Bagshawe Cavern, Derbyshire

It was an early start for an Alt. Tuesday trip to Bagshawe Cavern in Bradwell as we met in the car park at 6:30pm. Along with myself and Karen, there was Mat and Nikki, Andy, Linda, John, Ashley, Martin and Alison. After changing, John collected all our £2 fees and opened up the door into the coe. Once we had all signed in on the log, we opened the door leading onto the steps dropping down into the cave.
It had been agreed that we would split into two groups with one group visiting the Upper Series and the other, the Lower Series. The usual way into the Lower Series is to drop down the short Dungeon pitch but we had learned of an alternative way via a squeeze. Karen and I along with John, Martin, Alison and Ashley chose the Upper Series while the others headed for the Lower Series once we had gone into the cave.
There were some nice sections especially in the narrower passages but once in the large main passage, it reminded me a lot of caves in South Wales with larger passages, quite a bit of breakdown and everything covered with a thin layer of mud.
We reached the start of a sloping passage with a small trench in the floor which was slippery with mud and although it was easy to slide along while crouching down in my wellies, I thought it might prove to be tricky when returning on the uphill journey! Anyway, I reached a flattening out of the passage with a pool of water and low roof which looked like it would be a duck in wet weather and not far past this a passage joining from the right equipped with a diving line and a couple of diving bottles clipped nearby, although there was no water in the side passage at the time.
Continuing onwards, the floor of the passage was washed clean and soon a stream joined from low on the right. I followed the water for a short distance until the roof began to get lower. I headed back to meet Karen at the pool. We started back up the sloping passage which ended up as quite easy and we were not slipping backwards as expected.
Once at the top of the slope, we could breathe a lot easier and met John as he returned from the same direction. Karen investigated a branch passage nearby which involved sliding over a slab and we met a gate to prevent entry into what must be one of the well-decorated parts of the cave. We had passed another gate in the main passage on the way in. After we had returned from the gate, I followed a nearby side passage but this seemed to be heading back to the main passage - and it did as well! In the meantime, John thought we must have missed a side passage as he had a copy of the cave survey so we returned back along the oxbow passage and Karen returned to the gate and I followed. We could see that the passage beyond the gate had a branch and this match John's survey - so this was the side passage he was looking for but we couldn't follow it because of the locked gate.
Once we had returned back along the oxbow passage to the main passage, we mate Mat and the others. They had been to the squeeze and some hadn't been able;e to get past. We saw that the time was past 9:00pm and we needed to head back to the surface to get to the pub in time!
I was out first and joined about 10 minutes later by the others. After changing out of caving gear, we had a quick drink at the White Hart and headed for home.