Deaths Head Hole (Nearly!)

We drove up to the Dales yesterday evening as usual and arrived at the Yorkshire Speleological Society's hut “The Old Schoolhouse” to find Pete Wagstaff, Boyd Potts, Alan Hatton and Charles Bailey (a very experienced caver) on his first away trip with Orpheus Caving Club. There was also a large party from Manchester University there and a face I recognised, Alex, who had been with a group of cavers I had accompanied into the gated extensions in Water Icicle Close cavern a while ago.
In the morning we had a bit of cereal and then headed for Bernies to meet up with others who were travelling up this morning: Keith, Mark Silo and Dave Phillips.
After breakfast at Bernies, we relocated to the village hall car park at Cowan Bridge and shuffled bodies and cars so that we could travel up to the car park on Leck Fell with as few cars as possible and leave the rest at Cowan Bridge.
Once parked up on Leck Fell, we got our caving gear on making as much use of the vehicles as possible to shelter from the biting cold wind and then walked to the pothole entrance which luckily wasn't too far away.
Deaths Head Hole is a large open pot surrounded by a barbed wire fence held by wooden posts. We spotted a convenient tree overhanging the pot near a stile in the fence which looked up to the job as a belay point and with Mark taking up rigging duties, we tied the rope to a sling around one fence post and to a slightly wobbly piece of rebar about 4 metres outside the fence.
It was very cold but thankfully mostly dry with the odd spot of rain as Mark set off down the pot followed by Keith and the others.
Eventually three of us were left waiting on the surface: myself, Pete and Dave. We were all feeling cold so I let Dave go first followed by Pete. By now my feet were becoming numb despite walking and running around near the pot so I decided to forgo the trip which was relatively short and make my way back to the car to get changed and warm up.
Despite a walk upslope through heather, when I got back to the car, I was still cold!
I quickly got changed out of my caving gear and got my warm Montane Extreme jacket on and sat inside to get warm.
After an hour and a bit I heard voices and it was Karen and Keith returning from their trip. Once they were also changed we were off back to Bernies for chip butties.

It was a pity we had booked Deaths Head Hole, a relatively short trip for today and Lost Johns Cave for tomorrow, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, as they say.