The first novice caving trip was to Wales, but I couldn't go because I was too busy having dinner with Alan Rickman. The second, and last caving trip was this past weekend, so I cleared my schedule and made time!
We left Oxford an hour after planned because not only did the mini van driver call in sick, but so did the back up driver! The drive to Mendip took about 2 hours, during which time the 13 or so of us enjoyed an eclectic mix of tunes (anywhere from traditional Irish music to Bohemian rhapsody, to opera, to the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song, to classical) and speculated about the trip would go. Some of us (or maybe I was the only gullible one) actually though that the cave hut we'd be sleeping in was a hut in a cave! But no, the cave hut is actually above ground and consists of a kitchen, a living room, and one bedroom upstairs with about bunch of mats laying on elevated wooden structures.
The cave hut
Our bedroom
The first thing we did after pulling up was walk to the pub down the road - just in time for it to start pouring!
Thankfully it wasn't raining on the way back, which meant I could actually take in my surroundings as opposed to fruitlessly trying to avoid getting wet. The sky was beautiful. So many stars, the moon behind a fog and lighting up the horizon.
When we got back to the hut, the cave leader announced that it was time for the caving games. He then proceeds to pull out a contraption made of two wooden boards held together by screws. The goal is to squeeze your body through the boards, which get tightened with each round. It got to the point where the two people left competing had to cheat and unscrew it just to get their heads through, and then put it to the right setting for the rest of their body. Oddly enough, the two rounds where the semifinalists lost was the round they each thought stripping down to boxers would help them fit through better!
It's called the constrictor... boy is it constricting!
Couldn't get it over his head, but got it over everything else!
How small is was at the end of the game
Our winner! Still didn't beat the all-time record though... next time...
That game left some people a lot more cut up and bruised then when they began. The next game was where there was a kitchen pot on the floor with a looped string around it. The goal was to have two people standing on this tiny pot and to somehow pull the string up from the floor and over both of their bodies.
They did it very quickly, surprisingly.
So did they...
Jack and I... nope.
That's Jack...
Meanwhile, Tom, one of the team leaders decided it would be funny to throw fireworks into the furnace without warning anyone...
It was pretty funny...
The next day it was time to go caving! After my first homemade breakfast in England, we got suited up! You start with a very fashionable onesie...
But these guys definitely take the award for pulling off the onesie with style
The onesie is then followed by a caving suit, a belt, rubber gloves, a helmet, and of course wellies.
Then we split up into teams and hit the road! My team, consisted of two American fools, I mean friends I dragged along with me, an Italian PHD candidate and two awesome guides. This time, we were driving in day light and the countryside was gorgeous! We pulled up to the side of the road, parked the car and hiked to the cave, which was essentially a bunch of rocks creating an opening in the hillside.
Hiking to the cave
We walked 10 feet into the cave and there was a tiny (I mean the tiny) hole in the ground. One of the leaders got down and just went through feet first and disappeared, at which point Grace bowed and out went back to the car. She had mentioned being claustrophobic and we had joked about it for like a week leading up to the trip, but I didn't realize she was serious! Such a shame because she rocked the caving gear...
But she was probably the only sensible one out of all of us
Here's a pretty pic grace took above ground while we were caving.
Anyway, I blindly followed, not completely aware of exactly what I was getting myself into. Turns out, the space just got smaller! We kept going down, down, down. Every once and a while the cave would open up into a chamber about the size of a vehicle. The sights were amazing, but on the inside I was scared to death! The cave was called Goatchurch Cavern. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, but I'd venture to say that was a good decision. Judging by the bruises all over my body from squeezing into tight places, I'd imagine the camera wouldn't have made it).
Here's a picture from someone else's camera just to give you an idea. That's a person's feet
Here's another picture from another team with a camera
One part of the cave is called the drainpipe, and it is a 15 meter horizontal tunnel barely wider than the average person's shoulder length. I ended up manuvering like a cork screw through it, kicking my feet and twirling around inside before I made it out. And once you made it through (so triumphant) you had to go back through it again because it led to a dead end... It was absolutely insane. There were so many moments were I was thinking there is no way I can fit through there, but the only alternative is being stuck where you are... so you make yourself fit! Or there is no way I can climb that, but the alternative is being stuck where you are, so you do it!
We did another cave that day, which was just as tight and tasking on your body; the only difference was that this cave has bats and massive spiders. The different parts of this cave were called Purgatory, Hell Series, Paradise Series, and The Garden of Eden! After we have finished with the caves that day, we couldn't get in the car covered in mud. Solution: change right there next to the road. There was a lot of firsts that weekend. Chocolate for lunch was another (only food we brought in the cave).
After all the groups made it back to the hut, we made a massive home-cooked meal.
So much cheese... and proof that Grace can somewhat cook!
After a delicious dinner, we played another caving game (cavers are crazy) with a door with hole in it, and you have to make it up and down the door by weaving in and out of the holes. But all of the crazy cave games made sense after having been in a cave!
Some didn't make it through this unscathed...
Cavers make so many games out of squeezing through small spaces. At one point, the leader of the trip climbed onto the kitchen counter and attempted to squeeze through a tiny window (and would have succeeded if it weren't for the 12 foot drop on the other side and the hook in the middle of the window frame).
After the games, we set off a bunch of fire works outside, some of which people may of may not have been holding at the time it was ignited...
No one was injured too badly... hahah! And then we ended the night with ghost stories!
The following day we went in a cave called GB. This cave is also a wet cave, as opposed to the two we had done the day before. We drove to a farm and then walked around a beautiful field of sheep (which also had a giant sink hole in the middle of it) for a while until we found the cave. This cave had many more open chambers bigger a football field; it had your classic spiky formations on the ceiling dripping water like you would expect in a cave... don't get me wrong, it still had its fair share of very tight very small spaces. There were plenty of times where we were maneuvering through a passage by pushing our bodies against two walls because there was no floor. There was even a waterfall (and it had been raining a lot, so it was a lot more water than usual), which we descended and climbed (easily the scariest thing I have ever done in my life). I have climbed a waterfall in Jamaica before, but this was completely different. Remember, these caves are pitch black. We did all this with just a head light. It was much more vertical and there were no ropes. At one point I actually slipped on a rock and had to literally be thrown back onto the ledge. It was terrifying and amazing! People go through their entire lives without seeing what I saw those two days.
When we finally arose from hundreds of feet below the surface, the sun was setting on the field of sheep. It was like a movie. So picturesque with us ascending from a hole in the ground and triumphantly trekking across a field in our caving gear, covered head to toe in mud. The whole trip was like a movie. In the cave it felt like we were in the Descent and something was going to jump out and kill us all at any moment (not the whole time... just a bit...)
It was an absolutely amazing trip. And as a bonus, we drove through Bath on the way back to Oxford. The lights at night were amazing! That's when I found out it's apparently it's a typical American thing to point out how beautiful Bath is at night. The experience I had was well worth the pain I am in right now! My muscles hate me!
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Battle wounds... the other arm is just as bad...
So worth it!
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