Reservoir Hole and The Frozen Deep

We were up at 08:00 to cook and eat breakfast as we were expecting our “guide” for the day's trip to Reservoir Hold at 09:45.
As arranged, Keith arrived just after 09:00 and joined us for a sausage sandwich. Others who were also staying at the hut were leaving for various destinations and we were wondering what to do about locking up when we left.
Luckily we were joined by a Wessex member just before 09:00, so that issue resolved itself. I wasn't surprised as I'm sure there are usually others around most weekends and even though others had left the hut earlier, there were still several cars still parked in the car park, so they obviously intended returning soon.
Anyway, our “guide”, Andrew Moon, arrived as arranged just after 09:45 and after a short chat, we set off to follow Andrew to Cheddar Gorge (we had packed up everything in the car already and we had paid our overnight fees).
We soon arrived after a rainy journey (typical!) and parked up in the small layby opposite the small covered stone-built reservoir in the Gorge and began getting changed into our caving gear making as much use of the shelter provided by the car boot lids as possible.
We crossed the road and climbed over the metal gate into the reservoir compound and clambered up a short muddy bank to the foot of the limestone crag forming this side of the Gorge. Here was a surprisingly small entrance covered with a metal gate which was held in place by a padlock.
Andrew soon had the gate off and squirmed into the cave through the small hole followed by Keith and Karen with me bringing up the rear. The time was 10:25.
Luckily, within a metre or so, the entrance passage increased in size and was an awkward hands and knees crawl with irregular sides and the odd small boulder. It was sloping gently downwards and after passing a short low, flat-out section with a rock stuck in the floor to make things slightly awkward, we reached larger passage and then intersected another passage at an angle.
We followed this walking passage for a bit and passed sections of “moonmilk” covered walls. Andrew pointed out the very tidy stacking of small boulders which had been removed a s a result of digging activities over many years, which was mainly down to the efforts of well known Mendip caver, the late William Stanton.
We clambered down a drop through a boulder choke lined with stacked rocks and reached another section of hands-and-knees crawling to eventually arrive at a wide passage and then a large chamber in a large rift with sections of slickensides (where two rock faces rubbed against each other during earth movements).
We clambered up a rocky ramp at the far side of the rift chamber and climbed over a large jammed boulder making use of an in-situ handline. From here we climbed down the two electron ladders left behind by yesterday's group. This pitch is broken into two sections by a scaffolded wooden platform, with a 7 metre climb down to the platform followed by another climb which was a little longer.
Once we had all been lifelined to the foot of the pitch we set off for the remainder of the cave and were soon passing the breakpoint of September 2012 to reach the amazing 30 metres high and 60 metres long chamber christened The Frozen Deep.
This chamber is the largest known cave chamber, in terms of floor area, in the UK. There was a large pure white calcite column and several other large stalagmites in view as we entered the chamber and began following a route marked through the chamber bordered with agricultural electric fencing (a white plastic tape with thin embedded wires which is easy to see and very strong).
A short distance along the route and we could see the huge frozen flowstone “waterfall” reaching from the chamber roof down to the floor following one section of the wall.
It's such a large chamber, it took us quite a while to make our way along the route with many stops to admire the splendour. Luckily with our three Scurion headlamps and Andrews very bright LED cycling lamp, we could see quite a lot. We saw the current digging site which was accessed by yet another electron ladder. Of course we could only look at the top of the ladder as we passed by.
After many exclamations of “Wow!” and “Amazing!” we were back at the entrance to the chamber and had a quick “mars bar” break before beginning out return to the surface.
At the ladder pitch, Andrew climbed up first while being lifelined by Keith. Once he was ready, I climbed up next followed by Karen and Keith.
I had dropped back down over the large jammed boulder to wait for the others and Andrew suggested Karen and I start to make our way out a she and Keith coiled up the ladders and put them in the tackle bag.
I was in front on the way out, which was quite a bit easier and the climbs through boulder chokes were upwards and the hands-and-knees crawls were sloping uphill.
At a junction, I followed the wrong route and clambered up a short climb and soon realised I had gone wrong but curiosity had got the best of me, so I continued following this route to an old dig for a bit before turning around and heading back just in time to meet Andrew and Keith on their way out.
I had just missed Karen, who had remained behind to allow Keith to catch up so that she could help moving the gear out of the cave, and we soon caught her up.
Various obstacles, which were more awkward than anything else, soon passed and Karen let us know she could see daylight again.
We all popped out of the small entrance hole and found it was raining again, but only lightly. We had resurfaced at 13:45.

But we didn't care. We had an excellent and enjoyable trip lasting three and a quarter hours and had seen the UK's largest chamber and also some really beautiful “pretties” to top it all off, thanks to our guide Andrew.