Cauliflower and Mud

Our planned trip to Peak Cavern and Speedwell was cancelled due to rain. What to do for a caving trip in Derbyshire that didn’t involve a stream? Bill had the idea of going to Sidetrack Cave, which we’d never heard of. A quick check of the guide revealed why: 500m of passage, the first 200 of which were a flat out crawl. What could be more attractive?

The cave is halfway down the side of Eldon Hill Quarry, and after 15 minutes of wandering around the edge, we eventually spotted a likely-looking hole, and shortly after that found a lone bolt in the ground, and a large boulder to use as backup for a rope. We then climbed down the 10m or so to the ledge with the cave on it, dumped our SRT gear, and headed in.

The start of the crawl was squalid—muddy, with small pools of water to lie in, and some awkward twists around stalactites. After that, it got worse, with a ridge of mud along the middle of the passage that left us dangling a leg over each side and bumping our helmets on the ceiling and floor.

Eventually we reached a small taped off area with a few formations, and after 90m of unrelenting wriggling, the first landmark of note, Little and Large’s Airbells. After experiencing the joy of standing up for a few minutes (not walking, just standing in the airbells), we were back to crawling for another 100m, although occasionally we even got on hands and knees in this bit!

Finally, the crawl broke into a larger passage, where walking upright was occasionally possible. Left took us to a lovely set of decorations, with gour pools on the floor, and some nice stals and curtains hanging from the ceiling. Needless to say, after all the crawling there was a good long photography break once we reached the pretty bits.

The other way from the junction lead to some more dry gour pools and a rather nice aven with lots of interesting fossils (mostly looking like a collection of nuts and bolts) and more stals. The highlight was a large dry gour pool across the middle of the passage with fascinating formations revealed through cracks in the surface.

Unfortunately, the whole decorated passage was only about 100m long, and at that point we were left with nothing to do but return through the muddy crawl. 75 minutes later, having travelled the whole 190m back out (yes, that is 2.5 metres/minute) we exited the cave, coated in mud, and happy in the knowledge that we probably wouldn’t be going back.

We quickly prusicked back up, and were soon in the warmth of our favourite Derbyshire pub, the Jug and Glass. The only problem now is the water drops on the camera lens in some of the pictures. We’ll have
to go back and take them again…