We can’t hope to bring you every story, but there are plenty of caving and mining blogs out there you can browse at your leisure – so have a read through some of the best! If you know of a blog you’d like us to add to this page please let us know.
Clicking on a story will open a new tab and take you to the original story.
Vince Simmonds Blog – Wookey Hole, Mendip
14th April 2016: with Nick, Brockers and Dunc. I had amassed a pile of kit to go underground including 2no. BDH's filled with cement, drill with assorted bits and hangers, new skip and a 1 ton dumpy bag, all to deal with the sloppy sediment issue ...
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Hanoi Part One
Old building, new wiresWe're back in Hanoi for a few days, no real reason except Ruth is visiting a Dentist while we are here (she may be developing an abscess) and it's also nice just to leave Phong Nha for a while.Another old French colonial bu ...
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Oxalis Four Day Tu Lan Caving Tour
Tu Lan campsite from Hang Ken entranceAnother fine tour, weather good and water is warming up nicely.Hang Chuot, or Rat CaveHere's a few selected pictures from the tour, mostly caves as that's what it's about!The short swim through cave on day twoDay t ...
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Vietnam Caves, Hang Dong Cây Sanh, our final Expedition outing
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| Riverside Campsite |
Ruth, Watto and I just had time for a quick two day outing before another Son Doong tour. A short drive and forty minute walk got us to our campsite by a dry riverbed.
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| Hang Dong cây Sanh entrance |
From the campsite it was a thirty minute walk uphill to a cliff and an entrance to a cave by a large "Strangler vine" tree, hence the cave name, Cây Sanh being the local name for this type of tree. It use another tree for support, then slowly strangles the support tree as it grows, eventually the supporting tree dies but by then the tree can support itself.
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| Oh Dear, this Deer seems to have got stuck in the mud |
The entrance was a steep slope down to a large area with big formations, at the bottom of the slope was a muddy floor with many deer prints and a pit containing bones which we were told were Deer.
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| The Skewer |
The cave was full of formations, including one lone stalagmite, tall and thin, which we called "The Skewer".
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| The Skewer |
After a while we reached a big chamber with many loose blocks and a choice of ways on, we chose left and down, past a pit estimated at 20m deep.
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| Oh Deer Chamber, you can just make out the daylight, up and left of the people |
This gradually decreased in size before ending at calcite chokes. Time was running out for the day so we had a quick look at the way to the right. This appeared to continue down a short pitch or climb so we had to schedule a return the following day, instead of visiting another cave as initially planned.
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| Final Rift |
The next day we returned to the right hand section, one route ended at a large chamber while down a roped climb ended at a high rift where the draft seemed to go. This was as far as we could get. We also descended the 20m pit which turned out to be 30m deep and ended at a too tight slot which drafted out.
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| Nice formations |
That was it for new cave, apart from a side passage near the entrance so we did some photography on the way out before exploring the side passage.
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| Big Passage |
This had a number of bat skeletons so we called the passage The Bat Graveyard, this ended after about 150m, very pretty but unfortunately that was really it.
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| Pretty side passage near the entrance |
All in all, about 900m of new cave, most of it very pretty.
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| Strangler tree, or Cây Sanh, at the entrance |
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Exploring Hang Bom
The path's here somewhereIn between tours, we managed to squeeze in another day of exploration. This time we had a big team of six of us.The Bomb of Hang BomWe had been told that we were looking for a 20m shaft with a river at the bottom, after about 4 ...
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DCC North Wales Slate Weekend
Cwmorthin Underground Slate QuarryGwynfynydd Gold MineCwmorthin EntranceThis weekend had been on the calendar for some time, and the plan was to go and play on the new Go Below zip wires in Cwmorthin on the Sunday, and a loose idea to possibly do the C ...
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That Sinking Feeling once again
On the Monday, the return trip to Top Sink to retrieve the ropes did not seem anywhere near as attractive as it did when we thought of it on the Saturday. Luckily we had managed to attract another member to our little group for this final trip of the long weekend. Jane, from UKCaving, offered to come along and be our model for the pitch shot.
