Saturday - 31st March 2001
People present - Duncan Jones, Pete Dale, Andy Whitney, Milton Grimshaw, Bill Holden

Just over three weeks had passed since my last caving trip, stopped by foot and mouth and I was starting to run out of repairs I could do on the car so I turned to the internet and went in search of things to do. This is where I found that Bagshawe Cavern was still open, wow I thought a cave that's still open! the trip was quickly booked the next day, all I had to do now was wait another two weeks before getting back underground (time which was well spent searching for other open caves and mines).

The trip looked like it was going to be well attended with a possible eight people coming. Pete and Julie Mohr had said they were coming and that they would also supply the ladder, unfortunately on the day they arrived but Petes back was playing up so they went without going underground but they did leave us the tackle (thanks for that).

The team assembled in the muddy area (car park?) we had a quick look at the survey in the changing room, planned the route and we soon got changed and entered the wooden shed which guards the entrance to the cave, I say cave but the first part is a mine going down the steps and eventually hitting proper cave. We took a detour down Calypso's Cave and soon arrived at the Dungeon (a 5m pitch) we knew that it was a bit wet down there so we set off to do the upper level first. A few small avens were noticed in the roof and Pete, Andy and Milton decided to investigate and climb them whilst I shot off down another passage. I was followed by Bill and the passage we went down happened to be the main way on so we carried along it passing the gated entrance to the New Series which even if it was unlocked would have been sumped, which is a shame as the best formations in the cave are in that area. We then had a short gloopy muddy section, which led us to the stream and the inevitable sump.

We turned back and found a small side passage - Glory Hole Passage, which turned out to be a rather nice phreatic joint controlled inlet to a crystal clear sumped duck. We headed back to the Dungeon taking a look down a small passage along the way, which led to a grotty dig whilst the other three visited the stream. After returning to the pitch we waited a while but soon we got fed up of waiting and decided to descend the pitch, at the bottom there were two ways on, low and wet or very small low and dry, neither looked very promising so we went back up the pitch and waited for the others and waited… Finally after a nice kip the others returned with stories of grand formations. At first I thought they meant 'real' formations but it turned out they were self made mud ones, apparently fairly large!

The team re-assembled we all went down the pitch to be greeted by the lake again, Milton wasn't bothered by it and pushed through the water to find a small airspace, slowly we all followed and a few yelps and screams and a small head on side ear-wetting section later we were on dry land again. Milton then told us he had a mouthful of water and it tasted of pi**, quite how he knows what that tastes like I don't know and I don't think I want to know.

The lower series followed with another short wet section and a mixture of walking and crawling, eventually we were crawling on a rubble floor and we all came to a halt, some grumbling about the quality of caving followed. Milton said he could organise a trip to the local sewage farm or maybe a trip round a quarry if I liked this kind of cave, hmm was it really that bad? We decided a rest was a good idea and we started discussing what was better than this cave which had been called all names imaginable (I'll let you use your imagination rather than writing them here) whilst we were talking another two Red Rose members appeared, Ian Lawton & friend (sorry don't know name). They looked nice and dry and had apparently used the dry bypass to the pitch and first lake, which I knew nothing about (honestly). With a brief description of the bypass we set off out, Me and Pete opted to go back through the lakes as we were the only people sensible enough to wear neo-fleeces.

The lake passed quickly we shot up the pitch and de-rigged it, we then headed back out wondering how long it would take the others to reappear and we talked about how funny it would be if they didn't find their way back through the bypass and had to negotiate the lake only to find no ladder. Just after we finished getting changed the other three returned from their rather slow crawling exercise, the lake certainly seemed like the better option.

Despite the quality of caving not being to the usual standard it was nice to get back underground and beat the foot and mouth restrictions.