Wormy
New member
After our previous trip to find Gods bridge river cave, and failing miserably, we decided to have a trip back (11/09/2015).
Last time we were there we pushed as far as possible, through very tight beddings and ducks, into the small cave just west of the bridge itself and eventually (after about 30 cold wet meters according to my diary) gave up and went to the pub when the weather turned and it started with the proverbial cats and dogs.
Luckily the weather was very nice on Friday and the bed of the Greta was almost completely dry with a few scattered pools.
A bit of research had given us a better idea of where to go so we set of at a very leisurely pace. After wandering up and down for an hour or so and checking a lot of the river bank, and scars above it, we decided that the cave was obviously made up by wicked people with nothing better to do than annoy cavers. We wandered back to the river and sat down to think (read smoke and winge about caves that may or may not exist). The small compression we had sat in had a few loose rocks in the bottom with a little darkness behind so we started poking about, after moving a couple we could definitely see into a reasonably deep void so using the strap as a hand line I dropped into quite a spacious cave. This eventually turned out to be the breakdown chamber, just before the ducks through to the big low sump, in Gods bridge resurgence cave. We had a good poke about in this and explored a few of the more promising sumps but without a map were unwilling to start diving willy nilly.
The resurgence cave is quite impressive in itself and I'm quite tempted to have a bit of a dig at the clay sections in the west end.
Eventually we had pushed every corner and decided to go and find the real cave. After wading through all the nettles, we found the main entrance. Part of the cliff face above it had collapsed bringing down a small tree, and effectively hiding the entrance, we spent about half an hour shifting the blockage and squeezed inside.
MUD....I cannot stress this enough! Some of the most bloody awful mud I have ever come across and about 50 meters of it at a rough guess, it doesn't help that the bedding one needs to get through is only about 60cm high in some places and the mud is about 50cm deep. The stream way at the end of the MUD is very impressive however, with some impressive avens and numerous oxbows. We pushed to either end and then decided to find the squeeze exit in the hope of avoiding all the mud, we found the correct oxbow and a promising looking crawl but about 10m in it started closing right down and we had to reverse out, liberally filling the bottom of my trousers with pebbles.
Back through the mud it was then, numerous squelchy minutes later we oozed out into the sunlight and went for a bath in the closest river pool possible. All in all a good cave, very impressive stream way, and a few moments excitement when we thought we'd found something new. Not an easy entrance to find though, for anyone attempting it in future, there are two small quarries on the north bank of the Greta, the main entrance is in the corner of the westernmost one behind a lot of nettles and rocks at about: NY 95847 12676. Entrances to the resurgence cave are further east, there are about 3 entrances in total, two only visible from walking in the river and looking at the cliff faces, the dug entrance to drop in from the top is at: NY 95945 12752 although we did roll a few rocks back to stop livestock dropping into it.
Last time we were there we pushed as far as possible, through very tight beddings and ducks, into the small cave just west of the bridge itself and eventually (after about 30 cold wet meters according to my diary) gave up and went to the pub when the weather turned and it started with the proverbial cats and dogs.
Luckily the weather was very nice on Friday and the bed of the Greta was almost completely dry with a few scattered pools.
A bit of research had given us a better idea of where to go so we set of at a very leisurely pace. After wandering up and down for an hour or so and checking a lot of the river bank, and scars above it, we decided that the cave was obviously made up by wicked people with nothing better to do than annoy cavers. We wandered back to the river and sat down to think (read smoke and winge about caves that may or may not exist). The small compression we had sat in had a few loose rocks in the bottom with a little darkness behind so we started poking about, after moving a couple we could definitely see into a reasonably deep void so using the strap as a hand line I dropped into quite a spacious cave. This eventually turned out to be the breakdown chamber, just before the ducks through to the big low sump, in Gods bridge resurgence cave. We had a good poke about in this and explored a few of the more promising sumps but without a map were unwilling to start diving willy nilly.
The resurgence cave is quite impressive in itself and I'm quite tempted to have a bit of a dig at the clay sections in the west end.
Eventually we had pushed every corner and decided to go and find the real cave. After wading through all the nettles, we found the main entrance. Part of the cliff face above it had collapsed bringing down a small tree, and effectively hiding the entrance, we spent about half an hour shifting the blockage and squeezed inside.
MUD....I cannot stress this enough! Some of the most bloody awful mud I have ever come across and about 50 meters of it at a rough guess, it doesn't help that the bedding one needs to get through is only about 60cm high in some places and the mud is about 50cm deep. The stream way at the end of the MUD is very impressive however, with some impressive avens and numerous oxbows. We pushed to either end and then decided to find the squeeze exit in the hope of avoiding all the mud, we found the correct oxbow and a promising looking crawl but about 10m in it started closing right down and we had to reverse out, liberally filling the bottom of my trousers with pebbles.
Back through the mud it was then, numerous squelchy minutes later we oozed out into the sunlight and went for a bath in the closest river pool possible. All in all a good cave, very impressive stream way, and a few moments excitement when we thought we'd found something new. Not an easy entrance to find though, for anyone attempting it in future, there are two small quarries on the north bank of the Greta, the main entrance is in the corner of the westernmost one behind a lot of nettles and rocks at about: NY 95847 12676. Entrances to the resurgence cave are further east, there are about 3 entrances in total, two only visible from walking in the river and looking at the cliff faces, the dug entrance to drop in from the top is at: NY 95945 12752 although we did roll a few rocks back to stop livestock dropping into it.