As the three Dudley cavers slouched along through the boggy ground on the long trip to Top Sink, Jane was skipping along happily praising the lovely scenery. With trepidation we approached the entrance – even without tons of kit the rifts would be hard going. Jane however still didn’t seem worried, and it soon became clear that at the various ‘pinch points’ in the rift where we three had to crawl and thrutch, being rather smaller she was waltzing through upright, swinging her arms!
Once we reached Walrus Pot I went down first and set off along the second rift to de-rig Penknife pitch while Brendan started setting up lighting at the foot of the pot. After he got so cold in Long Churn, we had thought ahead, and he was wearing a waterproof jacket, which despite being wet through, did make a difference to body temperature.
When I got back to the bottom of the pot with the second rope, the photo shoot was nearly finished, with Jane on the rope, Mark hanging over the top of the pitch with his camera and Brendan jumping in and out of the waterfall with various flash guns and bulbs.
I viewed the climb back up with trepidation – the bottom half of the pitch would all be through water and I wished I’d remembered my pantin. However, it didn’t prove to be as bad as I feared; in fact Brendan and I both agreed that the water was quite refreshing!
The ‘crabwalk’ back to the entrance was not at all refreshing, but Jane ran through the rift with a bag and camera box and then came back for more!
A windy walk back to the van and a nice cup of tea at Jane’s was a good end to an excellent long weekend in Yorkshire.
Present: Jess Burkey, Mark Burkey, Brendan Marris & Jane Allen
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| Walrus Pot |
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Joining the dots for an Easegill through trip
After a tiring trip on the Saturday, we were all quite achy when we set off once again to Bull Pot Farm on Sunday, with the aim of completing the last leg of our through trip route-finding; Lancaster Hole to Wretched Rabbit. It was a beautiful morning, with sun in the sky and snow on the hills.
Taking some lessons from the amount of kit we carried the day before, we left two SRT kits tied to the end of the rope at the foot of Lancaster Hole and left the tripods in the van! The route finding went well and we made good progress.
We stopped for a quick photo at Bob’s Boss and Painter’s Palette, then passed Fall Pot, Montague East and West and Stake Pot, following descriptions we had printed out.
The highlight of today’s trip was a section of passage called The Minarets; a beautifully shaped and decorated tunnel where we stopped and took a few photos. Brendan however found that his camera lens had developed condensation on the inside from its dunking the day before, so again his photographic plans were foiled.
There seemed to be a lot of awkward climbs up and down, some with bits of muddy rope to help us. The longest of these had a long, muddy rope downwards which led to an even muddier rope upwards where I managed to get my cowstail caught on a knot and had to be rescued by Mark.
Eventually we were into passage that the boys recognized from previous trips and they romped off into the distance, leaving me to stumble my way over greasy boulders. After pointing out to them delicately and with hardly any swear words that I couldn’t learn the route if all I was looking at was my feet, they let me go ahead and soon I too recognized the way we were going.
Taking a shortcut to Wretched Rabbit we climbed out of the now far too familiar entrance. All the snow had gone and we were even out in time to join some local friends for dinner at a nearby pub.
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| Bob's Boss (Photo Brendan Marris) |
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| The Minarets (Photo Mark Burkey) |
Present: Jess Burkey, Mark Burkey, Brendan Marris
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Yeah cave is dry, by the way I’ve not been in it for 5 years…uh oh!
Team: Andy Freem, Antonia Freem and Duncan Hornby
It is a rare treat to be able to lead the Freems into a cave system they haven’t been in!
Meeting up on the Friday at the MCG hut, Mendips I found them huddled in front of the wood burner. With surprisingly little effort I managed to drag them away from the comfort of the fire for a customary pint at the Hunters!
Saturday was always going to be a short trip as Andy and Antonia had travelled to the Mendips primarily for a meeting at the Wessex CC about their involvement in supporting Eurospeleo.
