look for Swindale head caves.
Which we found pretty much straight away (which makes a nice change) easiest way to it is to follow the northern tributary gorge down into the main gorge, from that point there's one entrance to your left and one to your right, we decided to go for the downstream cave first as its the longest (122 meters).
This still has to be one of the prettiest little caves that I have done as yet, stal, straws and flowstone falls are everywhere you look it seems, and as its quite a remote cave there is pretty much no damage which is nice. (Some sections are quite tight and it can be a bit of an effort to avoid the formations) eventually the winding lower stream passage emerges into a couple of well decorated, large avens and the upper stream passage starts again about 4 or 5 meters up the wall. The upper streamway continues getting wetter before ending in a sump.
Overall a lovely little cave and an area that I will be going back to very soon.
Firstly the area we decided to head to was (very roughly) between Lunehead and Brough, I'm also glad to say we found far beck bridge cave on the way but exploration of that will have to wait for another day. We had the almost obligatory fruitless poke about around Lunehead mines and then decided to walk up the hill to the east of the road, interestingly theres a stream sinking about 40 meters from the road on to the north of the track with a lovely echoey sound, the pile of boulders beside it gave way enough for us to be able to see into a streamway, but as we had no tools that had to be left. after this we walked on up the road, the amount of risings in that valley is mind boggling and the majority of them are pretty big, some valleys being entirely dry.
Luckily the flag was down at the edge of Warcop range so we headed on down into Coalgill sike, its also worth mentioning that there are many shakeholes to the north of the bridleway that have holes leading off the bottom of them, one big enough for me to slide down into but it was only about 3.5 meters deep and barely a meter across. Eventually we got to Coalgill sike pot, which for some reason I did not take a picture of, its about 9 meters deep although the farmer has liberally sprinkled dead sheep into it, in fact that many that it must alter the depth of the pot. AS we had no SRT gear with us we pushed on to look for Swindale head caves.
Which we found pretty much straight away (which makes a nice change) easiest way to it is to follow the northern tributary gorge down into the main gorge, from that point there's one entrance to your left and one to your right, we decided to go for the downstream cave first as its the longest (122 meters).
This still has to be one of the prettiest little caves that I have done as yet, stal, straws and flowstone falls are everywhere you look it seems, and as its quite a remote cave there is pretty much no damage which is nice. (Some sections are quite tight and it can be a bit of an effort to avoid the formations) eventually the winding lower stream passage emerges into a couple of well decorated, large avens and the upper stream passage starts again about 4 or 5 meters up the wall. The upper streamway continues getting wetter before ending in a sump.
Overall a lovely little cave and an area that I will be going back to very soon.
