Red
Rose Cave and Pothole Club - Newsletter Vol. 6 No. 5 - October 1969
Manchester T and AVR RAMC MEN JOIN THE CLUB . Weekend
19th. to 21st. Sept 1969.
Party: Tony Higham
Tony Tanner, Chris Cleary,
Ray Enderby, Alan Massey. Howard Fordham.
In Support: - John McCarthy, Alan Povey.
As new members of the Red Rose Cave and Pothole Club, we asked
our Commanding Officer (we are in the T - AVR 'Medics') if we could use
the unit Landrover and Minibus for weekend training after promising not to take them below ground we set out on Friday 19th
from Manchester and made our way to High Casterton, arriving at
a darkened Bull Pot Farm at 11pm. Ron Bliss had written to tell us that the main switches were
over the kitchen door and it only took one lighter full of fuel to find the
right kitchen. It was such a great luxury for us to have the use of the farm
instead of having to erect tents on a wet, windy, boggy moor in the dark. After
a good meal we sampled the added luxury of sleeping six in a bed (frowned upon
by the Army) and spent a restful night.
On Saturday we set out to investigate the
lower reaches of Sunset Hole. There was very little water going down but some
of the party managed to let it all run up their sleeves when negotiating the
small pitches. Once down the final pitch we spent well over an hour trying all
the crawls but did not visit the extension. The return trip had to be speeded
up as they close at 3pm. We just made it!
On Sunday we drove over to Selside and paid our tanners. Poor Bob tripped over during
the walk up to Long Churn and sustained a
nasty cut on his right elbow. Our doctor, Tony Higham,
plastered him up and pronounced that the arm was unbroken but thought it best
that he didn't continue so he returned to the truck. The rest of us made our
watery way down to the Dolly Tubs and as we are not yet rich enough to own wet
suits, we were feeling pretty cold and wet by the time we had reached the
Bridge. Well aware of the dangers of exposure we decided to call a halt and
make our way back out, which we
managed without incident. It was only after the rest of the party started wading waist deep in water i the final stream passage that I remembered from my last
visit there five years. ago the oxbow on the left. I nipped around and much to
their disgust, appeared ahead of them. I received the impression that they
didn’t believe me. Up above it was raining and blowing fit to bust and we were
not too amused to find Bob in clean dry drinking togs sitting in the Rover
smoking like a flue. We arrived back at the farm to find our support party ready with a welcome hot meal for us.
So ended our first weekend at Bull Pot
farm. The fact that the minibus had to be push started up the slope in the rain when we left merely added the final touch of pleasure to a very pleasant
trip. We hope to return for many more such trips and look forward to a meeting with other club members.
Tony Tanner.