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Ade Pedley, Dave Chaswick, Alex Ritchie

After much deliberation about what to do for the day, someone finally suggested Jackdaw hole, this immediately ignited Alex's enthusiasm as he hadnt done this before, neither had  I so two new caves in a weekend for me.

A very pleasant wintery walk up the Pennine way brought us to the seldom visited Jackdaw hole, only there was a pair of cavers  one of whom had a severe black eye (i was going to ask but decided against it!!) about to descend, so we opted for our backup plan of Penygent Longchurn, again neither me nor Alex had done this one either. Alex set about rigging the pitch with numb fingers which quickly turned into a bit of a fiasco due to the said cold fingers and the pressure of us standing around in a cold wind, later on that very same day Alex descended the fluted shaft to a roomy chamber with the usual decomposing sheep at the bottom, apparently you can bypass the main pitch by a rift at the back of the shaft in high water.

Very interesting passages lead down stream, which follows a high level route as the stream drops away below, staying pretty much level eventually there are a number of points where you can climb down, i used a rope but Alex managed to find a way down easily enough which didnt need the rope, this drops you into the lower levels and eventually the point where the stream disappears into cobbles, we found it possible to follow the stream level back upstream to where could climb back up to where you started, there is evidence of severe flooding in the lower levels so not the place to be in wet conditions.

After about two hours underground we started our return walk past the now empty Jackdaw hole, save that for another day!!.

 

Re:the two other cavers at Jackdaw, the black eye was not a result of any altercation, domestic or otherwise. Be assured it was attained on a caving trip the previous day!
Dave R

Dave, have you been trampling on poor Meg's head again ?