Oxlow Caverns – 10 January 2004

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amazing bit of concreting at the top.  Whilst Paul was rigging this Sooty and Tim photographed the mushrooms….

The third pitch had a lovely deviation which George really enjoyed, hey, it’s all experience…

At the bottom of the third we completely missed the RAMP and headed off into the West? Chamber with one nice climb down over a rock bridge and then Paul and Tim went down a dig with a dodgy iron ladder and loose rocks… Having reached a dead end we took a pit stop and enjoyed Paul’s butties.

 

Once we discovered the ramp we were motoring the Paul and Tim dropped the 4th whilst Sooty and George made their way out.  Below the 4th the duo headed onto the 5th and particularly enjoyed the mud pillar formations with the stones on top. Very ironic that Sooty and George missed out on the horizontal bit (Sod’s law?).

 

On the way out Sooty and George made good progress ahead of the derigged pair and the only problem was on the entrance where the front two decided to play “knitting” with another team’s rope.  

 

Exiting the cave the two halves were exposed thus:

 

George “I’m never going down there again”

 

Paul “We’ll bottom it next time”

 

Sooty “Bowels of the earth is an appropriate description for that one”

 

Next trip… easy with lots of Ingleton pre cave and pub post cave (agreed by all).