Slaughter Stream Cave, Forest of Dean rescue

[paul]

A caver fell on a climb in Slaughter Stream Cave on Saturday at around 1 to 2 p.m. and a call out was raised. The Gloucester Cave Resue Group attended with assistance from the West Brecon Cave Rescue Team.

I was part of a group of 5 Orepheus C.C. members who had been on a trip down Miss Grace's Lane Cave and were camping in the area and lent our assistance.

The GCRG and WBCRT did well in getting the stretcher through low crawls leading to a 10m pitch below the entrance pitches (sorrry, not having been in the cave before I'm not familiar with names).

The casualty reached the entrance and waiting ambulance at 3:10 a.m. on Sunday morning having suffered a suspected fracture of the femur and broken rib.

 

[Huw Groucutt]

nasty!

what is miss graces like by the way? any good?

 

[paul]

nasty!

what is miss graces like by the way? any good?

Excellent. The 100 foot concrete-lined entrance is impressive. We were lucky to be given the "Grand Tour" by John Hutchinson and Jan Karvik - about 4 hours. Lovely domed ceilings in various chambers and loads of leads.

 

[cap n chris]

It is bristling with potential to make it a very long system indeed; Jan took us on the third ever trip into the new extensions late last year - thanks, Jan! Typical of the Forest, the cave is joint controlled and what it lacks in formations it more than makes up for in interesting geology and passage shapes - also there's plenty of poised rocks in some of the traversey bits! No active stream, like Slaughter, but still worthy of a trip if you like to go somewhere "new"!

 

[Huw Groucutt]

sounds like Jan has done a lot of hard work there! gigantic dig and then showing half of Britain around the place!

 

[diggerdog adam]

Is that the cave where raw untreated sewage runs freely in the main stream way ive never been but held tales of such like? :shock:

 

[paul]

Is that the cave where raw untreated sewage runs freely in the main stream way ive never been but held tales of such like? :shock:

It was my first trip into the cave, during the rescue, and we were warned that the water in the area of the cave we were visiting was polluted.

 

[SamT]

Hmmm nice ---

its the tales of womens thingybobs hanging from the walls that sounds really inviting.

I had to crawl past one in the entrance to winnats head the other month

uke02:

 

[dunc]

I went to Slaughter quite a few years back and to be honest the stream didn't seem any different to any other (nothing obvious floating in it, lets put it that way), although I do recall seeing something hanging on the side of the passage, which strangely I didn't investigate to find out what it was!!!

 

[Fred]

The sewage problem at Wetsink (Slaughter) is caused by the fact that the local sewage pumping station has an overflow about 5m upstream of where the stream sinks into the cave. Welsh Water (yes I know it's not in Wales) who run the pumping station have a license for the overflow to run 18 days per year so raw sewage running directly into the cave should be very infrequent. However certain debris and the nasty bugs, I guess, remain somewhat longer (ask Andy Ward). Also the main resurgence for the cave is about 200m upstream from a campsite used exclusively by school and youth groups (flow to the resurgence is fairly quick from memory).

There have been various articles in Descent and the regional press about this problem and FODCCAG (Forest of Dean Cave Conservation and Access Group) have been after the local council, Welsh Water and the Environment Agency to sort this out permanently i.e. install bigger and more reliable pumps to cope with storms. Also the license limit has been breached on numerous occaisions e.g. a year or so back the overflow ran for the whole of May when there were only a few days of rain. Welsh Water's excuse was that kids had sneeked into the pumping station, descended into the pump tanks and opened the valves!!! For some reason I am suspicious that this was not quite true.

All that said, I must confess to having been in the cave loads of times and I've never been ill (touch wood). So don't let this scare you off, after all there's 14Km to explore, lots of which is bone dry.(For access contact Andy Clarke as per the South Wales guide book).