Duck Hunting In Upper Flood Swallet.

Dudley members were invited to attend the first 'Cave Fest' event being held in the mendips with Jess, myself and Loz signing up.

Jess and I headed down on the Friday evening. Loz had put her name down for a trip in to St Cuthberts on the Saturday but found herself running late and wound up on a trip in to Eastwater Cavern instead.

Surprised that no one had put their names down for Saturdays trip in to Upper flood swallet, Jess and I eagerly booked the trip. We were joined by Duncan Simey and met up on the green at quarter to ten to find our leader for the day Bill Chadwick, one of the original discoverers of Neverland.

Eager to get going Bill suggested we head straight off and so we were soon changed at the MCG hut and on our way.
En-route I found I had lost a glove and told the others to carry on and I would catch them up, but not only did I not manage to find said glove, but found myself wandering the fields until Jess popped her head up and called me over.
Our next few hours would be spent crawling and squeezing through the entrance series. Bill asked if I fancied cleaning off and going to a little visited area above the duck-under-boss to get a photo of the duck pond and I, of course, jumped at the chance. The Duck Pond is very much like pork pie passage and is a flat out crawl with no way of lighting the chamber any other way than from the front. With this done I headed back and began to make my way back down when Jess came around the corner and lit up the curtains in front of me and so another ten minutes were spent photographing this before turning around to grab a shot of Bill coming back down the Boss.
Further soakings and mud crawls brought us to the wash off point where we stripped down to our undersuits and wet socks before heading to grab a quick shot at Curtain Climb. With this done Jess and I took a few photo's in the connecting passage whilst Duncan, who had never visited Neverland before, went off with Bill.
Suitably impressed the others returned from the stunning area of the cave and we begun our journey back out. The trip in had been great fun sliding and squeezing our way through. On the return it felt a little tougher on the knees!
After six hours underground we re-emerged on the surface and headed off to find out how Loz had got on in Eastwater.

The Duck Pond

The Zig Zags

The Duck-Under-Boss

Curtain Climb

Curtain Passage

Present: Jessica Burkey, Mark Burkey, Duncan Simey and trip leader Bill Chadwick