Lost John's Cave

Initially we thought the weather forecast meant a curtailed trip into Lost John's Cave as yesterday's forecast was for a wet afternoon but while eating breakfast in Bernies and talking to Jack Pickup he looked up the weather radar map on his Nexus tablet and we saw that it was very wet on the west coast of Ireland but where we were in the Dales would be alright for a while today.
Due to both the original forecast and because it was Sunday an most didn't want to get away too late, we had a very early (for an Orpheus trip!) start and had been at Bernies just before 09:00 as Steve Round had pointed out when the church clock bell was ringing while ordering breakfast.
Some who were not planning on breakfast in Bernies had headed straight onwards to Leck Fell and we followed after the usual session of leaving some cars at Cowan Bridge village car park.
It was milder yesterday as we parked up at the usual car park and started getting into caving gear. Pete Wagstaff, Charles Bailey, Boyd Potts and Alan Hatton were with the early party and were going to rig and descend the cave via what is called Centipede Route and we found them still getting themselves sorted at the car park.
Karen, Keith, myself and Mark Silo were to rig and descend Dome Route, then after meeting the other party at Battleaxe Traverse, some would continue further down the cave at this point while the remainder would exit the cave as they wanted a shorter trip.
Things went very smoothly and after dropping the various pitches in Dome Route, I was at the back of our group and as I was leaving the foot of the final pitch, I followed Karen and Keith and met Boyd making his way out closely followed by Mark.
Meanwhile I started prusiking up the last pitch of Centipede Route followed by Karen and Keith and we three made our way back to the surface de-rigging Centipede Route as we went.

We reached the surface and again got changed and after saying good-bye to Keith we joined Boyd and Mark in Bernies for a post-caving chip butty after an excellent trip.