cavemanmike
Well-known member
You obviously haven't been to the far end of oha, still penty to find down there and don't listen to rhostram he was having a bad day /nightMrs Trellis said:
Most Hideous Hole
- Thread starter yrammy
- Start date
notdavidgilmour
Member
Maeshafn wins - Hands down! :tease:
Speleofish
Active member
I've clearly led a very sheltered existence.
cavemanmike
Well-known member
That is a true story Chris.ChrisJC said:cavemanmike said:You obviously haven't been to the far end of oha, still penty to find down there and don't listen to rhostram he was having a bad day /nightMrs Trellis said:
I think more people have been on the Moon than to the end of OHA.
Chris.
cavemanmike
Well-known member
Depends if you are wearing a woooooly jumpernotdavidgilmour said:
crickleymal
New member
Brinchcombe iron level which should with a lot of digging connect with Perseverance iron mine. The first 100 yards is fine then it becomes low, horribly muddy and generally grotty. So much so that after two visits I swore I'd never go back.
Robert Scott
Member
I have heard from one of the original explorers of the unsurveyed West Pasture Cave (370m long) that it is a keen collector?s place. There are caves less than 20m long that have longer descriptions in NC1.
Lovely little spot Phil' helictites further up. and on exit fishpond and royal well 'thermal' to de-tox!pwhole said:Long Tor Grotto is a decent little mine in Matlock Bath, protected by a small lake of the most evil and disgusting black sewage-laden mud I have ever seen. It's a bit like the Wallows in Peak Cavern, but with cold black stinking lava instead of water. There was a dead rat floating on top of it on my only trip, and it smells of shit and diesel mostly, with hints of dirty laundry on top. Fishing waders are just long enough to enable you to get through without touching this horror, and they took about ten minutes of scrubbing in the river afterwards before I could safely put them back in my friend's car.
Amusingly, in ye olden days, they had a lemonade factory/shop above it (Whittaker's) which also operated the mine as a small showcave, and when we were digging out the Longcliffe shaft, in Castleton, we found a completely intact bottle, with stopper, buried about 10m down in the rubble - which didn't even begin until 18m down, so how this bottle survived is beyond miraculous. Mrs. Whittaker was clearly capable of serious stuff.
Anyway, I digress, as always
P.S. tomorrow other little local project should be sorted!!!
Brimstone Dyke overton/ Ashover. Haul a ton of tripod out. ab' via a ditch outfall to ocherville central and poo! (that's the good bit!) fence posts and barbed wire in abundance block the alleged way on; more ocherous shirt and the detritus of an abandoned dig.; car batteries wire more wire and spot lamps towards a dead end. mmmmm, jazzy.
pwhole
Well-known member
Boom! Excellent stuff. I do remember seeing the little helictites actually but I can't remember where they were! I also seem to remember right at the far end getting to some weird natural passage and then possibly lava? Lots of lava? Or am I thinking of somewhere else that looks exactly the same? Hahahowd git said:
Pitlamp
Well-known member
Robert Scott said:
Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that. When I was very young and even more gullible, one of the said explorers persuaded me it'd be a great idea to go and survey the cave. But he then made the cardinal error of consuming several more pints and allowed the true story to slip out. Fortunately it was much too far away from the club's premises to contemplate hitching over with caving gear so that was that.
The main exploration account is in the CPC Journal 1972 (pages 314 - 315) and is reasonably detailed. It makes the cave sound very wet and sharp, including the comment: "crawl on chert ledges which collapsed, always unexpectedly, dealing out a variety of cuts and bruises". Although not surveyed the article does tell us that the length of the cave was measured using a non stretch tape and that it is "A typical Yoredale rat run formed along joints at 255 degrees and 165 degrees" so a fair guess at where the end lies is possible.
There is a follow up note in CPC Journal 1973 (page 55) which uses the slightly longer name: "West Pasture Scar Cave" and suggests it is "the most evil cave in the Northern Hemisphere". It says they found a further "500' of purgatory" beyond what was originally thought to be a sump.
Sounds like the sort of place to go when a wetsuit is coming to the end of its life and can be regarded as "sacrificial".
David Rose
Active member
So what keeps us going to such places?
The answer is: Otter Hole. Imagine if it ended at the tidal sump. Yet now that entrance series is simply a prelude to what has to be one of the very most enjoyable trips in Britain, not just the pretty stuff, but all of it.
So who's on for visit to OHA to reveal its untapped potential?
The answer is: Otter Hole. Imagine if it ended at the tidal sump. Yet now that entrance series is simply a prelude to what has to be one of the very most enjoyable trips in Britain, not just the pretty stuff, but all of it.
So who's on for visit to OHA to reveal its untapped potential?
mrodoc
Well-known member
One place I would never go back to is Shakespeare's Cave. The approach is surprisingly exposed along a steep bank above a cliff then there is an OK entrance chamber leading to a sump. If you don't fancy a technical free dive then you have a horrible muddy phreatic tube to lump along followed by a low duck- then the cave gets too tight and you wonder why you bothered!
cavemanmike
Well-known member
David Rose said:
If you go with rhosram it will be a 15 hour round trip.
Ian Adams
Active member
David Rose said:
There is a fair bit of potential for that ...
The original survey (Chris Cowdry I think) places the "end" (as far as you can easily go) somewhere underneath Murphy's Pot. This is a large pot that has suffered two old collapses (and where a 2000 year old boar's skull was found). Historically, this has been dug and draughts have been found and lost again. Very close is Millennium pot (which I think is actually still Murphy's Pot) and you get the same story there except it is much smaller.
Only a stone's throw is the Leete cave on the bank of the River Alyn which recently (2/3 years ago) suffered a major collapse internally and the river which runs outside now appears to be running in underneath (in some part) which was probably the cause of the collapse in the first place.
We haven't been back to look at this since before lockdown last year and we have had some very wet weather since.
It is "likely" this all connects to the far end of OHA - I'd like to think so anyway.
If it does, the twelve hours of gloopious muddius and the adventure of "this cave will suck all the living enthusiasm out of you" will become virtually redundant (except for hard core cavers that want that particular experience).
Certainly worth exploring as soon as we are able ...
nearlywhite
Active member
cavemanmike said:David Rose said:
If you go with rhosram it will be a 15 hour round trip.
I've been back since (twice) and it took 6 hours... Just saying Mike...
