Blast From The Past

[The Old Ruminator]

Bar Pot c 1970.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Lancaster Hole c 1970.

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[The Old Ruminator]

Camera box. Garlands Pot. Giants Hole c1970.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Little Neath. Camera box. 1969.

 

[Lankyman]

Camera box. Garlands Pot. Giants Hole c1970.

My first ever ladder climb (late 1976?). Made a complete hash of it and fell off. Fortunately I was on a line.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Where it all began. My very first cave photo at Holwell c 1963 . My interest in caver portraits stems from there.



Me from my first ever set,

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Lancaster Hole c 1970.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Ruddy Box. Me resting OFD ? c1969.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Cliff Etherden Pant Mawr c 1969.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Another from the 1963 Holwell Set.

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[The Old Ruminator]

Cuckoo Cleeves c 1965.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Kingsdale c 1969.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Bat Passage, G B at the time of discovery in Agfa Dia Direct.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Me in Swildons Four 1960's.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Peter Glanvill at work and still going. 1960's

 

[Wardy]

I was going to like the posts on this thread individually, but there were so many to like, that I decided it deserved a post as a thank you.
As a Northern caver you can miss out on the tales of prolific digging and exploration that go on elsewhere especially in the Mendips.
Tales like the one that started the thread are great to read and take you back to that time.
Add in the photo's that followed and this is a brilliant thread.
Thank You OR

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Thanks Wardy. As ever a single posted thread has morphed into an interminable splurge. I only meant to cover the Shatter bit. Next instalment will be " The Student Years ".

 

[The Old Ruminator]

The Student Years.

The 1960's were busy caving years. I had teamed up with local lad Pete Rose and had taken a bespectacled youth from Chard under our wing. Yes Peter Glanvill whose scrabblings at Holwell we had noted so left a note there. On my motor bike I was looking for caves over the Quantocks and in the Dolomitic Conglomerate quarries to the west. I found a 1920's Thompson sub machine gun down a deep rift at Milverton. The police confiscated it. In July 1968 me and the two Peters just escaped from Swildons as a massive flood took away the 40 ft pot. I got married in Sept. Both occasions were traumatic.

The two Peters went away to college but the dim old village lad did not. I smashed the motor bike into a mini on the Mendips then flew smartly over the top of it. Bad back for months. Pete Rose kept in touch from his digs in Portsmouth and very soon I was caving with The Portsmouth Polytechnic Caving Club. Pete travelled in an old Ford Pop. buying half a gallon of petrol at a time. Impractical sports cars came later. My first trip with my adoptive group was at GB in April 1967. Eventually they forgot about my humble education and invited me to student reunions. PR became a pharmacist and PG a country doctor. I did Yorkshire, Wales and Derbyshire meets with the PPTCC always dragging along the steel camera box. Only Pete Rose and I took photos of those trips. They were good days. Nobody had any money. Portsmouth often stayed at the old Cerberus cottage at Fairy Cave Quarry. In the early 1970's Pete Rose qualified and worked for Boots The Chemists as did I . Caving resumed as before though I wonder now how all the other students got on.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

PPTCC at Horton c 1970.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Somewhere up norf.