Of late we have spent quite a bit of time
in South Wales and a reasonable amount in the Mendips, so for a change Brendan
suggested the Dales. Jess has mentioned
a few times that she has wanted to return to Mistral Cave, so this was planned
for our Saturday trip.
Jess and I travelled up to Ingleton on the
Friday night and so had a good nights sleep before meeting up with Brendan who
had arisen at 5am to arrive at Inglesport for our 9am breakfast.
After plenty of faff we made a couple of
purchases before heading off.
“What are you up to today?” The guys at
Inglesport enquired.
“Mistral”, we replied
“Oh”, was the only reply.
Undeterred we headed off to Bull Pot Farm
where we met up with a couple of other groups getting ready including a former
DCC member Graham who enquired what we were up to.
“Mistral”, we chirped happily.
“Oh”, Graham responded with a smirk.
Before heading off up the track we made use
of Red Rose’s facilities and whilst we waited one of the members enquired where
we were off with all our camera gear.
“Mistral”, again we answered.
“Oh”, the guy responded doubtfully. “well
there’s the stream way and an arch, but I can’t think of anything else you
might want to photo, unless you can do something with mud, it’d be like
polishing a turd”, he smirked.
Brendan and I had planned to take
photographs on the way in because of the copious amounts of mud we would meet
in Hall Of The Mountain King. Jess was quickly very bored of us placing flash
guns and wanting to photo within 5 minutes of the entrance and wanted to hurry
to the mud to play.
First we wanted to head to Gour Hall as it
sounded like there may be something more than mud to see there and we were very
pleasantly surprised by the pretty formations en route and the Gour Hall
itself. Jess relented and allowed a few photographs on our way back to Hall Of
The Mountain King.
Once there we squelched and slid our way past a couple of
rather rude life size sculptures, before reaching a small hole at the bottom of
the chamber which we would slide through ensuring not an inch of our caving
suits would be spared the clay like mud. On the other side we met the cascades
which removed a fair amount of the gloop we had just acquired.
Jess popped for
a quick look upstream and called us to look at some impressive straws before we
continued up the cascades and on to the Cigalere stream way. We arrived at the
canal and after a rather refreshing dip made our way to an impressive waterfall
chamber with rope hanging down. After yet more photographs we made our way out,
Brendan lost both boots to the mud as he exited and wound up having to fight
his way through in only his wet socks.
I almost came a cropper as I began to
uncontrolled slide down the hall of ten, but Brendan just about managed to keep
hold of a muddied arm and save me.
We finally emerged too late to get food and
headed off to the YSS for a bunk for Brendan. A really fun trip and some impressive
turds were polished ;)
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| The Hobbit |
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| Entering Gour Hall |
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| Gour Hall |
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| Final Chamber |
Present Brendan Marris, Jess Burkey & Mark Burkey
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