Peoples: Elise Freshwater-Blizzard, Jeff Wade, Ben Auton  When I was growing up, there was a movie to which I only watched once. Since then, every time it was shown in my home, I frowned away from it. Watership Down.   Watership Down is full of death- I want to ignore that for the purposes of this write up. To get to the point, what Watership Down really did for me, is make me realise I am, indeed, Claustrophobic. I’m being serious. Before watching this film, my 6 year old self had no clue what it was like to be in tiny places unless it was under a duvet or being hugged too tightly by my sister. A scene like this really woke me up and, for the first time in my life I thought: “Wow. I don’t like this feeling of being in small spaces or watching things being put into small spaces”  And as I crawled through small tubes, at one point, wedged firmly in the rock, I realised, ‘Huh’ … ‘I’m in Watership Down’ … … ‘fuck.’ But instead of panicking, my good friends, I did something far better. I enjoyed it. Even if my childhood trauma from […]

After a surprisingly successful 8am meet-up at the kit store we(myself,Max Claire and Botch)  set off towards Castleton. Upon arriving at the TSG we soon learnt that the group we were supposed to be ahead of was about to set off. A group from the Wessex arrived at shortly after and informed us around 20 more would be following so we set off towards the cave. A short time and a misplaced key later(promptly recovered from where I had left it in the layby) we arrived and got on with the trip. The first 3 pitches were mostly uneventful  and went smoothly without overly holding up the Wessex group. Well pleased with our progress the trip continued through the boulder choke and towards cow-arse-worms which we avoided and went up some ladders instead. A few small(ish) pitches and a short walk later we were standing at the top of Ride of the Valkyries. At the pitch head we reformulated the plan again as the top traverse was already rigged giving us a bit more wriggle room with the rope lengths and called out to a Wessex group passing far below to no reply. Descending on a pull-through to the first […]

Members present: Louise, Corin, Henry 2, Sherlock, American Ethan, Jeff and Chris Jones H had agreed to take me and Corin on a “leader assessment” trip, but then conveniently was working and drafted Chris and Jeff in to take her place. Corin did an excellent job of recruiting freshers for us to look after, and so 5 of us met at the kit store to pack rope before meeting Jeff and Chris in the Peak; only to find that Corin had done less well at checking that someone was at home to let us into said kit store. After a slightly frantic drive to the IC to pick up Adelaide’s keys, we were finally in. We’d planned on Giants to East Canal, although after seeing the flooded Derwent in Bakewell earlier that day I advised that a dry trip was more in order. On Chris’s suggestion we packed ropes for Owl Hole, some obscure little pot near Glutton Bridge that I’d seen surveys of on the walls of the Orpheus. The drive was long and twisty, but I did get to listen to the Archers which is always a winner. We luckily reached the parking area at the same time […]