We did the through trip because it was still a little early to be eating cake when we got back to the car.

Mental note - the crawl that connects the caves is right at the end of Calf Holes!

Second cave on our slack day. There’s a short entrance crawl, then we followed the water upstream to where it gets deep and sumps.

First cave of our slow day.

Followed the streamway to the (very foamy) sump. Only Stuart managed to fall in the water on the way back out!

Selected by Edvin from “Not For the Faint Hearted,” aka “The Black Book of Misery”.

We started the day by bumping into someone that said it could be “fun” on string, but seeing as we didn’t have any ladders we continued regardless.

Below the entrance climb (through an interesting looking plastic drum) the cave continues as a short flat out crawl. This leads into a narrow rift that at points was quite tight - at one point Edvin took his SRT kit off.

Following the first free climbable pitch there is another which we hand lined. This leads to Bosch Rift, where you are forced to crawl along on your side for 10 metres or so until a point where you have to follow an ascending traverse, at the end of which there is a short climb down after some acrobatics.

This soon leads to University Challenge, the main rift in the cave. You enter about halfway along it and some way off the floor. We followed it downstream to the (unimpressive) terminal sump, repeatedly traversing along then rigging a pitch straight down where it is wide enough. Most of the pitches are easily free climbed on the way down, but the ropes proved useful on the way back out.

The way back out was a pain, but eventually we returned to where we had entered University Challenge. Edvin and Stuart went up the rift to explore some chambers with some pretties. From here the rest of the way out was even more awkward, helped in no small part by the amount of gear we had with us. Edvin and I stashed our SRT kits in the tackle sack so we were carrying it, and it insisted on getting stuck in the worst places. At one point Gareth had to come back and save the day as I was stuck behind the bag in a rift and couldn’t move it, and Edvin was too tired to pull anymore!

We splashed our way down from upper Long Churn, and down Dollytubs. The view from the bottom was rather good - the sun was in just the right place to shine down through the trees at the top.