Caving and Quarrying

Monday 22^nd February 2016

Last year, I caved a lot from January to September and then stopped.  I do this from time to time.  Florence and Will caved less and I always and only cave with them, as I have insufficient skills and confidence to cave with anyone else or anyone from my club.  Anyway, we are resuming and we kicked off our year with a walking-trip to Box.  Box is a mine, but purists will point out that it is a quarry.  If this sort of distinction interests you (it did me, a bit) I refer you to the Institute of Quarrying.  You are most welcome. This quarry (mine) is a network of dozens of miles – yes, miles – of tunnels.   Here is a good brief description and scroll down for some clear images of what you will see in Box. The entrance is locked and unlike many locked caves, it does not have a fail-safe door or gate that will always allow exit, so if you were admitted by a party with a key and they locked it once inside, you would be locked in.  I am imagining you all packing your picnics and setting off to Box this weekend, you see so I am just warning you. Here is the main way in from Box village: There is a very brief and muddy entrance crawl.  All the rest of the trip is walking and scrambling at most.  This is not caving.  It is cave-like in that it is almost all utterly dark, so you need hard-hats and lights, back up lights, good boots and clothes that are warm and that you do not mind getting trashed. This trip was most notable for being the first time we have lured Lily underground.  Here is Lily, working a Zoolander approach to ‘caving’ gear, with her friend, who also joined us for this ‘fun’ day out.  This was before we went in: We were a party of 7.  We had a survey which is next to useless once you walk about 20 meters from the entrance.  We had 2 people with us who had been in Box twice.  We all had the right gear.  We also despite all of that, got hopelessly lost.  But to be fair, we were warned that this would happen. There is graffiti everywhere in the main tunnels, much of which is possibly helpful as it was written by explorers to aid route-finding.  But beware as I think much of it is bogus or just inaccurate.  Each tunnel splits, left and right, and then each new way splits and so on, creating a seemingly infinite network of tunnels, most of which look identical to one another.  A short way in, you reach The Cathedral. This is a vast chamber with a large gap in the ceiling way above you, admitting daylight.  Looking up from the bottom of the pit: From this hub, passages divert and within moments, you are in a maze.  The things that most interested me were the relics of quarrying that litters this place. For example, an old stone-cutters two-man saw, embedded in a stone, still operable. Here are 2 of our explorers mining: The quarry (mine) dates back to Roman times, but quarrying continued until the 1960s.  At the far end of one of the passages, the MOD has a locked facility underground.  One day, I hope to get closer to this area. But perhaps the most poignant feature is the writing on the cut stone walls of the passages.  All over, in pencil, are words and more often, sums.  The miners worked out their sums for quantities of stone cut and moved, and related it to what they would be paid.  Here are some: I wouldn’t mind going back for a longer trip – there is a good through trip which can take some hours – with a knowledgeable leader.  I was afraid when we got so lost this time, because unlike caves, there is no real way for route-finding by feature or obstacle.  I also worried that we had finally got Lily underground and then we got lost.  Our trip  was quite brief and we were not lost for very long, but I was unhappy.  People have got very lost in here, for days on end.  If you do go, take a survey, try and get a leader, and make sure you have a reliable call out who knows what to do. Two weeks later, Florence, Will and I went back to my default cave, GB.  My third ever Mendip cave and my favourite of all the caves I have seen, which to be fair is not a  vast list but it is dozens.  It had been very wet, and the upper series of GP, known as Ladder Dig which I have visited, sumps in wet weather but we were just keen to have a leisurely ‘standard’ round trip.  This involves climbing up the waterfall, and I have done this a few times, but this time was the first time it has been really wet. It was great to see the cave being so lively.  Because of my unique caving style, I like to linger in waterfalls and stream-ways, so I did get very wet.  But, I was also permitted to lead the trip (except for the bits where I might have fallen off the cave) and I loved doing that.  GB is the perfect cave.  Fact.