Bagshawe Cavern

Lots of things were happening at the Chapel the morning after the January meeting, two visiting groups heading into Peak Cavern, along with Jess's diving party, a huge group heading out to work on the digging project (NNNPD) and a small group of five of us headed over to Bradwell for a very pleasant visit into Bagshawe Cavern.

Present on the trip were Alastair, Irene, Cat, Adam and yours truly.

Present: Jules Barrett, Clive Westlake, Christine Wilson, Alan Brentnall & Ann Soulsby

After a weekend's worth of rainfall saturating the hills of Bradda Moor from the back end of Hurricane Kate, putting the kibosh on any Peak trips, the storm called Barny came through to top up the water levels. We had a planned trip into Bagshawe Cavern on Tuesday night - would it be a "short trip", or would the levels be low enough to let us get something done? Not only did we have a trip into Baggers, but Mickey Campbell emailed me to let me know that he would be taking a troop of scouts down there at the same time. If the water was up, would there even be room for all of us?

After a week of general deluge we wondered how far into the system we would be able to get. As it was, whilst some areas were sumped off, we managed to get to most of the parts that John wanted to take us to.

Alan Brentnall had arranged access into the cave and led one team while Ali and I went ahead with Gordon. I had been a few times before so led us but allowed Gordon the opportunity to work out our location using his copy of the survey. It turned out to be a useful exercise and showed just how easy it is to get disoriented and while we may've seemed a bit mean it served a purpose and hopefully will help him achieve his accreditation.