Alien-style walls, with formations above
It’s been several months since I caved. I am comfortable with the fact that I am not going to be a winter caver. It’s not just the cold, it’s the depressed light levels that really gets to me.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to cave again in the Mendips, from The Wessex, which is the club I joined last year. Florence and Will were staying here and so we decided to just do a quick ’round trip’ in a beautiful cave called GB, near Charterhouse.
Some of the lovely formations in GB
To be honest, I didn’t want to go and I did cast about for reasons not to. I was actually very anxious because it had been a while since donning the kit and wriggling into a hole in the rocks. And the longer that I stayed away, the more detached from it I felt, and the more detached I felt, the less inclined I was becoming to return. And so on. I guess this is how you stop being a caver.
Had I missed it? Not really, because much as I have enjoyed caving for the last 12 months, I also dread the bone-penetrating cold that goes with being wet and inactive (as you are sometimes) underground, or more especially, on exiting the cave and getting de-kitted and dressed in the teeth of a north-east bitter wind as it whips off your scanties in a Mendip lay-bye.
I started caving last January and I stopped caving in late October. It wasn’t a conscious decision to stop, I just was busy, then it got colder, then there were fewer trips, then I declined a couple of trips…I think it’s fair to say my caving season will run from late February to late October. I especially like coming out in day-light and warm sunshine. I also quite like summer evening caving when it’s light when you go in and dusk when you emerge, with the bats, from the hole.
Florence in the red hat, coaxing me down a little climb in GB - cheese works best
Yesterday, we explored a little de-tour in GB called Rhumba Alley – whose name I pinched for my Rhumba Alley cuffs – and we did the pretty standard round trip too. This is a fairly gentle cave, very pretty, with mild to moderate challenges, some climbs and scrambles, a few small bits but nothing too tight. It also has a waterfall climb that I have now completed 3 times, once when the water was so low it almost wasn’t a waterfall, once when it was so high it was in spate and once yesterday when it was just right.
Pretty back-drop - I look as if I am about to have tea
This little section makes you feel really epic, because, yes it’s a little bit exposed and yes, it is a long way down and it’d be awesome if you didn’t fall off, but it’s actually a series of achievable challenges rather than a massive scary experience and once you reach the top, you stand (in my case, you stand on one leg, because I lost a wellie in a crevasse and Will was retrieving it), hands on your hips, lumberjack style, surveying the way you’ve just come up and feeling pretty good. You might nod your head a little in a way that affirms your climb. I did. It’s dark, no-one saw.
As the trip, which was about 2.5 hours long, went on, I was aware that I was really starting to enjoy it and the feeling of wanting to cave again had returned. There were also hibernating bats in the cave, quite near the entrance, tiny black pods suspended from fragments of rock. Some caves are closed in winter so as not to disturb the bats, but GB is fine as long as you are aware of, and don’t shine your light at, them as this might awaken them – and if they wake up now, they surely will die. I love bats. On the way out, I was allowed to lead and as I came up a little climb, I looked up and saw a GIANT bat, an uber-bat, fat and black, on the rock face ahead of me. I *may* have exclaimed about this mother-lode-bat. I’m not scared of bats but seriously if this one had wanted to start a situation, it’d be trouble.
It was a black rock. Let down. And – mainly – relief.
More 'pretties' in GB - curtain formations
The shots here are why I love GB. These pictures, taken by Will, are all of me and Florence in GB. The light is of course from the flash, it doesn’t actually look like that usually.
This is MY cave, right?
I am back to the caves, with another trip next weekend and more in the pipe-line.
My absence has done me good. I am (so far) less anxious and I am stronger, physically. I am a little lighter – not much – but my upper body is stronger so it felt more secure, relying on my arms and shoulders. It’s going to be a good season.
You are so brave! Just seeing the pics of you in those confined spaces makes me feel nervous! xxx
Hehehe, I am so far from brave Nicola, in fact I am the melt-down Queen! GB isn’t small, the spaces are comfy to vast XX