Gautries

This was my second time caving and the trip started at about 7:30 pm when Jreg, James and I picked up Ollie (another fresher) from his lab in the Diamond which finished at 7 pm (savage). We then met Jack in the Gautries car park and James went to pay the farmer who warned us it would be dark down in the cave. Also Jreg parked so we could make a quick getaway if we got rumbled by the feds.

When we arrived at the Gautries entrance we found it was already drained and could climb down into it straight away. This cave was much narrower than the other cave I have been in I was slow at first because I was not used to crawling. I was also not expecting to have to briefly swim through some parts of the cave that were full of water, although the others said Gautries is usually much wetter. There was also a cool mudslide which was my favourite part of the cave. Eventually we found a new part of Gautries that Jack and Jreg had never been to before but they didn’t like it and said it was not worth the effort to get to.

On the way back out of the cave we had a hold up trying to climb back down a slippery section because Jack and Jreg were making Minecraft noises. The same thing happened when trying to climb up a rope and squeeze through a narrow opening. Once we had reinserted the plug that makes the cave fill up with water we had a three hour window to get out which we made in good time. We were all freezing once out of the cave and the heater in Jreg’s car was broken. It was still a great trip, thanks to Jreg for driving us.