Pete Rose

[The Old Ruminator]

So sorry that you are gone old friend for over 60 years.

 

[The Old Ruminator]

Pete and I met when we were both at differant schools back around 1964. Later we met up with Peter Glanvill ( MRODoc ) . The two Peters went to university. I went to a sec modern. Pete Rose went to Portsmouth Polytechnic where there was a very active caving club. Pete kept in touch and I got sort of adopted by the club doing trips with them in all the English caving regions. Pete and I also joined Cerberus CC so we were active at Fairy Cave Quarry from the late 1960's. Pete got a bang licence back in the day when it was stick or plaster eight pounds at a time. I had made pipe b*mbs out of scaffolding nearly killing Pete when one went off prematurely. I got into diving for 25 years and took Pete on as a trainee. He was pretty hopeless always frantic about being carried away in the tide. Time went by as it does. Pete owned his own chemists shop in Crediton . After retirement he had a form of leukemia for a long while which finally meant him having to have two blood transfusions every week. Sadly he contracted a nasty form of cancer and died quietly in bed at home which is what he wanted. Two many memories to share properly

 

[mrodoc]

Pete was a good friend with a quirky sense of humour. He and I became virtually the sole diggers in Skullcap Cave at Chudleigh in Devon. After Tony Boycott banged a boulder at the end and remarked it would need more blasting Pete and I returned the following week. Driven into a frenzy by the hollow dripping sound beyond Pete dug like a maniac terrier allowing us to enter the cave beyond that evening. We found 20 metres of well decorated relict streamway - the best find in Devon for decades. He assisted in many other digs and spurred us on with his gloomy pronouncements on their prospects when he considered them a waste of time. He and Nick were responsible almost single handedly for opening up the collector's piece of St. Dunstan's Well Cave on the Mendips and came up with the memorable name of Domestos Bend for the intial U-tube squeeze. Who can forget his catch phrases 'Just one Cornetto' sung at full volume in large Welsh passages or 'You're all doomed' as we prepared to dive Scottish sumps or his catch all comment 'Wondrous' spoken so many times my wife and I referred to him by that moniker.