Brightgate Cave and Tearsall No.2 - Phil Wolstenholme

Present: Lukas (don't know his surname), Ben Tout, Phil Wolstenholme, Dominika Wróblewska

None of us had ever been here before, and we were hoping that Glyn, being local, and who was meeting us there, would know this place like the back of his hand. However, on informing him that we would be a little late meeting (as usual), he informed us that he wasn't coming, believing the trip to be the day after - and he'd never been before anyway, so we were helpless! Lukas was on his second caving trip, and had kindly driven me and D over to meet Ben at the layby. After some nervous knocking at the farm, we eventually met a grizzled old lady who gave us the key for Tearsall and some vague directions. Stumbling through the wet and muddy farmyard we made our way through several gates and intrigued herds of farm animals until we got to the appointed spot. We found Brightgate quite quickly, but the map showed it to be in the next field, so several minutes were spent wandering around that with no joy until we realised we'd been right all along. Dialing up the Cave Registry on Lukas' phone, with a ten-digit grid ref., confirmed what we suspected - that was a handy moment. The entrance is right next to the power-line poles, for future reference.

We all slithered through into the entrance chamber and thence into the maze, which lived up to its reputation immediately when I realised I would get very stuck if I pursued the route I was taking, and had to find another one. Luckily there's a cross-joint every three metres, so it doesn't take that long to get through somewhere - and as Ben had thoughtfully printed out a survey it was some help - though printing it at 72dpi meant some 'interpretation' was required in places. Eventually we rejoined the main drag, and were able to get to the bottom chamber easily - which was fantastic. Like a giant open wedge of cheese, the roof slopes down to the sediment floor where ancient stalagmites columns are wedged, with some big mounds of 'beehive' flowstone - the area remined me very much of the lower end of the upper series in Jugholes - not that far away really, and probably at a similar height. The ancient miners' inscriptions smoked on the roof are impressive, but one patch near the floor appeared to have been cleaned off - I hope this wasn't misinterpreted as modern smoked graffiti! It was all very dry and fossil-cavey, and we found some very nice calcite crystals in places on the floor that Ben took some photos of.

It's obvious the cave continues down-dip below the sediment floor, and some digs in the far right corner have extended it several metres into some muddy crawls, but the amount of excavation required, and the obvious lack of storage space for the spoil, without trashing the cave at least, is presumably what stopped them going any further. We eventually found the crawl leading to a beautiful small aven/vein-cavity labelled on the survey with 'Draught from impenetrable fissure' - it certainly was draughting, and very cold too, which suggests it might be from more cave rather than surface, as it was almost certainly warmer on top than underground. We decided to do a different route back through the maze and had no issues at all getting back to surface - a very nice little cave, and the amount of phreatic development (the whole cave) on such a steeply-sloping system so high up is very interesting.

We then set off for Tearsall Pipe Caverns, and what a faff that was - we pursued every hillock and hollow in the large field above on the right before realising it was actually down in the bottom of the dale near the trees. It's a good job we were entering via Pool Shaft as that's the only one we found - I went looking for Sump Shaft but probably didn't look far enough, as I never found it. Incidentally, the box spanners are redundant, as one bolt is missing so the panel just hinges around - and the spanners are too big for the nut anyway. Lukas has only had one SRT experience before, in Suicide Cave, so there was a certain amount of harness adjustment, equipment refreshment and technique-reminding before he was ready, but we got him down without incident and we all set off for an explore. It was clear after ten minutes that we were totally misreading the survey, and that much of what we were presently in wasn't actually drawn on! So after completing an interesting loop through workings and natural passage, we found ourselves back at the shaft and turned the survey around and realised everything on the survey was in the other direction, so off we went. We were really impressed with the tight blend of natural passage and mine workings, often being no more than a picked hole where a pocket of galena had clearly been sat before being cut through by some cave. One section of solution-developed rock overhead was just magnificent.

We never found the connection to the other sections, but Dominika went down a very tight passage with scallops on the wall that I suspect was the way to all that, but we'd done enough and were running very late by now, so we called it a day and wormed out way back to the shaft. Again, we had no issues with Lukas who climbed it fine, and in fifteen minutes we were all back on surface blinking in the drizzle. Getting back to the farm was amusing, as they seem to have a stock-car fetish, and one or two were being driven around as we arrived - several more were scattered around in fields. What a funny bunch they are. But a good value-for-money trip if you do both, and if we hadn't lost so much time finding the entrances, we would have probably found more, but there's always another time.