I was to take them on the through trip of Fairy Cave to Hillier’s in Fairy Quarry. We parked at the Cerberus hut, changed then walked the 5 minutes to the quarry. A warning to those who have never visited the cave, the quarry is now fenced off and one needs to get a combination for the padlock on the gate to gain access. Fairy cave itself does not have a gate but Hillier’s does so the through trip can only be done in that direction if you do not have a key.
It had been cold that morning and we were surprised how warm the air felt as it poured out of the entrance, entering the cave felt positively tropical!
The beginning of the trip panned out as much as I had expected, not remembering any of it until I came across some squeeze for which I had a faint memory of.
We stopped a few times to film and eventually came to a bouldery tube down to a duck. I don’t remember this! A flat out crawl into a pool with a few inches of air space, Andy surveyed it and was concerned that there was not enough space to maneuver as further on the ceiling forced you into even less air space. With valid concerns and recovering from a bad back he decided to go no further. New plans were hatched, Antonia and I were to continue and complete the through trip with minimal stopping, Andy was to navigate his way back out and find the entrance to Hillier’s and meet us there.
The duck was grim and I had to put half my face into the pool to get through; that turned out to be the easy bit, it was the tight squeeze immediately after that was “interesting”.
With the duck and squeeze behind us we continued on with the trip doing the odd bit of filming. We eventually met the Hillier’s system at a T-junction which is an easy climb down. Heading left towards the exit the cave is noticeably more decorated with impressive flowstone formations. At some point along you pass through tar hall. Black shiny tar oozes out of the roof from past quarrying activities, like some grotesque alien life-form.
After this is a section of passage with many broken formations caused by quarrying activities. Another flat out crawl, then you can finally stand with a climb up a slope to the exit.
Andy had been waiting patiently to greet us. It had obviously occurred to him that he could come through that entrance and we were keen to show him the rest of the cave. We headed back towards the T-junction filming various locations.
Once we got to the T-junction I said I had never actually gone right, I had always gone left to head out, so we went right! This turned to be a fantastic experience as the formations suddenly got even better with an explosion of coloured flowstone, crystal pools, straws, stalagmites and curtains, a Freem production filming wonderland!
Antonia and I pushed a contorting but easy to navigate choke, passing through a flowstone flat out crawl and with Antonia leading the way entered the section of the cave into what is known as Cambridge Grotto. This is very well decorated and we passed through to as far as Brenda’s Chamber. Andy had not followed through the choke, so after about 30 minutes of exploring we headed back to join up with Andy. At this point we headed out.
In the evening, we ate at the Victoria Inn at Priddy, then went to the Wessex for their meeting. I hung around in the common room chatting with others and then about 9pm the meeting finished and we all headed off to the Hunters.
Trip time: 5 hours
Plan “A” was to visit Pine Tree Pot, a cave near MCG which neither of us had visited. This was blown out by the fact no one staying at the MCG had access to the key cupboard. So rather frustrated we went to plan “B”, use a key we had picked up at the Wessex the night before and enter Hillier’s again with one of the Freem’s superior cameras to film some of the formations in higher quality.
We picked up two new MCG members who had been let down by other members and took them into Hillier’s. The cave is quite short so I took them as far as the T-junction into Fairy Cave, explained various options and left them to it. Andy and Antonia had made their way to just past tar hall and we began filming. We were working our way towards the pretties beyond the T-junction.
Filming took longer as the superior camera required setting up on a tripod, this gave me ample opportunity to use my stills camera for capturing various formations or scenes including bat poo! Yeah it gets very lonely on long filming trips…
With an almost celebrity like status Andy and Antonia were recognised by another group passing through the system. I on the other hand was not...
We eventually passed the T-junction into the next pretty section, filming the squeezes and formations. This time Andy joined us and passed through the choke into the flat out crawling section. At the end of this is another squeeze that turns into an awkward left-handed turn. Andy observed me passing through this and most wisely decided against continuing in case his back gave him trouble. Thus Antonia and I continued on, filming as much as we could do.
