Doolin River Cave

Phil Walker was dropped off by his wife at 10:00 and he joined myself , Keith and Karen on a trip down the road to rig the Fisherstreet Pot with ladders , lifeline and SRT rope so that we could have a through trip in the Doolin River Cave entering via St Catherine's cave and exiting via Fisherstreet Pot.
The day was much warmer than of late – we were comfortable wearing T shirts, although Keith had to wear caving gear as he rigged the SRT rope and cached all our SRT kit at the bottom of the pot for later.
Once that job had been carried out, Jenny drove myself, Karen, Keith, Boyd, Phil, Simon and Sharri up to the entrance to St Catherine's farm while Mike drove Elaine up. Simon had driven Robert and his lads Hywel and Rhodri up earlier.
Of course we had all changed into furry suits and brought the rest of our gear to get changed at the entrance to the farm.
We actually got an answer to our knock on the door to ask permission to get to the cave unlike most previous visits.
Soon we were at the entrance to St Catherine's and I began the entrance crawl a few minutes after midday and onwards past the squeeze into larger passage.
We all trooped through the large walking passages, had one or two places where we had to re-track and try another route where slabs broken down from the ceiling blocked the route.
Soon we were at the well-decorated Grotto and had a short break before carrying on.
The water levels were fairly low with the inlets “Pisser” and Aille River not as vigorous as on previous trips.
After quite a lot of large canyon passage, looking for good examples of Doolin Cobbles and having a look at the odd leech, we began to lower sections of the cave.
These passed soon enough with another section of easy walking passage before we reached the low and wet hands and knees section leading to the bottom of Fisherstreet Pot at 14:45.
After Keith and I had prusiked up the previously-rigged rope, Simon climbed up the ladder followed by Boyd again prusiking.
Myself and Boyd then lifelined Rhodri, Htwel and Robert up while the remainder prusiked up as well.
We walked back along the road to Doolin Cottages and got changed after leaving our gear out in the warm sunshine to dry and after showers, etc. Karen, Keith and I had a quick trip to Magnetic Music for a coffee and chocolate cake.