For some reason I had taken it upon myself to organise people into the caving groups for the day, sorting everyone into GB or Swildon’s. As I hadn’t been down GB in a good few years, I decided to put myself on the team. Joining me would be Jess Brock, Nem, Dan, Shea, Tara and Sia. Four leaders, three freshers. An interesting choice on my part! The other group was led by Toria, aidan and Joe, also going down GB. The sky was mostly clear, with wonderful dapplings of sun across the Mendips.
In spite of the organisational chaos, everyone got onto a trip and I told people who was driving for what and for them to organise it themselves. I grabbed a survey and got Aditi and John to join my car alongside Tara and Shea. But it was upon starting up my car that I realised I had a problem! Reversing out and not hitting any cars. I think it was purely difficult based on nerves; Shea got out and guided me but by god it was awful. Numerous times I just… turned the wrong way. Shea found this immensely funny, saying that she was tempted to come into the car and do it herself (she’s saying – as I write this – she would have. If I do it again on the next trip, I’m out).
The drive itself was fine, with me opening the window and yelling “cave wankers” at the groups going down Swildon’s. The lay by for GB was easy enough to park in, approaching a wooden fence. As we started to change, the other drivers arrived. After getting changed, we started to make our way across the field to the entrance. To my joy, I spotted numerous mushrooms on the way! I resolved to take pictures of them – or indeed them – on the way back from the cave.
My group headed in first, the path directly to the gate covered in thorns. As Jess and Dan were more in their terroritory, they led with Nem immediately following, me taking the back of the group. Given the rushing wet of Swildon’s, this trip looked like it would be a lot easier, with much of it being great stomping halls. To my memory, we didn’t go into Devil’s Elbow, coming the Gorge, a huge chamber which followed into the Main Chamber, the site of the Bridge, where Nem and I separately made the same reference to Lord of the Rings and the Bridge of Khazad-Dum.
It appeared to me that wherever we went, there were calcite formations to marvel at. Climbing to the top of the rocky hill in the Main Chamber, we saw amazing flowstone, falling to great distances, their slight orange colouring and finger-like stals reminding me of witches hands.
We followed the way to the right, ending up at Rhumba alley. Dan mentioned that if we went in and looked right, we’d see some nice formations. Tara, Shea and I went in but we didn’t fancy squeezing too much, worried about some of the flowstone we saw on the walls. Thus, we headed back.
The path back took us to a window to the Main Chamber, where we again got a chance to marvel at the witch-hands formations.
At some point in these proceedings, we had a successful lights out moment. Upon turning them off, Nem started talking about how when she was younger, she’d turn off her light outside and see how long it took her to see without it. She then noted such a thing would not happen here. There was no light at all. True darkness. After she stopped talking, I had great fun poking her face, which she reciprocated with some playful slaps.
We cimbed down an oxbow, coming into the Main Chamber passage, albeit further downstream than before. To our right were some bolts, so Dan and Jess got to work up-rigging a ladder. An impressive feat, he attached one ladder portion, climbed, then attached another portion to the next blt. Eventually he made it up, to our amazement (though not surprise, I will stress). We all climbed up after him, getting into a small chamber some half-dozen metres over the streamway. There was soon a metal gate-frame in the passage, leading one down to a low wet crawl. I volunteerd to go and see if it was worth it Goddamn it was narrow! My chest got completely soaked in water and I had to turn my head to avoid it touching the water. I came up past some wonderful tall stals, both hanging and standing, and came into another rather narrow chamber. Dan was following and he soon popped through. He pointed out to me what I’d somehow missed on my way in: the masses of helictites that covered the ceiling! Pure white, writhing out of the roof like worms. Strangely creepy but beautiful, I’d never seen so many before. The others to come through were Shea and Nem.
Dan explained that there was another narrow crawl even worse than the one we just did. We went forwards to take a look. My lord it looked grim! Dan said we’d have to go in on our backs and, despite it being shallower than th eone we’d just been in, it had a layer of water on the bottom of it. I’d had experience with going into crawls on my back before and they were hardly fun when they were dry! When wet, the water going down the neck is just awful. An entirely unpleasant experience. Nem had very similar thoughts. Or at least, she had a single thought upon seeing that grim passage: “Nope”. Shea was unsure but sorted of wanted to go through, the enthusiastic fresher that she was, but she didn’t go through either in the end and we all returned to the others. Dan went first to see if Jess wanted to come through for pictures. So, Nem, Shea and I waited. We waited for about five minutes until it was clear we should just go ourselves.
Upon getting out of the crawl, I saw Jess sitting near the entrance, camera pointed at me. Ah. In the crawl, I hadn’t exactly been quiet, grunting quite loudly as I went. Now it was all on film. Shea and Nem had similar reactions to the camera. We learned that the chamber we had just been in was called Helictite Chamber. Apt name, indeed!
I climbed down the ladder to the Main Chamber streamway and waited in the dark for the others to descent, singing Conan Grey and Cavetown to myself as I did so. Tara was the first to follow. She stood at the bottom in such a way that, with my light off, it was impossible to see her. The rocks made it such that – in spite of the other caver’s lights – she was hidden behind a veil of shadow.
Nem belayed Dan down as he dismantled the ladder, using some funky shenanigans to manage it. All quite impressed, the rest of us stood by and did lil’ boogies to keep ourselves warm. As they packed away the rope and ladder, I led the freshers up the stream. There were a few climbs beyond some loose rocks. It was where the stream came from, but its difficulty gave me pause. Shea pointed out a possible path to the right, though as we went to investigate, Dan told us the first way was the right way. The climbs were a tad ticky and Sia required some assistance on one of them, with me giving a knee up. Passing the climb, we walked underneath the Bridge and continued on to the entrance, the crawling and the tightness in the early sections of the cave making me hopeful for Swildon’s the next day so I could get my oversuit nice and clean for the journey home. It all made Nem frustrated with herself, having left her kneepads in Jess’ car! Shea also complained about knee pain, having also down down the crawl to Helictite Chamber. At some points I bragged about how my knees felt fine, much to their chagrin.
I gathered most of the mushrooms of the way back, though Sia sat on some of the more vibrant ones, which I’d actually jinxed a few moments before. One of the mushrooms was shapped like a slightly stretched ping pong ball with a slight grey colouring (I suspect I pulled the sem off by accident). It had a hell of a bounce! Nem had fun playing ping pong with it on the inside of my helmet. After taking pictures, I tossed them away.
As we were changing, four horses/mules/donkeys/equines gathered around Shea, which was quite alarming, but upon approaching I began giving them scratchies, so cute! They were adorable! Later, waiting for the others, Shea often stood in the sun, enamoured with the English countryside, something she called “Exceptional”. Actually, that might not be 100% what she said. Luckily, I’ve got her quoted:
“As a Canadian, who is from a part of Canada where the terrain is rather different, today was something ‘exceptional’ (however, others on the trip argue ‘exceptional’ is not the word to usually describe sucha day. The drive was nice… because we made it. After some questioning reverse-ing skills and a tractor. As someone who has only seen such things on the silver screen, I can certainly say the sights, physical aspect and teamwork were experiences I could could get in real life and the group I was with.”
The cool evening sun and the people I was with certainly made this a memorable caving trip, one I will remember. The helictites were cool too.
