Carlswark Cavern

There had been a plan for Karen, Keith and I plus maybe some others to have a trip down JH (James Hall's Over Engine Mine) near Castleton but as it had been so wet recently, we decided to postpone the visit to JH for another time and Keith would stay at home in Rugby.

So, we decided to visit Carlswark Cavern as we hadn't been there for quite a while and we intended to visit the outdoor gear shop "Outside" as well at Calver crossroads which is near to Stoney Middelton..

After breakfast at Monyash, Karen and I picked up a rope from the OCC hut and parked in Stoney Middleton at the large layby near the village centre.

We walked along the path passing the Gin Entrance and then to the Eyam Dale road and up the slope to Eyam Dale Shaft. We found the shaft had a rope rigged already but it had obviously been there for a while a the tail which was tied to an old bolt on the concrete step by the shaft was very dirty with grit and mud from recent heavy rainfall.

I rigged our rope and dropped down the shaft followed by Karen. We removed our SRT kits and tied off the bottom of the rope and then dropped down the short bottom section of the shaft and then the crawl into the rest of the cave.

We visited most of the cave except for The Big Dig which was flowing with quite a lot of water and of course the main part of the Dynamite Series which is just too small for us.

Afterwards we walked back to the car and cleaned our gear off in the stream flowing below the car park.

Later we heard that there had been a bit of collapse on the second pitch, called Bitch Pitch, so maybe it was just as well that we had changed our plans!