If, like my extended circle of friends and some family members, it bores you rigid to hear me waffle on about caves, wait until I post something different, something interesting, maybe about decorating or pruning.
In the middle of the Mendips is a small village called Priddy. It’s a beautiful place, with a couple of handfuls of houses strung out round the ancient green which is open grazing land; and a few more dwellings on the roads in and out of the village, spaced away from each other, remote. Two pubs appear to thrive in the village, due in the case of one to its amazing location and many visitors who walk and cycle in the hills. The other is tucked away and seems to have more local trade as well as cyclists and hikers, dog walkers and cavers. There is another pub, not in Priddy but not far away, that is the real cavers pub. Two caves are accessed from it’s car park and the landlord holds the keys to these. I have not been there. I am told he assesses the cut of your gib before deciding if your party is worthy of a trip down these caves, so I may need to toughen up a bit more first.
We have lived in the area for over 20 years and Priddy has always drawn us. We often cycle there, ascending the Gorge from Cheddar village, making it an arduous, long climbing ride, that is also very rewarding and great training for Sportives. We have walked many times from Priddy and one of the most haunting and spiritual places I have ever visited is just outwith the village, Nine Barrows, an ancient burial site with its 9 huge raised mounds, spread all across this area of vast exposed moorland on the top of the Mendip hills.
I have often seen cavers in Priddy, kitting up for a trip or coming back, muddy, wet and wrung out. My reaction was always to wonder at their foolishness, if I’m honest. And until yesterday I had never been underground in the Mendips, my other caving having been in Devon. However, yesterday we set off to a pair of linked caves, not in Priddy but not all that far away, close enough to come back to the village after and a visit to the pub anyway. These caves are accessed from a disused quarry which is locked as is the entrance to the caves. To cave here you need access codes and keys which have to be applied for and now, having done these caves, I think this is a very good thing. The first trips I did were introductory, easy by caving standards, if challenging to me. I have no fear of closed, tight spaces and the idea of being underground, beneath millions of tons of rock, worming about in (mainly) natural water-made burrows does not worry me. I do think about it. I think: above me is a church yard, a farm, a lane. Or a quarry, as it was yesterday. Sandwiched between planes of rock for very tight squeezes, I feel hugely aware that I am wedged between ancient stones. But I don’t fantasise about rock-falls or ‘what if’ scenarios all that much, because I trust Florence and Will and we only go into caves that are known, surveyed and, insomuch as any cave can be, safe.
However, I feel that caves have atmospheres, and of the 4 I have done, 3 have been largely happy, intriguing places. But the first cave we did yesterday did make me uneasy and I really don’t know why. Here is the locked entrance to the cave we travelled to and from where we exited:
I think it looks rather forbidding and in fact we didn’t go in this way though we did come out of it. We went in to the other cave, here:
Sorry it’s rather blurry. This entrance is quite small and to be honest, I preferred the 2 fixed ladders climb into the last cave I did, to this short descent into the passage. It just felt eerie. I wanted to drop out of the trip right then.
We were not 100% sure that we were in the cave we meant to start from, though it soon became apparent that we almost certainly were. The options in caves are usually either go in and climb, crawl and squeeze about, look at the decorated chambers and do a few challenges, turn round and come back, more or less the same way. Or, as in this cave, travel through the first cave into the next. At some point you have to decide if going on or turning back is your best bet. The passages in the first cave, whilst listed as ‘moderate’ in terms of challenge, were really tough, we were constantly descending (meaning that turning back would involve a lot of climbing back up) and there were some interesting squeezes that whilst well do-able, I didn’t want to repeat in reverse. We are a great group of squeezers because, like Russian dolls, we are perfectly arranged in descending order of size: my friend Lou is smaller than me; I am smaller than Florence; Florence is smaller than Will. So when I say it’s perfect, that’s mainly from my perspective and Lou’s, not so much from Will’s because we use Will as our squeeze tester. If he fits, we’ll all fit. Poor Will, we also stand on him, drag ourselves up squeezes by holding his cave suit trousers and get bodily shoved through and up holes by Will. It’s mainly me who needs this level of assistance, but he does the work of 2 men. Here are some images from the trip, all in the first cave:
This is typical of the lovely formations to be seen in these Mendip caves. And in this incredibly attractive shot you can see from L to R, Will, me and Florence but the sparkly stuff is both super-fine tree roots beaded with droplets of water running from the roof of the cave and also curtain formations of calcite.
