Friday - 14th July 2000
People present - Pete Dale, Dave Thompson

When Dave had rang me up to book his place on the White Scar trip (Yeah! Members on a club trip!) He had said that he would like to do a cave called Thackthwaite Beck Cave on his way down the Friday before the day after (Sounds like my type of caving buddy.) I said that I would be up for that, so he told me he would ring a couple of days beforehand just to confirm I was still keen. (What a daft question, eh!) Sure enough the phone rang and we made arrangements to meet at Woodhall at 7pm.

Before arriving at Woodhall I had a quick look around the small village of Darraby alias Askrigg (Where they filmed All Creatures Great and Small) I then drove to Woodhall and parked up at the road side, a few minutes past 6o'clock and waited for Dave. After about 15mins Dave turned up and we where soon changed and faced with one of my fears, yep the cave entrance was at the top of the hill, great I thought I hate hills!

As we walked up the hill all was quiet (probably because me and Dave where out of breath!) Reaching the top we spied a small waterfall with some sort of machinery near its base. After a bit of free climbing we had descended down (obviously!) to what looked like a filled in mine shaft with what seemed to be a pump over the top of it, but who knows? We spent a few minutes talking and inspecting the various components of this ancient device, and then proceeded with the main reason for us being there. Caving!

Arriving at the base of a scree slope, Dave pointed towards a hole "There it is!" he remarked, as we began climbing the very loose rock where, the faint gurgle of water could be heard somewhere beneath us. Reaching the entrance, Dave and me peered into the gloom and didn't like what we saw, it was surrounded by a considerable amount of very loose rock (As usual). When Dave had come looking for the cave a few weeks back he had noticed another entrance just over a small fence to the right of this one.

Upon climbing over the fence I found Dave routing around in desperation "What's up lad?" I asked, "The entrance has gone!" "Don't be daft" "It has, it was ere last time!" He said with an awful lot of desperation in his voice. I told him to stand aside and let me sense where the entrance was. Dave watched eagerly as I stood perfectly still waiting to pick up some sort of vibe from the entrance, nope sod it, didn't work! So we both scouted the scree for the entrance.

A few minutes later we spied what looked like a wooden lid hiding amongst the limestone. Frantic digging uncovered the lid which when removed revealed a plastic pipe down into the system, which Dave then descended. Personally the other entrance looked safer than this one as above the plastic entrance pipe was a very large scree slope of about 60 degrees! So upon entering the pipe I replaced the wooden lid, but not before a couple of rocks decided to join me!

Dave was waiting at the bottom of the pipe, I joined him and off we went into the darkness. After the nasty confines of the entrance pipe we were surprised to find that the cave was very large indeed! As we walked along the passage we commented on the fine fossils persevered in the cave wall. Then as expected we encountered water. Since I had my neo-fleece on I made Dave go first, and after a few girlie screams from him, he informed me that it was waist deep. Reluctantly following him we reached the start of the first and continuous boulder choke (continuous in every sense of the word!) We tried following the stream to start with, but this proved too wet even for us! So an alternative was looked for.

Just a little way back up the passage was a short climb that looked well worn so up I went dislodging quite a few boulders which tumbled down to land in the water next to a shocked Dave! I told him I would explore this way while he looked around at the bottom. Yep my way went and so did Dave's, since we joined each other again in a large chamber. Glancing around we both realised that what we thought was the roof of the chamber was infact a great slab of hanging limestone! We didn't hang around here for to long, (obviously!) Unfortunately the passage didn't improve one bit, and every rock or boulder we stood on moved or wobbled reassuringly.

Boulder hopping followed by crawling in and out of the boulders we reached stalactite chamber which. Was full of beautiful formations and the walls were covered in white, red and orange flowstone! According to the guidebook, after stal chamber you enter the massive collapse (personally the whole cave is a massive collapse!) This is where our problems began, as route finding now became a problem.

Negotiating the collapse consisted of climbing up then down, left then right, under and over, you get the idea? Anyway at one point we had to crawl through a bedding plane, no problem with that you may think, but did I say that this bedding plane was below a boulder the size of a car! And if that wasn't bad enough had a bedding plane above it and a rift either side! (What the hell was holding it up?) A very rapid flat out crawl expectedly followed into yet more chokes. This was getting silly now and after a short crawl in the stream we reached the end of the cave, well whether it was the end or not wasn't a concern of ours as the choke seemed to be threatening to move!

Right then time for the exit, finding our way out proved to be more difficult than anticipated! At one point I can shamefully admit that I was a little worried as to whether we were gonna get out, and after 30mins spent going round in circles and looking in every possible orifice the way out was found (phew!) Once back in daylight we followed the stream down to the waterfall and inspected the pump type thing again. Then we had a quick look in a nearby adit which we found to be none to safe about 20m in. A gentle stroll back to the car, we got changed and arranged where to meet for the white scar trip tomorrow.

Well what can I say about this cave? Ah yes I know! Its different and I can honestly say I won't be going back!!!!! Although it doesn't seem that bad now and if there was……?