Today, both myself and John made our way up to Fells End Pot to meet up with both Fred and Jim (another member of the Bradford Pothole Club) in order to obtain some scaffolding for Chatsworth mine. The brutal heat meant I left my caving oversuit off until the last moment and even as we took the gentle walk over to the cave entrance, sweat dripped down my forehead.
The cave itself started with a short 10m pitch which led into a fairly roomy chamber with a boulder floor. To my surprise, the scaffolding was neatly stacked up in the centre of the room and the only job would be to haul the poles and clamps up the 10 meter shaft and then out of shake hole to Johns waiting Land Rover. Within no time at all, we assembled ourselves at different points in the cave. Jim and Fred at the bottom securing scaffolding poles into caving bags, myself hanging on the rope part way up the shaft, and John at the top doing all of the hauling.
I certainly didn’t envy Johns role positioned on the surface in the 25 degree heat, as he heaved the poles out one by one and which must have been back breaking work. The task took a good few hours but in no time at all, we had around 30 poles and a large bag of clamps sat on the surface of the shake hole. After securing the poles onto the roof rack of Johns Land Rover and thanking both Fred and Jim for their help, we drove back to Grassington congratulating ourselves on a job well done.
