Dowbergill Passage
Sunday, 6 May 2007
Another highly organised and well planned trip started with me supposedly picking up Martin at 12, but couldn’t decide what to do as was raining a little. Decided to do Dowbergill passage as someone at work had been going on about how it was his favourite trip.
First we tried to find a NC1 guidebook as I’d taken mine bk to library the day before but had to eventually do without as both copies available were missing from their shelves, and it is forbidden to remove the ‘Reference only’ copy from Sam Allshorn’s room.
WE arrived at Kettlewell and set off from the car just after 4 not really knowing what to look for as didn’t have guidebook description. Luckily though I had recently had a dream about providence pot so kind of knew what we were looking for. Upon reaching the entrance shaft, I realised that this was scarily like my dream, especially when looking down the shaft, though I didn’t tell Martin until we were in the cave about how the dream ended (flooded from below, couldn’t remove lid etc).
The way into Dowbergill passage can most easily be found by following the cable that I assume is present from the ‘numerous rescues’ mentioned in guide. Dowbergill is a great piece of passage, slightly confusing at the providence end due to various boulder mazes etc. We were both soon wishing we hadn’t worn wetsuits (especially Martin who had somehow managed to squeeze into the ‘tacklestore wetsuit’, though he couldn’t fasten the crotch strap.) as there are numerous climbs up and down the rift making it very hot work.
Quite near the end I had convinced myself that ‘Bridge chamber’ would be obvious and that we hadn’t passed it yet, and that this was a REALLY long trip but we soon popped out into the magnificent Dow cave.
Dow Cave itself would certainly make a fantastic fresher trip (even for coachmeet) and was far more impressive than I imagined.
Excellent trip and back to the car in 4hours.