I realised just having 2 people meant that it was more difficult to set up scenes. A third person in a filming team definitely makes things easier and can act as a model for scale.
With time running out, regretfully Antonia and I had to give up and head back to the exit to ensure we did not overshoot our call out. There was plenty more to video…
Meeting up with Andy we shut the gate and headed back to Cerberus, just in time for it to start raining. Sitting in their camper van, scoffing pasties and chocolate, bruised and battered from the choke we were all very impressed with the many formations that Hillier’s had kept secret.
Trip time: 5 hours
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It is a rare treat to be able to lead the Freems into a cave system they haven’t been in!
Meeting up on the Friday at the MCG hut, Mendips I found them huddled in front of the wood burner. With surprisingly little effort I managed to drag them away from the comfort of the fire for a customary pint at the Hunters!
Saturday
Saturday was always going to be a short trip as Andy and Antonia had travelled to the Mendips primarily for a meeting at the Wessex CC about their involvement in supporting Eurospeleo.
I was to take them on the through trip of Fairy Cave to Hillier’s in Fairy Quarry. We parked at the Cerberus hut, changed then walked the 5 minutes to the quarry. A warning to those who have never visited the cave, the quarry is now fenced off and one needs to get a combination for the padlock on the gate to gain access. Fairy cave itself does not have a gate but Hillier’s does so the through trip can only be done in that direction if you do not have a key.
It had been cold that morning and we were surprised how warm the air felt as it poured out of the entrance, entering the cave felt positively tropical!
Andy and Antonia, doing a final equipment check before entering fairy cave
The beginning of the trip panned out as much as I had expected, not remembering any of it until I came across some squeeze for which I had a faint memory of.
Andy passing through the first flat-out squeeze in Fairy Cave
Andy in a chamber near the entrance
A water drop captured hitting a cave pearl
We stopped a few times to film and eventually came to a bouldery tube down to a duck. I don’t remember this! A flat out crawl into a pool with a few inches of air space, Andy surveyed it and was concerned that there was not enough space to maneuver as further on the ceiling forced you into even less air space. With valid concerns and recovering from a bad back he decided to go no further. New plans were hatched, Antonia and I were to continue and complete the through trip with minimal stopping, Andy was to navigate his way back out and find the entrance to Hillier’s and meet us there.
The duck was grim and I had to put half my face into the pool to get through; that turned out to be the easy bit, it was the tight squeeze immediately after that was “interesting”.
A lovely day to go for a dip!
With the duck and squeeze behind us we continued on with the trip doing the odd bit of filming. We eventually met the Hillier’s system at a T-junction which is an easy climb down. Heading left towards the exit the cave is noticeably more decorated with impressive flowstone formations. At some point along you pass through tar hall. Black shiny tar oozes out of the roof from past quarrying activities, like some grotesque alien life-form.
Tar oozing out of roof in Tar Hall chamber
After this is a section of passage with many broken formations caused by quarrying activities. Another flat out crawl, then you can finally stand with a climb up a slope to the exit.
Andy had been waiting patiently to greet us. It had obviously occurred to him that he could come through that entrance and we were keen to show him the rest of the cave. We headed back towards the T-junction filming various locations.
Andy and Antonia ensuring video camera lens is clean before filming
Once we got to the T-junction I said I had never actually gone right, I had always gone left to head out, so we went right! This turned to be a fantastic experience as the formations suddenly got even better with an explosion of coloured flowstone, crystal pools, straws, stalagmites and curtains, a Freem production filming wonderland!
Antonia and I pushed a contorting but easy to navigate choke, passing through a flowstone flat out crawl and with Antonia leading the way entered the section of the cave into what is known as Cambridge Grotto. This is very well decorated and we passed through to as far as Brenda’s Chamber. Andy had not followed through the choke, so after about 30 minutes of exploring we headed back to join up with Andy. At this point we headed out.
In the evening, we ate at the Victoria Inn at Priddy, then went to the Wessex for their meeting. I hung around in the common room chatting with others and then about 9pm the meeting finished and we all headed off to the Hunters.
