Tuesday nighters
Edvin, Katie, Jess, Julian, Chris and Victoria
Edvin suggested a trip to Merlins in Stoney to check on the streamway. Always a good suggestion — unless you’re John, who I suspect has now had quite enough of Merlins. Fortunately for him, he was unavailable anyway, being off in bonny Scotland.
It had not rained for 40 days and 40 nights, so this seemed like an excellent opportunity to see just how far into the sumps we could get without actually having to get into any sumps. It had also been unusually hot in the UK, so some time underground in the cool, refreshing embrace of a cave seemed like exactly what was required. Natural air conditioning, basically.
It was therefore a trip that definitely called for knee and elbow pads.
I had downloaded the conservation survey for the DCA Cave Conservation Scheme, so we had a look at this before heading in. The areas of conservation interest included the streamway, which contains numerous speleothems in permanently flooded passage. We were also looking for a particularly heavily contaminated stalagmite from the streamway, and planned to take photographs of various formations and interesting speleothems along the way for the conservation form.
As it turned out, the conditions were so dry that we found absolutely nothing that wanted to be flooded. We did, however, take plenty of photos.
The walk to the pitch was short, and Katie had sensibly brought a rope. When we arrived, there was already a rather good-looking rope in situ, we decided a rather fun freeclimb was in order.
So we did, a little traversing and some helpful vertical assistance from the rope. Julian had also brought his SRT kit, which turned out to be another very good decision.
Once down, we carefully watched the roof as we descended one at a time into the streamway. Many of us had been on the previous trip, which had resulted in a large boulder falling onto someone’s head — generally considered poor form in a cave. Thankfully, the offending boulder has since been blown to smithereens, and the roof all seemed considerably more cooperative this time.
We followed the dive lines, with plenty of crawling along the streamway. At one point Edvin commented that it was the easiest cave diving he had ever done.
Katie helpfully pointed out that if he was cave diving, he should probably be blowing bubbles rather than talking.
Progress continued through a series of dry sumps, each followed by a large chamber where we could stand up, have a rest, admire the surroundings and briefly remember what it was like to be a person who could walk upright. Then it was back down for more crawling.
We stopped at Sump 5, which was where we had reached last year and felt suitably accomplished. This time, however, there was a growing realisation that we could actually keep going.
So we did.
More dive lines. More crawling. More formations. More photographs. And, increasingly, a suspicion that the cave was going to carry on for considerably longer.
Eventually, we believed we had made it all the way to Sump 8. The passage finally ended at a low roof with a small pool of water. We could see what appeared to be a board under a ledge, but there was nowhere obvious to go beyond it.
This was finally the end.
Or at least, we assumed it was.
I checked the survey we had downloaded for the conservation work — only to discover that it stopped at Sump 5.
We were officially off the survey.
There was something particularly satisfying about this. Last year, Sump 5 had felt like the impressive end point. This year, with exceptionally low water levels, we had crawled our way beyond it and apparently wandered off the edge of our paperwork.
A very satisfying Tuesday night.
We emerged very muddy and extremely pleased with ourselves — having confirmed that Merlins was indeed very dry, the streamway was very crawlable, and our survey was considerably less ambitious than we were.
A great trip, with plenty of photos for the conservation work and, most importantly, another reminder that sometimes the best way to deal with a heatwave is to spend an evening underground crawling through a streamway.
