crude vertical caving

[Kenilworth]

Talk of 1930s cavers has me wondering what you have done or would do without knowledge of or access to modern srt gear.

I had the advantage of absolute ignorance, so got to experiment a bit before discovering "propriety". My father and grandfather climbed hand over hand into many small pits, probably not much more than thirty feet. They were strong men who used their bodies for work and play and knew what they were capable of. I was not as confident, and never climbed very far in this way. When I was little my grandfather showed me that by tying a stick to the end of a rope I could throw it over a branch, sit on it, and pulley myself into otherwise unclimbable trees. Later I used this method to lower and raise in caves. Learning from the rotted artifacts of earlier saltpeter prospectors, I threw many notched tree trunks into small pits, with great success. Experiments with rope ladders showed them to be more work than a single knotted rope. Then I learned about prusiks and rappelling and those ways were abandoned, though I still use a knotted rope now and then.

 

[Disgusted from Cornwall.]

I'm 41. There are a number of palmerston forts in the area I grew up in. Some of these were used by the MOD for training. As a result, I had an 80m bit of Marlow Black rope, which used to be worn like a Miss World banner thing, on our bikes. I suppose this was around 1986. This is utterly crazy, but we decided it was quite a good idea to abseil off St Germans Viaduct (major railway bridge). I knew a round turn two half hitches knot and that was about it. I got mums sewing box and some old seatbelts from the scrapyard (with help of my dad) and made a harness using a thimble, sailmakers needle and kite line. It was completely "ad hoc" there was no measuring, it was just bunged together. The D ring was a shackle off one of the boats. I got a bit of "the fence" (1/2" metal bar) and bent it, using the vice and a big metal tube (a jack handle) into something which was a bit like a fig 8. We then went an abseiled off the bridge.

We used to "abseil", using body friction into the moat of the local fort. Coming up was a bit alarming, hand over hand. Having said, we were about 10 and probably had quite good power to weight ratio. We had a rope "off a sailing boat", which was glossy dynamic stuff, which was about 11mm.  My mate did a hand-descender slip into the moat and took all of the skin off his hands. His ascent involved using his teeth. After that, we used rope ladders, home made, of course.

I remember being fascinated by tunnels (and the palmerston forts have several). We explored many of them until my dad exclaimed "there is a sort of fungus which lays dormant in tunnels and if you breathe it in, it grows in your lungs and can kill you".

This is what you say to discourage your children from going down holes!

Had I had known about mineshafts and prussic knots, we would probably be dead. I imagine bike torches would be the order of the day!

We used to use candles in jars and hurricane lamps in the forts/tunnels.