In this cave, after about an hour and a half of hard work you reach a point where there is a fairly long, very low wet passage to negotiate, a ‘duck’ though you are not required to put your head under water and duck through, that is called a sump. You don’t really get your face wet in a duck, there is always air, ie a gap between the water and the roof of the passage, but, as in this case, you may be lying in water and wriggling on your back or side through the water to get to the next dry section. This was shallow but the space was also very low, about 18 – 24 inches so you had to lie down flat on your back in the water, turn your face to the side and push through with feet and elbows. To be honest the worst part is that from then on, you’re wet through and the water was shockingly cold at first. Only 1 caver can go at a time and it takes a while.
So before we went through this, we needed to decide if it was better to go on and hope to be soon in the second cave; or to turn back. Will, our test-pilot, valiantly went ahead, so whatever we did now, he was soaking wet. He went on after the duck and shouted back that he was sure he’d found the rift that he recognised – Drop Out Rift – that signified the start of the next cave. Florence went. Lou and I had an urgent whispered conference about what we wanted to do. Apart from the fact that the 2 experienced and strong cavers were now through the duck, so they’d have to come back if we backed out, neither of us wanted to go back into Fairy’s Cave. Partly because we didn’t fancy the climbs and squeezes and partly because we just plain didn’t like that cave.
We decided the do the duck. Had I known beforehand that I’d be doing this, I would almost certainly have declined to go on the trip, so it’s just as well I didn’t know because despite my fruity language (I am told) and the fact that it’s unpleasant, it wasn’t that bad or even that hard. The good news was that once through that and after a dry flat-out then hands-and-knees crawl, Will knew for sure that we had traversed from the first cave to the next cave, the duck being the meeting point and we were not far from the exit. Maybe an hour. Which was reassuring as we were all wet to our skins, my boots were full of water, which I tried to empty and you need to keep moving to stay warm.
This cave was quite different. A bit more roomy and we took a detour to look at a fine, well decorated chamber which I have no shots of as the camera was in our dry pot some way back ready for us to retrieve it later. The going seemed easier, which is odd as this cave is rated as difficult in places and then we reached the passage where the locked entrance is, and through the metal door, we could smell and feel fresh air. Problem: there was a 3 meter pretty much vertical climb to the door, with a rope and few hand/foot holds. This is my weakness, climbing. I say this as if I can offer several compensating strengths such as amazing descent skills or fearless squeezing but I can’t. It’s the weakest of my weaknesses. I stood at the bottom and wept. I am now really ashamed of that little weep and I think it may have been a reaction to the adrenaline of the past 3 hours of work. Anyway, Will and Florence rigged me up and of course I got out in a few minutes, followed by the brave and goat-like Louella.
Even the first cave I did, in a freezing cold February, didn’t make me shake as these caves did. I shook so much I could barely walk back to the car, strip off my layers of wet clothes and cave-suit and dress in dry warm clothes. An hour later, in the pub in Priddy, hogging the fire and eating spicy chili, I was still cold and shaking.
Making the most of the university hols, I am due to cave again tomorrow with Will and Florence and we can either re-visit a cave I have done in Devon, and see more of it, or choose another Mendip cave. As if that wasn’t riches enough, Florence and I are attending a residential caving weekend this weekend, an introduction offered by one of the Mendip’s leading cave clubs, with a night in the bunkhouse of their ‘hut’ thrown in, and some options for caves on the Saturday and the Sunday. Florence isn’t a novice, far from it, but they said it’s fine to go along anyway. If I had to cave today, unless some-one’s life depended on it, I couldn’t do it. My body hurts so much, but I know it will recover if I rest it. Worse than that, my self-confidence took a hard knock because the caves we did yesterday revealed my personal short-comings and illustrated how very dependent I am on the others. I was afraid in that cave, I was afraid we’d get lost, that the door wouldn’t open, that I’d get stuck and finally that I couldn’t get up that last blasted climb. If I’d been alone (which would never, ever happen to any sane caver and they are sane, risk-averse people within the obvious confines of their activities underground) I’d still be at the bottom of that rock wall.
Part way into Fairy, I vowed never to cave again, if I got out. I said I wasn’t going to Bakers tomorrow or the Mendips again at the weekend. However, I think I will do the weekend trip as I know I will be among novice cavers and I want to meet the club members. If you never challenge yourself, you never move on. This is my mantra, though it must be said here that I class adding a new cake to my baking repertoire as a challenge. I do challenge myself with things like cycling and running, I like to achieve new goals. But maybe I’m challenging myself too much with the caves. Or maybe once the gloomy sense of unease and ill-will that pervaded Fairy has dissipated and my mind and body hurt less, I’ll be fine.