Trip time: 5 hours
Sunday
Plan “A” was to visit Pine Tree Pot, a cave near MCG which neither of us had visited. This was blown out by the fact no one staying at the MCG had access to the key cupboard. So rather frustrated we went to plan “B”, use a key we had picked up at the Wessex the night before and enter Hillier’s again with one of the Freem’s superior cameras to film some of the formations in higher quality.
We picked up two new MCG members who had been let down by other members and took them into Hillier’s. The cave is quite short so I took them as far as the T-junction into Fairy Cave, explained various options and left them to it. Andy and Antonia had made their way to just past tar hall and we began filming. We were working our way towards the pretties beyond the T-junction.
Antonia admiring a formation during filming
Filming took longer as the superior camera required setting up on a tripod, this gave me ample opportunity to use my stills camera for capturing various formations or scenes including bat poo! Yeah it gets very lonely on long filming trips…
Macro-mode still of fungus growing on bat poo!
With an almost celebrity like status Andy and Antonia were recognised by another group passing through the system. I on the other hand was not...
We eventually passed the T-junction into the next pretty section, filming the squeezes and formations. This time Andy joined us and passed through the choke into the flat out crawling section. At the end of this is another squeeze that turns into an awkward left-handed turn. Andy observed me passing through this and most wisely decided against continuing in case his back gave him trouble. Thus Antonia and I continued on, filming as much as we could do.
Close up of curtains in Cambridge Grotto
I realised just having 2 people meant that it was more difficult to set up scenes. A third person in a filming team definitely makes things easier and can act as a model for scale.
With time running out, regretfully Antonia and I had to give up and head back to the exit to ensure we did not overshoot our call out. There was plenty more to video…
Meeting up with Andy we shut the gate and headed back to Cerberus, just in time for it to start raining. Sitting in their camper van, scoffing pasties and chocolate, bruised and battered from the choke we were all very impressed with the many formations that Hillier’s had kept secret.
Trip time: 5 hours
Curtains in Cambridge Grotto
Beyond Cambridge Grotto, Antonia pauses to admire the formations she had just filmed
Now you have read the blog you can watch the movie!
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Dig Halloween update 9th April 2016
With Jake. It was okay with just the two of us as it allowed a couple of missions to be completed without to much disruption to digging. 1 . Took my drill underground and Jake drilled a hole into the large boulder, balanced precariously at the t ...
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New Toys, Tears and Tantrums in Easegill
--> With a long weekend in Yorkshire on the cards, we had two objectives – to link up the parts of the Easegill through trip ...
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Vince Simmonds Blog – Wookey Hole, Mendip
7th April 2016: with Jake, Nick, Brockers, Duncan P, also Sam Batstone, Roz Simmonds, Jeremy and Luke Hawkes. Duncan has a sore back so took Roz, Jeremy and Luke on a tour around while the rest of us headed down the rift to dig. Nick, Jake and Bro ...
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Brendan feels a bit Blue in Long Churn
After a rather manic couple of weeks at work our boss asked if we fancied a couple of extra days off to make a long weekend. Jess and I contacted Brendan and so a plan was hatched to finish off our route finding in Ease Gill of the main routes. After a bit of faff Friday morning we eventually left late and arrived at Inglesport gone 11am.
As we hadn’t managed a lot of sleep in the last week, and we had some new toys to play with, it was decided we would just start the weekend off gently with a trip into Long Churn to have a play with the new flash guns and bulbs.
This culminated in a shot being taken from the top of Dr. Bannisters hand basin.
Looking down from the top we needed a little more reflection coming off the walls and Brendan began using his boot as a bucket to throw the water. After one successful go he slipped and nearly fell so I told him I would continue. Filling a welly I went to toss the boot full over the wall , slipped and tossed the whole lot over Brendan’s head. His response was to curse me loudly, turn, slip and fall in to the pool behind him!
