Report by Jules Barrett
Cavers: Jules Barrett
(EPC), Ann Soulsby (TSG),
Wayne Sheldon (TSG)
I'm continuing my tour
of bits of Derbyshire caves that I've not been in and had arranged to
meet up with Ann
Soulsby and Wayne Sheldon at short notice. We met at the TSG hut in the
morning
with no firm plans and a number of options were discussed. We settled
on Nettle
Pot since Ann likes it (you'll have to ask her!!) and Wayne hadn't been
in there
for a while. I've still got lots to do in Nettle Pot as I'd only been
in there
once before today and that was a solo trip along the Flats. I was keen
to have a
look at the very bottom (Fin Pot, Eyes Down, Red River Passage etc.)
but we were
hampered by the fact that I'd been unable to find my copy of Caves of
the Peak
District and we had to be out fairly early. I had arrived at the Chapel
with
about 300m of dirty rope so a busy half an hour was spent washing rope
and then
packing for the trip. After paying at Oxlow House Farm we walked up the
hill to the Nettle entrance. I set off rigging down the entrance shaft
and in
the few years since I was last in here I'd forgotten just how awkward
the
Narrows are (especially when you're rigging I reckon!). Eventually I
found
myself standing at the double-bolt rebelay at the top of Bottle Pitch
and things
were a bit easier/more roomy from here. I'd not been any deeper than
the Flats
so the lower section was all new to me. An easy traverse leads to a
pleasant
pitch to land on a broad ledge at the top of Elizabeth Pitch. We
traversed past
the top of Elizabeth Pitch and continued to the head of Crumble Pot.
This has a
tight section just below the pitch head and then continues down a
pleasant rift.
A couple of rebelays mark the start of Beza Shaft which is tight in
places and
has a few deviations to stop the rope from rubbing. The bottom half of
Beza
doesn't have any rebelays or deviations and there's quite a lot of
rubbing going
on. Fortunately the rock around here is pretty smooth and the ropes
didn't seem
to suffer too much. We landed at the foot of Beza Shaft and then
followed an
in-situ handline down a slope to The Shakes - a chamber at the bottom.
We spent
a bit of time investigating what turned out to be a blind pot at the
end of The
Shakes. We then found a body-sized arch on the right-hand side (if
you're facing
down coming down the handline from the bottom of Beza) and crawled
through that.
This led to a short pitch with an in-situ rope on it. Abseiled down
that to a
small chamber. At this point I really didn't know whether I was on the
way to
Red River Passage or in someone's abandoned dig. We also needed to be
out fairly
sharpish so I came back to The Shakes and we set off back up the ropes.
Wayne
and Ann de-rigged (thanks for that!) and we exited the cave about 4:00
p.m. Back
to the Chapel for another rope-washing session and home.
A very enjoyable trip.
Will go back now that I've
figured out what's what at the bottom and have a proper look around the
lower
stuff.
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