Caving Trip 4th-5th October 2003

On the Friday night we all met up at Lee Common scout hut at 7 o’clock, when the minibus arrived we all clambered in and we set off for the Cerberus Caving Hut just outside Oakhill in the Mendips. We arrived about 10pm and we all had some hot chocolate and cake and went to bed, after being told to be quiet a couple of times.

On the Saturday we woke up at about 7:45 and got ready for the day ahead, had breakfast and eventually set off about 10:30., dressed a our caving gear with our spare clothes in our day sack with our packed lunch. About 45 minutes later we arrived at our destination, a small car park next to Burrington Combe Café we had a short walk from there to the first cave where we split up into 3 groups our group went down Goatchurch which is a spacious cave with a few squeezes and sections called, The coal chute, The coffin lid and The drain pipe, this is a good friendly cave for beginners, we were down there for a couple of hours before resurfacing and having lunch back at the car park.

In the afternoon we walked back up to the caves and this time our group went down Sidcot Swallet, which is a lot shorter and has a lot more tight squeezes but is still regarded as a beginners cave when we were down there we did the lobster pot which is shaped just like well… a lobster pot! With a small funnel at the top and a big bowl at the bottom.

We then returned to the hut and had dinner and a few hours later we venture off to ‘bed’ and a couple more hours after that we went to sleep.

On the second day (Sunday) we travelled to Swildons Hole, which is classed as a wet cave but because there has been minimal rain recently it was fairly dry. We crawled down and went down lots of different passages until we emerged at the 20ft waterfall which we looked down before returning to the same passages as before now a little more familiar to us we broke into fresh air at the end and trudged back across the fields to the changing ‘facilities’ which is a barn attic inhabited by pigeons and a few of us took the liberty of laughing at the sign declaring that “You may use these clean and tidy resources as your changing space” before returning to the minibus and venturing back to the caving hut to pack our bags and have lunch before getting once again into the minibus and returning home to the miserable faces of the parents disappointed that their child had returned and was still alive and in one condition.

Altogether a great weekend!

Thank you!