Last year Jim had suggested a trip to Matienzo in Spain to have a look at the downstream sump in the Buttermere passage in the Torca la Vaca cave system. (He tried to dive the sump in 2009 but high water levels forced him to dive the upstream sump instead.) Unfortunately we were unable to get our holiday dates to line up during 2010 so the trip was a little delayed. This last week we have finally got the job done.
The ferry took us from Plymouth to Santander from where it is only a short drive to the caving area. Having arrived at midday on Monday we rigged the cave on Monday afternoon before booking into our accommodation. Tuesday was a slow start with a visit to the shop but then turned into hard going as we moved the dive kit into the cave. We didn’t have time to get the dive done but did get everything ready รขโฌโ including inflating the dingy and placing a bolt at the start of the sump. Wednesday saw us climbing into our 5 mm wetsuits and heading into the cave for the dive. This proved to be hot going but we made good time. Jim re-inflated one of the bladders in the dingy and we loaded it up with diving kit before swimming, partially kitted, to the sump. Jim put on his cylinders, attached the dive line to the bolt and set off. I re-inflated the dingy. After several minutes Jim reappeared and told me that the sump was in fact a duck leading to a canal (as he had predicted) with another sump/duck at the end and that he had surfaced in a chamber. We both dived through and went and had an explore.
The chamber consisted of a series of rifts which had merged together. The floor was made up of large boulders and banks of sandy flood deposits rising out of the water. Jim had tied the line off at a rock protrusion where we stowed your dive gear before clambering around to see what we had found. Several avens and a couple of sumps were found but not investigated owing to time pressure. We had a callout time with Juan Corrin who is one of the leading lights of Matienzo caving and we needed to collect some survey data for him as well as getting the kit out of the cave. After performing a very basic survey of the chamber we made our exit. Returning to the dingy and from there to the start of the Buttermere passage at the base of the pitch we packed all our kit including the dingy which did not want to deflate and dragged the lot up and out. We just made our callout time and meal time back at the bar.
The Thursday morning was spent giving the survey date to Juan, sitting in a bar and looking for another entrance of interest before driving to Santander to catch the ferry to Portsmouth.
Both myself and Jim would like to say thank you to Juan for providing the callout for us as well as all the time and effort he has put into providing us with information about both Torca la Vaca and other sites in the area.
Important things learnt on this trip:
- Ferry air conditioning units can sound like Jim is using a stove to brew up in the shower during the night.
- Jim does take a cup of tea into the shower.
- Spanish working man’s meals are enormous, consisting of four or five courses which have two choices of everything.
- Spanish chocolate has a higher melting point than British chocolate.
- The easiest way to deflate a dingy is to bite it.
- Spanish cows have never read the highway code.
- Lucozade is not good when you are very hot and dehydrated but is most excellent once the fizz is gone.
- Eels can live in Spanish sumps.
- Customs are more suspicious of my shiny red van than they ever were of my old rusty white one.
so, did the chamber have any leads?
You crazy mud-loving kidz!
Eels ๐ฏ ๐ฏ ๐ฏ
When are you going back to explore the other entrances?
As soon as my boss will let me ๐
Anybody know of a job vacancy with flexible holiday? ๐ก
I can think of a job with masses and masses of holiday, teaching; or a job that doesn’t involve much work, policing; as for flexibility, that would be doctoring.
we are on our way back ๐