Once we had all stopped laughing, Jess climbed up onto the water chute so that I could get the shot, while Brendan waded into the pool with flash bulbs. One shot led to another, as these things do, and a few bulbs went off prematurely, so by the time I was fairly happy with the camera angle and lighting, Brendan had been in and out of the pool so many times his teeth were chattering.
With a bigger trip on the cards for the next day, we were quite happy to leave the water behind and set off to the Bradford hut to eat and relax.
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| Upper Long Churn (Photo Brendan Marris) |
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| Upper Long Churn (Photo Brendan Marris) |
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| Upper Long Churn (Photo Mark Burkey) |
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| Dr. Bannisters Hand Basin (Photo Mark Burkey) |
Present: Mark Burkey, Jess Burkey, Brendan Marris
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Doing things the Wet Way in Swildons
It’s a little known fact that Wells Museum has an excellent Caving Exhibition, and each summer a photographic competition of Mendip caves is held. Mark and Brendan have both been placed highly in previous years, so Mark and I headed down to the Mendips to see if he could get any decent shots of Swildons Hole for this year’s competition.
Within feet of the entrance Mark had me climbing up and down through the water to position flashguns (“Well there’s no point in both of us getting wet!”) until one of the guns took on some water and blew up. With some of the older flashguns also refusing to work, Mark’s original plan of taking photos of me lying in Sump 1 was abandoned, (Yay!) and we decided to try for a pitch shot on The Twenty.
We followed our noses along the dry high-level passages until we came to the stream way. When we got to the pitch we were surprised to find a group of young military personnel practicing their SRT, so while we waited for them to finish Mark sussed out a vantage point for the camera.
Whilst rigging the ladder pitch Mark tossed me the end of a rope to hold, and called something out, but I couldn’t make out what he said. To my surprise, he then pulled the rope out of my hands and threw the whole thing down the pitch! Apparently he’d asked me to attach my end to the P bolt… Good job we had another rope with us, and once we had retrieved the first one we were ready to start the photoshoot.
While Mark hung around with the camera I was Up the ladder, Down the ladder, Along the passage, Up the rift, Under the water, Up the ladder, Down the ladder.. . Smile! My worries about getting cold as I was already wet through were completely unfounded.
With time moving on and the mill to get back to, we derigged and made our way back out of Swildons along the Wet Way.
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| Swildons Hole Entrance Series |
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| Swildons 20ft pitch |
Present: Jessica Burkey, Mark Burkey
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Vietnam Caving Expedition, first trip out
A view, in the jungle, that's something you don't see everyday!The Expedition is here, it comes once every two years. I managed to get a bit of time off and so was able to go out for the first eight days.What's for lunch, My Tom of courseThe first six ...
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Snowdon for some
12-13 MarchJo Myburgh, Andy O'Connor, Tabitha Oosterhouse, Elena and Claire Vivian.It's not every weekend that you get the chance to visit the highest point in Wales one day and then walk around one of the lowest spots the next. But that is precisely w ...
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Moving house the easy way
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| The new house, smart eh? |
What can I say, I've just come out from a Hang Son Doong Tour, and we've moved house. How easy was that (for me).
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| Entrance area |
The house is a lot nicer than our old one, but as expected we do have a few teething problems.
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| The bedroom, lighter than before |
They forgot to put a tap on the kitchen sink!
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| Upstairs lounge, a little bare |
No internet yet, washing machine not plumbed in, no beds and no furniture.
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| Might start a bicycle taxi service |
Easily fixed, go to market and buy some cheap plastic chairs (red of course) £2.50 each, if a little flimsy, must sit gently.
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| Your chariot awaits |
Quickly and easily installed our new furniture so we were ready for a test drive.
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| Tea on the front terrace |
Chairs only just take my weight so had to wrap Gaffa tape around the legs to stop them splaying when warm.
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| View out back, it's ok |
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Hang Son Doong tours, including one with Ruth’s Daughter
Still busy here, a number of tours have passed, including one with Rachel.Son Doong storage tents in Hang En, are we using teepees now?So here are some pictures from the last few, maybe Ruth will add some text about Rachels visit when she gets back fro ...
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