Somewhere in Long Churn - Yorkshire Dales Caving Adventure
Yorkshire Dales Caving Adventure
For a while now I’ve been trying to fit in more time to get underground into the caves of nearby Yorkshire. The nearest of these are only about 25 minutes from home, so very handy. And for anyone visiting The Lakes and wanting a subterranean adventure, then a short hop over to The Dales is the way to go.
Due to it being a very busy summer, for which I am hugely grateful to all those who joined us for activities, there hasn’t been time until now to get out the caving kit. So I think my last trip underground was in March with good friend Joe, when we ventured into Bull Pot, Kingsdale. This was to be my first time dealing with all the rope work and rigging, and I loved it. And wow was that an adventure.
The sense of adventure when underground is on another scale, I won’t try to describe it in words, it won’t work. This is something that needs to be done…..and endured, to appreciate.
So yesterday afternoon I met up with good friend Tony of IGuide Adventure. Being due to take a group of youngsters into a cave system known as Long Churn this Friday, Tony was keen to reacquaint himself with the venue and was happy for me to tag along and show me around the place as it was mostly new to me.
Things didn’t start too well as we took a wrong turn shortly after entering the cave and subjected ourselves to a long and rather tight crawl for some way before realising we’d made a little blunder. Reversing back through this was most definitely type 2 fun! We did laugh quite a lot afterwards, so all good.
Once on the correct trajectory all went very well and I had a splendid tour of this wonderful cave system. We negotiated features such as ‘The Baptist Passage / Baptistry Crawl, The Plank Pool, The Double Shuffle Pool’. We wriggled through ‘The Slot’ and visited ‘The Cheese Press’ but didn’t tackle this one as enough tight squeezes had been negotiated already. We also passed Dr. Bannisters Hand Basin and briefly visited The Dolly tubs. Lots to do and see that’s for sure.
Our final scramble had a strong flow of water cascading down it, making progress very challenging. One of us had to climb this without a rope and thankfully Tony took on this duty and kindly fixed a rope up for me, which I happily accepted. The actual moves were not difficult and the rock is all super grippy - it all is in caves due to the lack of Lichen or Moss - but stepping into the flow of water was disconcerting due to its immense power. Anyway, all was well and all that remained was a straightforward plod upstream through the cascading waters, so I bit like a gorge scramble, in the dark!
As we surfaced from the cave, back into the stunning, Limestone clad Yorkshire Dales, a Harvest Super Moon was rising over Pen Y Ghent. Icing on the cake or what.
Thanks for reading. Pretty likely there’ll be more caving features over the next couple of months. But hopefully still plenty of climbing will be occurring too, it ain’t winter yet folks.
If you’re visiting The Lakes and would like to try some adventurous and fun activities, we offer loads (not caving just yet, but can point you in the right direction if you like) and can plan a day or half day to fit in with your plans. Just get in touch and we’ll go from there.
MarkÂ
A tight squeeze - Yorkshire Dales Caving Adventure
The Slot - Yorkshire Dales Caving Adventure
Entering Long Churn - Yorkshire Dales Caving Adventure