Carlswark Cavern

Keith Slatcher and Pete Collins were travelling up to the Peak District for the weekend so Karen and I drove over to the Orpheus CC Cottage to meet them in the morning. When we got to the track leading to the Cottage, we found there was still a fair amount of snow and, at the gate part way along the track, there were three vehicles, including Ken's van, parked up. This was because there was a drifting of snow across the track by the gate and the vehicle owners had obviously arrived last night and could not get any further.
So I phoned Keith and told hime to meet us at home instead. We picked up one of my ropes and headed for the cafe at "Outside" at Calver Crossroads for breakfast, as we planned a trip into Carlswark Cavern and Pete and Keith were planning to do a through trip via the Dynamite Series and out via the newly-repaired Flower Pot entrance. They has attempted this before but found the exit in a state of partial collapse and so came back through the Dynamite Series. After breakfast we parked in the layby just outside the village, which was pretty full already, and got changed into our caving gear on the snow. We walked up the main road and then part way up the road in Eyam Dale and then clambered up the slope to Eyam Dale Shaft. Karen attached the rope to the anchors with assistance from Keith and we all abseiled down the short shaft. At the bottom we stripped off our SRT kit and headed into the cave.
We were soon at the start of the Dynamite Series and found the pool of water at the initial squeeze was quite deep. Karen suggested bailing it but most of our helmets had large ventilation holes. Then she suggested using wellies, which was a brilliant idea, so Keith pulled his off and we formed a small "chain-gang" passing the wellies full of water to me at the rear where I emptied them back through the low pasage sloping downwards we had all come through. Aftee not too long a period, we emptied about thrity welly-fulls and Pete managed to get through alright soon followed by Keith. As Karen and I had no chance of making it through the tighter onward squeezes, we headed back towards Eyam Dale Shaft passing another party of three cavers on the way.
We donned our SRT kit and prusiked back up to the surface. We had planned to hang around for Keith and Pete to find us as Flower Pot is only a short distance up the road and not far from the road. A family of cavers arrived shortly afterwards and we decided to remove our rope so that it wasn't in their way as they had electron ladder and lifeline. There was no sign of the other two so we walked a few hundred yards up the road and soon found Flower Pot. This shaft had been repaired recently and had nice, solid, thick blue plastic tubes lining the six or so metres of shaft. We then realised a slight miscalculation in our plans: Pete and Keith would have found it very difficult to climb up the plastic tubing without a rope or ladder!
We tried shouting down but received no relpy - not really surprising as Pete and Keith must have been at the foot of the shaft long before we had re-surfaced. So, we expected they would either head for Eyam Dale Shaft (not good as we had de-rigged and had their SRT kit but they could climb the other party's ladder) or exit via the Gin Entrance. We first returned to the car in case they had already exited via the Gin Entrance and were back at the cars getting changed. There was no sign of them, so we dropped off the rope and their SRT kits and headed for the Gin Entrance, all the while keeping an eye on the roadside footpath below in case they were heading back to the cars. At the Gin Entrance we had a good view of the path and main road below so Karen waited there while I headed back along the high-level path towards Eyam Dale. I had only gone a short way when I heard a shout from Karen : she had seen the two of them passing below and shouted to them. So we also headed back to the cars and got changed, and returned to the cafe for a second visit.
Here we found from Pete that the woman in the family group whose ladder they had climbed had noticed that Keith had his wellies on the wrong feet! He had put them back on after the bailng session and had not noticed that they were on the wrong feet. Not surprising as he had spent most of the time crawling!