Karen gad suggested a trip to P8 today so she could try out rigging and Jess Eades had e-mailed her earlier during the week so she planned to come along as well. Funnily enough, Boyd rang about something else and mentioned he was taking newcomer Martin Selfe to P8!. Keith was happy to tag along so we arranged to meet up as usual at the club hut. As we were driving there, we had a phone call from Jess saying that she just found out that Jim Alder and some others were caving in Knotlow Cavern and she decided to join them.
When we arrived at the club cottage we found Dan Leyden there with caving, climbing, walking and camping gear having arrived last night after a last-minute decision to travel up to Derbyshire. We invited him along as well and once everyone had arrived, we headed for the P8 car park and after changing into caving gear and walking across to the cave, we were at the entrance just after noon. Boyd rigged the first pitch and was followed by Dan and Karen while Keith rigged the alternative higher first pitch and was followed by Martin and myself. We met up in the chamber below and headed inwards. After the second pitch and a quick look at the downstream sump, which was quite high, Karen decided to start heading out towards the entrance while the rest of us had a look at the upstream sump. Despite the recent dry weather this sump was flowing well, surprisingly. Boyd and the rest followed the low tube heading back towards the second pitch while I returned via the route we had taken on the way in.
After meeting up again at the second pitch we all had a crawl around the lower passages below the second pitch, we returned back to the surface at 2 PM.
Dan and Keith joined us in Winster for a meal in the Miners Standard in the evening and afterwards we drove to the Royal Oak for the OCC Photo Competition where Karen won the Above Ground Projected Photo and Keith won the Print version - only beating Boyd because he voted for his own photo!
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