10th December 2020 - Jingling not quite all the way

 tony

6th December 2018 - Jingling all the way

As we're now properly into advent and it's raining, a cave without a stream and a festive name felt in order and so off to Jingling we set.

The fog was thick as we eeked our way along the Kingsdale road, trying to pick out the relevant gate and parking spot.  Fortunately, even though it looked pretty miserable through the windscreen, the change wasn't too bad and we were soon heading up the hill to the Turbury road.

I don't know how many times we've headed up this way, but we always seem to arrive at a wall not fully sure which way to turn to get to a gate.  On this occasion we chose correctly and after a few metres arrived at the gate allowing access to the road.  What could have been quite a long search for the pot was made infinitely easier by Dick's GPS and the familiar entrance soon emerged from out of the clag.

The last time I'd done this pot was with Tony and we'd had to engage skills from our distant past as we unceremoniously lunged for tree branches, selecting the thickest to wrap slings around in order to rig the first pitch.  It turns out though that this is the same pot I'd also previously done with Dick and his niece and nephew, which begins with a lovely descent down a short gully, before a fine traverse along a ledge overlooking the main pot.  As two and two were slowly put together in my brain, Dick set off down the lovely gully.

Despite this being a "dry" pot under normal conditions, the last bolt on the traverse seemed to be under a leak of some sort and I didn't envy Dick even though he was rigging swiftly. A short descent from the traverse dropped us into the lateral cleft, where we swapped rigging duties.  This really is a superb little pot, with some terrific positions, the homely cleft ejecting us once more into the dank open shaft.  Oh for a deviation, the "leak" from the end of the traverse seemingly having increased in volume by this point.

The final pitch dropped us into the bottom of the rift and while each end of it soon closed down, a dig at the foot of the rope offered a way on.  The tail of the rope offered a useful hand line down the dug shaft, but I wasn't tempted by the horizontal continuation and I squirmed my way back up to the bottom of the pitch.

Even given the traverse's leak, which managed to deposit a drip right down by neck, we emerged onto the moor mostly dry and warm.  I could definitely get used to this type of caving!  We're also getting quite used to finishing the evening in the Marton Arms and it's great to see that they've even a few caving prints on the walls too.

22nd December - Jingling all the way...

Our First Experience Potholing by James and Sarah
Dec 2012

So the Clothing?

I wrestled into my thick yellow suit which appears to be the standard caving attire! Another car of fellow cavers pulled up whilst we were changing and they were rather taken with my red wellie boots!

The Walk In

The sky was heavy with low lying cloud and as we walked up the sodden hill even the light drizzle did little to stop me overheating. My onesie fleece undergarment and caving harness equipment felt a little claustrophobic to begin with but that feeling disappeared when we came across this opening in the ground!

The Decent

A quick lesson from Mr Dick Gerrish using the descender, we found ourselves leaping across and down this traverse whilst Alastair was rigging the route ahead! More down, down and passing a deviation we found ourselves clipping in and out with more ease. 

The Bottom and The Ascent

There was the remains of a sheep that had come to an unfortunate end and the realisation that what we had just come down required climbing back up! Bouncing a little, I was able to establish a nice rhythm gradually moving up the rope in 6" increments!

Arriving at the top and traversing the tricky top section which was now under the cover of darkness we had come to the end of our trip.

A massive thank you to Dick Gerrish and Alastair Shawcross for a totally exhilarating experience! 

Guest editors James (Honey Bear) Outram (sitting in the middle) and Sarah Gerrish back at the van after their debut potholing trip.