It’s a little known fact that Wells Museum
has an excellent Caving Exhibition, and each summer a photographic competition
of Mendip caves is held. Mark and Brendan have both been placed highly in
previous years, so Mark and I headed down to the Mendips to see if he could get
any decent shots of Swildons Hole for this year’s competition.
Within feet of the entrance Mark had me
climbing up and down through the water to position flashguns (“Well there’s no point in both of us getting
wet!”) until one of the guns took on
some water and blew up. With some of the
older flashguns also refusing to work, Mark’s original plan of taking photos of
me lying in Sump 1 was abandoned, (Yay!) and we decided to try for a pitch shot
on The Twenty.
We followed our noses along the dry
high-level passages until we came to the stream way. When we got to the pitch
we were surprised to find a group of young military personnel practicing their
SRT, so while we waited for them to finish Mark sussed out a vantage point for
the camera.
Whilst rigging the ladder pitch Mark tossed
me the end of a rope to hold, and called something out, but I couldn’t make out
what he said. To my surprise, he then pulled the rope out of my hands and threw
the whole thing down the pitch! Apparently he’d asked me to attach my end to
the P bolt… Good job we had another rope with us, and once we had retrieved the
first one we were ready to start the photoshoot.
While Mark hung around with the camera I
was Up the ladder, Down the ladder, Along the passage, Up the rift, Under the
water, Up the ladder, Down the ladder.. . Smile! My worries about getting cold
as I was already wet through were completely unfounded.
With time moving on and the mill to get
back to, we derigged and made our way back out of Swildons along the Wet Way.
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| Swildons Hole Entrance Series |
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| Swildons 20ft pitch |
Present: Jessica Burkey, Mark Burkey
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