Caving Trip Report

by Henry 'Norman' James

We arrived at shed, in the middle of nowhere. Which was my first surprise as I expected to be greeted in some underground bat cave to start. And were kindly introduced by a load of instructors (one of which whom looked remarkably like Santa Clause) and got split into groups of fours or fives to begin our adventure into the miles of underground caves, tunnels and er…rocks.

Due to the poor weather we had to enter the caves an alternative entrance to what they’d planned, an entrance being just a small rectangular hole in a rock. Caving was really just like intense scrambling if you ask me in damp, dark conditions. Loads of hurdling through boulders and traverses. Our leaders were basically there to make sure we didn’t get lost/kill ourselves and provided a tour of the Geology. They have nicknames for weird rocks like ‘the Judge’ or ‘the wedding cake’ which was pretty confusing but we all went with it.
Obviously someone had to get injured not Emily this time but Laura. Who damaged her forearm somehow doing a cavey thing. We spent a good four hours in the maze of caves and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Don’t forget the caving club were proper keen to get SUMC involved in caving as much as possible and successfully seduced us with free coffee and cookies. So if you enjoyed it and wanted to do more keep pestering the committee ‘cause