Although Dave H turned up wearing his smart suit, he was unable to stop and join us as he had things to do: mind you the expected gang did arrive so we had a group of five altogether. Plenty of other cavers were milling around on the Green so there's still life in the mid-week Mendip caving scene.
Off and underground by 7:00pm with low water levels, rather unexpectedly after all this hammering rain we've had recently. This was Brendan's first trip to Swildon's Hole so we'd already decided to stick to an Upper Series route - being a nice chappie, I'd loaned B a fleece, neoprene socks, oversuit, knee & elbow pads, belt, helmet and light - thankfully I didn't need to loan out any wellies as he had his own.
We made rapid progress directly to the Old Grotto, had a chat about cave formations and met another group who were taking some pictures; Mat A in our group had his camera too so we posed a bit for him (probably mostly hideous!). On down to the Water Chamber and then the Old 40' with a handline on the cascade and then down to "check out" the 20'; some interesting spaghetti** as usual and then return up to the cascade and take a detour up the traverse of the old 40' top section to show the others (a) where it is and (b) what it's like and where the rigging for an abseil can be belayed etc..
** Ladder clipped to one anchor; karabiner clipped through top rung of ladder and fastened via slack sling to second anchor (ladder rung would fail under shock load in event of first anchor failure) with 50m x 11mm EN892 (soon to have nicely shredded internal fibres!) rope for presumably lining everyone except the leader since it was a single rope dangling off the pitch head (... unless the leader was using jammers to self-line, which is a possibility, I suppose).
Back to the Water Chamber; we all have been a bit puffy and concur that the air in Swildon's is still not good - the poor air from the summer has not entirely cleared yet.
Then up the Wet Way and have a nice bit of moistness; climb up the final cascade and then take Binney's Link to the start of the Long Dry Way - squirm our way past Robin Gray at Jacob's Ladder and re-meet his group as we approach the Old Grotto; we then visit Water Chamber again and re-do the Wet Way just for fun before exiting the cave, 1hr50mins after entering.
Down the pub by 9:30pm for tea and biscuits*.
All good stuff.
* Yeah, sure! Pints of alcohol, more like!
