Tuesday Nighters: John, Pete, Chris, Julian and Victoria
November weather had certainly arrived and I was feeling the effects of these short days. Flipped through the book and found I hadn’t done Brightgate cave. Pete sent us all through a photo of the access gate near the farm and we planned out meet up time. Of course, it was raining steady and it was dark by five. Some of us parked nearer to the gate than others due to the fact you couldn’t see a thing. Off through the mud to find the cave entrance.
The entrance is fine and we were out of the rain. Julian headed down into the entrance rift. Several people had been there ages ago so it took a minute to test which way lead on. It is a very narrow rift which had everyone on their side like a snake to pull yourself through inch by inch. One of us gave up ..won’t name anyone…as it is really tight.
Once through though we made our way into the maze. Pete shouted up that this was great caving as it reminded him of an adult soft play. I might disagree with the soft comparison but is it a really fun climb through massive square blocks.
We made our way down into the bottom chamber. It is a good size chamber with gour pools in the floor and massive square blocks of rock throughout. There we saw the historic graffiti and beautiful stalagmites. The roof is decorated nicely and the calcite crystals gleamed in our lights. We followed it down to several dig sites and took our time to explore the nice chamber. We took some photos and then slowly made our way back out of the maze. Once reunited we still had time to slog off through the field to make our way to the Miners for a chat and a drink.
A very pleasurable Tuesday Night trip.