Waterways Swallet, Derbyshire
I'd heard bits about the recent extensions to Waterways Swallet over
the last year but never been in it. I had a vague idea that alot of new
cave had been found by the Keyhole Caving Club and that there was alot of
scaffolding involved. As an Eldon member it's obligatory to get excited
about underground scaffolding so a trip was due.
There's a sump at the bottom of waterways and A Diver (this is CDG-speak
I'm using) had taken two cylinders to the bottom of the cave with the
intention of diving the sump at the lowest point of the system. Since I
owed The Diver a favour and quite fancied an easy jaunt into a new cave I
offered to retrieve them. Col hadn't been down (or heard of) Waterways
Swallet but since we now had good reason to make the effort we planned a
trip. I had a vague description from The Diver which talked about the
cylinders being hidden under a pile of rocks in a boulder choke near the
bottom of a ladder. Armed with this limited information, a grid reference,
an OS map and a copy of the survey we ventured south of Castleton.
We found the entrance with very little trouble and looked into a hole
that had something of Stoney Middleton about it; being small, tight and
hot. We climbed in and followed the obvious route steeply down dip into
the small first chamber. A couple more climbs down and a scramble across a
sloping bedding leads to more small climbs into the large Main Chamber.
This is very impressive with a boulder floor and a few passages going off.
An easy climb down leads to the Rift Passage which leads to The Gallery
where the new extensions begin. From here the route is down through a
boulder choke of impressive proportions. The route is tight, pretty
tortuous and mainly straight down. No connoisseur of underground
scaffolding could fail to be impressed by the work that has gone in here.
I did wonder how we were going to get the cylinders through though. We
followed the route down past The Doghouse and emerged at the top of a
fixed ladder. After some discussion we decided that this must be Floodgate
Pot and carried on down into larger passage which led to another choke.
This section is fairly strenuous and leads to the top of another short
pitch with a handline on it. By this stage I didn't fancy finding the
cylinders but we continued hoping that we were in the wrong cave. All of a
sudden, things started to look worryingly like The Diver's description. We
looked down the obvious hole and were dismayed to find a line reel. Below
the line reel we could see the cylinders. Col tried to hide the anguish on
hid face as I passed the cylinders up.
We set off up the handline carefully mauling the cylinders between us.
They're not light and man-handling them vertically up the choke was hard
work. Whenever I'm carrying cylinders I'm haunted by the fact that each
one contains roughly the same energy as 400g of high explosive. I pointed
this out to Col whilst he had two of them between his legs and clambered
over them. He said he's bear that in mind and clambered carefully. We
emerged struggling at the bottom of the metal ladder and climbed up that
and into the next choke. A fair bit of effort got us up to the Main
Chamber and we had a rest there and contemplated how much effort the
diggers must have put in. We were happy with the progress that we were
making but weren't exactly moving fast. The cave goes a bit more
horizontal here and we slowly made our way out. We exited about three and
a half hours after we entered and went for a cup of tea in Ashbourne.
Waterways Swallet is a very interesting cave. The steeply dipping beds
remind me of Mendip and there aren't many caves in Derbyshire that gain
depth so quickly. I didn't see much Stal but we weren't really looking for
it; the chambers and boulder chokes are impressive. There are flooding
issues to be aware of and I'd suggest that the boulder chokes need ALOT of
care. Remember that it's an on-going dig. For information about the
Keyhole Caving Club extensions to Waterways Swallet visit Keyhole
Caving Club where you can find photographs and an up-to-date
survey.
|
