Post-president’s barbeque visit to Notts 2
“So, who is coming along to Notts 2 tomorrow”, asked Alan Speight.
My hand shot up. Notts 2 is such a good cave—plenty of pretties without all that SRT faff. OK, so it would be my second visit to Notts 2 in a year during which I had only visited one other cave (and a couple of mines), despite making the move north from Cambridge in part to do more caving. But when you know you like a cave, well, it’s worth taking advantage of an available permit and the opportunity to visit the cave in the company of someone who knows the history of its discovery.
The next morning found me bright eyed-and bushy-tailed at the Old School in the company of Mike Clark and Gordon Scott to pick up Lynn Katze and transport her to the delights of Notts 2. At Leck Fell, we joined Alan, Sharron Rosser and Jim and, in a shake of a lamb’s tail, we were ready to tackle the entrance shaft. Off with lid and down we went. Alan first, then Lynn, followed by yours truly, and the rest of the team.
The entrance shaft of Notts 2 is amazing—a vertical maze of scaffolding pipes, breeze blocks, and builder’s ladders. Halfway down, the ludicrous nature of our progress—first facing one way then rotating through 180 degrees to find the next ladder—had me giggling quietly to myself. A couple slithers and an interesting traverse and down-climb later and we were in one of the many inlets of the cave proper.
This inlet had changed since my last visit. Instead of clean, water-washed calcite and rock, the walls were covered with thick mud up to well above my head. All this mud had been deposited during the floods that affected the Dales in December 2015 and January 2016.
Reaching the main stream way, we headed upstream. The cave was somewhat wetter than on my previous trips and we were soon wading across knee-deep, thigh-deep, and finally groin-deep pools. The pretties were every bit as fantastic as I remembered even though some were now covered with mud. However, the often-photographed “humbug” formation was sadly changed by the flood. The water flowing through the cave had washed away the mud at the base of the formation and the stalagmites and stalactites were no longer joined together. The flood had also washed away many other mud banks throughout the cave, leaving behind gravel banks, some of which were undercut.
By the time we reached Curry Inlet, I was starting to feel a little chilly but was still keen to see as much of the cave as possible. So, after a quick look in Curry Inlet, we headed up Inlet 5. Here again the floods had changed the cave. I vaguely recalled struggling in a half-bent position through thick mud up this inlet a few years ago. Today, it was possible to walk upright down the middle of the passage without even touching the mud. We carried on along the inlet past more pretties and then climbed up a slippery slope with the aid of an in situ knotted rope to admire a chamber full of helictites and straws, some bent into amazing shapes.
The slither back down the slope was easier than its ascent and we were soon heading back to the main stream way, a little warmer now we had been out of the water for a while. The warmth was short lived as we retraced our steps back down-stream through the deep pools to where we had first entered the stream way. En-route, Alan showed us the site of a side passage through to Inlet 5 that he had dug out some years previously but that was now once more full of mud, courtesy of the December floods.
Despite the wet conditions, before leaving the cave, we splashed downstream along the fantastic stream passage towards the final steep down-climbs to the sump. The water got wilder and the climbs steeper, and Gordon, Lynn and I decided to turn round. The rest of the team carried on to the top of the final climb but only Sharron and Jim were brave enough to tackle this in the prevailing, sporting conditions.
It was then “simply” a matter of reversing our route back up to and along the entrance inlet, working our way up the entrance shaft (I am sure it has got harder since last year!), and out into the heat of a July afternoon. The slight wind luckily kept the midges at bay and it was a happy team that reconvened In Ingleton for a post-trip cuppa.
Report—Jane Bradbury
Trip time—about 3.5 hours.
Team—Alan Speight, Jane Bradbury, Mike Clark, Gordon Scott, Lynn Katze, Sharron Rosser, and Jim
