Our first trip of the Yorkshire weekend away, was to be Notts II. The seven of us lowered ourselves one by one into the entrance shaft, which really is an engineering marvel. The amount of effort, time, and sheer determination to shore it up with scaffold bars, wooden slats, bricks, breeze blocks, expanding foam and various other materials must have been huge. I'm glad the original diggers made this effort, though, as corkscrewing down (and later back up) the shaft was great fun.
Before long we joined the Notts II streamway, where a trip to the downstream sump was in order. This involved a couple of photos, with Zeina being the model par excellence. After that, it was up the streamway, with Bartek pointing out a few navigational markers en route. Before long we arrived at a junction, where we went left. This took us into a most beautifully decorated section of passage, where we met two cavers with clean suits that smelled of Febreeze (I don't know how either of those things is possible.) This passage quickly ended with a crawl and a sump, so it was back to the junction where we again went left (though it was right on the way in).
This passage led us to a canal section, where Anne didn't want to swim and get wet. She took up the offer of a shoulder lift, making it through the canal with her top half completely dry. This was quite lucky, really, as the water at the deepest part was between my mouth and nose; any deeper and she would have ended up experiencing a very cold bath. The canal quickly ended in another sump (a very attractive, clear, deep blue one), so it was time for Anne to have another shoulder lift back to the junction. After that, a quick stomp down the streamway (with a suitable photo opportunity, of course), led us to the main shaft and a climb up to daylight. Overall, a great start to the caving weekend.
Cavers: Bartek, Paulina, Zenia, Firas, Dino, Dave & Anne
Trip Report by: Dave B
Photos: Bartek Biela
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