Ding Dong Bell Pussy Well Rope

Incredibly we managed to occupy ourselves for almost an entire long weekend in and around Kingsdale, Yorkshire. The weather was dry and sunny; perfect weather for caving (?).

Friday: Brendan, Keith and ourselves descended Ireby Fell Cavern. After a relatively short period of searching we found the cave, and after a quick snooze (for Brendan) we descended the pot via Ding, Dong, Bell, Pussy, Well and Rope pitches. I rigged, which was great fun and everyone got down safely, so I must have done something right. No pictures of this one, although Keith did take video… so this may be added at some stage.

Saturday: Richard and I descended Marble Steps to the Main Chamber. I rigged down to the Main Chamber, which took an absolute age because the route provided a number of obstacles to overcome. Richard tried to rig the next pitch, but we decided to admit defeat when we weren’t feeling 100% comfortable. In the afternoon we enjoyed some of the Yorkshire sunshine and went looking for cave entrances.

Sunday: Starting from Kingsdale we had a nice walk around both sides of the valley, taking in Whernside and then Great Coum. We came across a lizard, lots of tadpoles, some lovely mossy tussocks and a few slime-filled ponds!

At the end of the walk, we went to have a look into Jingling Pot and after talking to a few cavers nearby, we thought we’d try a descent the following day. As we didn’t have a 60 m rope, our only means of descent would be via the vertical maze of Lateral Cleft, rather than the main shaft. The former involves a pendulum from the middle of the main shaft to a side passage about 9 m from the surface, and it was this manouvre that I was particularly uncertain about.

Monday: The pendulum turned out to be fairly straightforward, it just required a descent to the optimum depth and then a swing across the shaft to reach the side passage. The rest of the cave was fairly simple and was worth the effort to see the view upwards, from the bottom of the shaft. No pictures 🙁