The Old Ruminator
Well-known member
Anyone know if Festival Cave still exists ? My sketches from c 1965.
Festival Cave, Westleigh, East Devon
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mrodoc
Well-known member
I am quite sure it does. If you look at Google earth you can see where it is and the quarry hasn't touched that area. This was a well decorated cave with an interesting history. Discovered by DSS in 1951 (Festival of Britain year) it wasn't reported and hence was rediscovered a few years later by a group of scouts who had cycled over from my home town of Chard to examine the limestone there. They went on to make a genuine discovery of an even bigger cave they named Raider's Rift that made it to the TV. As far as I know I have the only photographs of the cave taken by our late press photographer Dave Wheadon. Raider's Rift has gone sadly but there was 300m of passage and a couple of pitches. The photo of Festival Cave here was taken when I was 17 with a 35m camera called a Cosmic made in Russia - advertised as ' the camera from the nation that photographed the moon'. I looked it up and you can find them on ebay. For their price they were excellent cameras and I used it until I could afford something more sophisticated namely a Pracktica. This was originally a Boots 64 ASA colour slide and I would have used a bulb flash. It was later scanned and colour corrected in Photoshop. It features my old school friend Colin who did a fair bit of caving with me at that time.
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The Old Ruminator
Well-known member
Yes. Out of bounds during the bat season but are they accessable now? Another would be Perry's Pot.