Elopers- Chris Scaife and Carolina Smith
We drove down south on Saturday the 18th of August, and stayed overnight near Greenham Common in Berkshire. The next day we got the ferry from Plymouth to Santander. This is a fantastic way to travel, with an excellent restaurant and a deck just meant for whale watching. For those interested in wildlife, we saw fin, minke and sperm whale, common, bottlenose and white-sided dolphin, great and Balearic shearwater.
Arriving in Matienzo on the Monday, we enjoyed the sunshine and then went to Pablo’s for food, wine and Cola Cao con Wobble. Beginning to get too comfortable now, it was obvious we needed a caving trip.
Risco
Tuesday, 21st of August 2018
Cavers: Chris Scaife, Carolina Smith, Lloyd Cawthorne, Lizzie Wilkins, Mike Topsom, Fran McDonald
With about 5 hours to spare on a day when we had had to sort out some wedding business in Ramales, then meet wedding arrivals later on, we went to explore a question mark on the Risco survey. We found a 6m pitch, descended by Fran, whose SRT rope was clipped into our belts, dropping into 23m of new cave. Hardly going to change the world, but a good trip. As this was a rare triple date caving trip, we have named this small extension the Triple Date Wormhole.
This was followed by a night at the Bakers Bar, with large beers and Lloyd’s ingenious idea of bringing a bottle of wine to the pub, to drink on the walk back. Consequently, Wednesday’s trip to the beach at Noja was spent nursing quite the hangover. We ate at Casa Tomas that night and I was very happy to drive and not drink.
We spent Thursday getting things sorted for the wedding, busy beavers.
El Soplao
Friday, 23rd of August 2018
Cavers: Chris Scaife, Carolina Smith, Rob Scaife, Jenny Scaife, Pete Smith, Juan Corrin, Penny Corrin, Phil Papard, Ian Ellis Chandler, Terry Whitaker, Nic Ward, Abigail Driver, Oliver Hutchinson, Claire Hutchinson, Claire Rice, Dan Jones, Layla Taleb, Niyati Gupta, Li Wong, Norman Kwan Wah Wot Went Wong, Gillian Reekie, Ron Cook, Fiona Cook, Vicki Jones, Tom Moore, Graham Robertson, Marta Gonzalez, Dave Coulson, Lloyd Cawthorne, Lizzie Wilkins, Andy Quin, Julie Bridgeman
We organised a coach to pick us up from Pablo’s at 8am and take us to El Soplao, a great show cave with spectacular helictites. After visiting the show cave we went to a picturesque village called San Vicente de la Barquera for a group meal, with more fresh fish than you could shake a stick at. We stopped at Santillana del Mar on the way back and visited the torture museum. Just getting in the mood.
Reñada
Saturday, 25th of August 2018
Cavers: Chris Scaife, Alex Ritchie, Phil Papard, Lloyd Cawthorne, Terry Whitaker, Dave Coulson, Dan Jones, Manuel Peña
On the morning of the big day, we had a quick trip into Reñada. Carol and a much larger group went for a walk to just inside the entrance of Agua. At least, having managed some caving in the morning, if the wedding had turned out to be a disaster we wouldn’t have wasted the whole day. After the trip we had a very large group meal at the Bakers Bar and then Carol and I went and got married. A wonderful wedding, but this is a caving trip report, so on with the story.
The day after the wedding was a very lazy one (still managed trips to both Casa Tomas and Pablo’s though) but the day after that we went for a proper caving trip.
Fresnedo 2
Monday, 27th of August 2018
Cavers: Chris Scaife, James Carlisle, Alex Ritchie
James had been in Fresnedo several times already this year and had a couple of leads to look at, a long way into the cave. To get to these leads involved about 3 hours of quite hard caving, with the muddy duck, several pitches and a fair few climbs and crawls.
The first lead was just a short distance down the last pitch. We had to do some horizontal abseiling to get into this passage, which led to a shaft 23m high. This had smooth, solid-looking walls and may very well have ongoing passage at the top – it certainly looked promising – so must be worth bolting in the future.
The second lead was one we were less hopeful about, but after a short pitch up and a bit of scrambling through a boulder choke, then a traverse over a pit, we were into a glorious streamway. This passage was averaging about 13m high, with stunning calcite in the streamway. We followed upstream as far as a boulder choke, passing some excellent formations along the way. Although upstream in the streamway itself is blocked, there was a draughting side passage that needs investigating, and where the stream disappears downstream of the big passage seems to continue as well. 247m surveyed in total, a brilliant find which we have named the Honeymoon Period.
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