Ill Concieved Plans Poorly executed

How it all started

I went to Leicester Polytechnic in 1981 and did all the usual new intake things that students do, joining a few clubs and getting very drunk on the sudden influx of grant money.

One of the lads on my course had joined the newly formed caving club and was trying desperately to get some of the people on our course to go caving. After a few weeks of gentle persuasion I got curious. There was going to be a trip to Yorkshire so I signed up, more to get away from my lodgings at the weekend than anything else.

I bundled together a pile of old tatty clothes and some cheese and ham sandwiches and deposited myself into the back of a minibus bound for Yorkshire. I had been promised that we were staying in a hut. Having no sleeping bag I had acquired a couple of blankets hoping that they would keep me warm through the night. The hut turned out to be a ramshackle shed at the back of the pub. The majority of the windows were broken and the iron framed beds lacked mattresses. This was going to be an uncomfortable night but after the drive there I was ready for sleep. Eventually morning came. I was convinced that I spent the whole night being kept awake by the clattering of my teeth. Before long we were whisked into Ingelton for a large warming full English breakfast which warmed up the cold deadened parts. The motley crew of collage cavers divided roughly into two groups. Those who seemed to have a clue and those like me.

After a while a plan was hatched, we were going to Kingsdale. Two of the clued up were going to descend swinsto pot and rig ladders whilst the rest of us would follow on behind and remove the gear as we went. We toddled off to the minibus to be deposited at the side of a road to get changed. I noticed that the more experienced types where donning wetsuits whilst the rest of us where in tatty old clothes. Did they know something I didn't? Once changed the two in the forward party set off up the hill. We dawdled a while and then set off in roughly the same direction. I was amazed that our leaders could actually find a hole on this hillside let alone the correct one.

The first part of our adventure was a climb into a hole via a ladder hung in a waterfall. Any notion of staying warm and dry disappeared in the gloom of that cave entrance. I quickly found that a feature of caving in large groups was that there was a lot of standing around in draughty cold places. Although it was all new and exciting I was starting to suffer from the cold and wet and we were barely inside the hole. Once we were together we started on the crawl, aptly named "Long Crawl". It involved moving along on all fours though a stream way in a clean-cut limestone tunnel. At least we were moving and keeping slightly warmer. Suddenly the bottom of the person in front stopped, we had reached the next drop. From the commotion from the pitch head I gathered that something was wrong. The leaders could not find the ladders that the forward party should have left. The forward party had no passed us so they must be somewhere in the bowels of the hill but quite where was a mystery. After much debate it became clear that we were going to turn round, crawl for infinity and climb back up though the waterfall and then trudge down the hill to the warmth of the van. I was not convinced that this was an activity I was going to continue.

We sat around and waited whilst others appeared from holes in the ground to be regaled with our tale. None of them believed that we could have lost the two in front. Eventually the two emerged, wondering why we had not caught them up and how we could have missed their ropes. It soon became clear that there was another problem. All of the gear was still decorating the pitches in the cave and the only way top get it out was for another party to go back down. It wasn't going to be any of us novices as we where just clueless, the two in the forward party refused as they argued it was not there problem so it was left to two very unhappy older members.

I had a cunning plan for that evening. There was no way that I was going to get some sleep. The only thing to do was to drink heavily; I was a student after all. I started off the evening swearing that I would never enter the bowels of the earth again. I certainly was not going down a hole the next day as my pile of caving clothes was a sodden pile festering in a large plastic bag. The thought of repeating the experience was just incomprehensible. At some point in the evening I got talking to one of our so-called leaders. He too was not going underground the next day owning to a mysterious injury but felt the need to lend me his wetsuit so that I could really appreciate caving. By the end of the evening I was almost convinced.

We left the pit of doom at the crack of dawn in order to avoid paying the extortionate price demanded for the tumble down shed and made our way to Alum pot. Much to my chagrin the leader had remembered his offer of a wetsuit despite the copious amounts of beer and I felt obliged to accept. For the second time of the weekend I was stripping down on a wind swept Yorkshire more but this time to don a wetsuit. The shock of pulling a damp neoprene babygro on was something to behold. It started with mild discomfort thought to down right cold and then warmth. This was the first time that I had worn a wet suit and it was a bit of a novelty. My arms seemed to spring up and down and once we started walking up the hill the warmth became unbearable. These things are not designed for walking in, especially uphill.

Before wandering over the moors to find a small entrance we peered into the inky depths of Alum pot, It is an impressive hole in the ground. We found our entrance in the middle of a field. It was a small insignificant hole into which a stream flowed. This was followed by a quick splash down the stream way and a plunge into a big pool. The wetsuit was working wonders. I was warm and protected from the harsh rock of the cave walls. I spent the next couple of hours discovering the joys of caving, splashing around in stream ways, poking around in little tunnels, crawling on all fours to see what was round the next corner, squeezing thought tiny gaps, climbing up and down water falls and trading insults with the rest of the group. This was my idea of fun. In those few hours underground had changed from a dark dank and dreary place to an exciting playground and I was the biggest kid there. At one point we burst into the day light on a ledge half way down Alum Pot. I could see the top and the murky depths. One day, I though I'll look up at here from the bottom.

On the way back home between bouts of exhausted sleep I enthused about the trip. I was hooked on this sport. It was something I was going to do again. All I needed to do was shell out some money on a wet suit and I'd be in heaven.