Sunday - 26th August 2001
People present - Duncan Jones, Pete Dale, Andy Whitney, Alan Kerr, Rob Kenning, Cath Cockroft

The day had arrived and myself and Pete had ideas for doing Meregill, a quick call to the farm to check the weather confirmed that Meregill would be fine today, we also managed to get Pete Hall to bring the extra bits of tackle we needed to do the trip to Bernies (Thanks Pete).

After getting the tackle from Bernies we suddenly realised how much work we had ahead of us with only the two of us to carry all the tackle, thankfully we bumped into Rob and Cath who were planning on doing Simpsons but upon hearing our plan for Meregill they very quickly ditched that plan and joined us. At the Hill Inn car park we were just about to start sorting out the ropes when Andy and Alan appeared, they also decided to join us (6 people on a trip - we were amazed!!)

After much faffing sorting out tackle and what bags everything was going in we got changed and finally made our way up to Meregill. Arriving at the entrance we had a look down at the Mere and found it was up so we had to use Aven entrance, which although not tight is just awkward. Once at the pitch head things improved and we were on our way along a nice bit of passage and we all too quickly arrived at the second pitch. With one dodgy spit missed out we had a pointless traverse line rigged that climbs up to the head of the pitch, falling isn't an option as the rope or spits probably wouldn't hold out. Pete was rigging and he reached a rebelay lower down and found yet more dodgy spits (one of which came out of the wall when he used it), after finding a suitable spit to use he then proceeded to rig a ridiculously tight rebelay - I could hardly thread my descender! I shouted but Pete obviously decided to ignore my plea for slack so I had no choice but to re-arrange the knots and rigging at the top of the pitch to make life a little bit easier.

With that little obstacle passed I made a comment to Pete about tight belays with which I got the reply 'stop whinging', a traverse is soon started to the head of the Canyon, which is a very impressive section of passage. Descending the pitch, we slowly made our way down the large expanse and down to a short traverse and further small pitch It was here that whilst waiting for Pete to rig the traverse we looked up at three people descending the pitch at different points - we all agreed it would have made a superb picture.

At the bottom of the small pitch some deep pools are traversed over, well most of us traversed over them but Pete insisted on walking through them because he was wearing his neofleece. Approaching the next pitch and starting to traverse there was a worrying time because we thought we had run out of hangers - something that happened to Pete and Alan last time they came down, but thankfully they were just well hidden in one of the bags. It was about this time that Robs carbide gave up on him, Petes light was becoming dimmer and we noticed Andy's new shiny FX-led had a few blown led's in it, was we about to have some kind of lighting epic?

One question we would like to know is what were Rob and Cath doing- they spent the entire trip at the back, hmmm…. The next pitch descended we clambered down to another pitch where we looked for spits, couldn't see any so Pete handed the rigging gear over to Alan, then he couldn't see any so I clambered up and traversed along and found the rest of them so I was then given the rigging gear - it was like pass the parcel. I rigged the pitch and whilst abseiling down I looked at the possibility of climbing it, it didn't look too bad so I saved it for the return. As I looked down I noticed a rather dark looking pool waiting to drown me so I swung out of its way and thought this cave isn't getting me wet that easily!..Until the next section of pitch where Pete went down first and then stood on a small ledge and I followed - both stood on a ledge with a rather deep pool in front of us, I was determined to stay dry so I carefully tried to traverse round the edge of the pool, at one point I thought I was going to lose it (which wouldn't have been funny - well not for me anyway) but I managed to avoid the soaking and so did everyone else which is a shame - where's the fun in that.

At the bottom I wanted to follow the Meregill Main Drain so I set off with no-one following, a short distance along I heard a noise from behind - was it a train? No it was Andy going at one hell of a pace, he wanted to do this bit of passage as quick as possible (Just because it's a little bit flood prone!). We passed the Torrent and the inevitable happened, the roof lowered and the passage became smaller so we stopped and as I turned round to see what Andy thought I saw a piece of grass right in front of my nose - hmmm, good time to turn round, yep Andy agreed… and with that we made it back to the last pitch rather speedily, passing Rob on the way who decided he'd seen enough as well. I was a bit disappointed with the 'Main Drain' - I expected something a bit bigger especially considering the size of the cave before that point having said that it is still a nice section of passage.

The de-rigging was handled quite smoothly and all the tackle managed to move its way through the cave rather efficiently. On the way out Pete was heard commenting about a tight rebelay on the second pitch, well we tried telling you, now don't whinge Pete… We emerged into the dark night fairly late, Andy and Alan were making quickly for the Hill Inn - their excuse was they had to make a phone call, I wonder if that's the real reason, or was it just to catch a quick pint before closing time?

A classic trip, well worth doing, next time I will have to explore the passages at the bottom as Beardy was telling me they are very interesting.