Lockdown 2.0 made social caving a challenge, and Sam wasn’t feeling it, so in the autumn we tried something we’d not done before.
We went for a walk around Stoney Middleton Dale, trying to find and visit as many cave & mine entrances as possible.
For every major cave we do a trip to, there’s ~10 smaller caves we don’t. Some are very short. Some are extensive. Some are supposed to be easy, some are tricky.
Here’s the entrances we visited, we didn’t really “go” in any of them – but we now know how and how not to get to them
Middleton Dale Mine Level 5 – Fingal’s Cave
Nice cleft. Broken glass on floor. Evidence of mining. Miney-crawl squeeze goes onwards but doesn’t inspire adults.
Middleton Dale Mine Level 4 – Triple Hole
I’d quite like a look at the main bit of this. The bit closest to the path is used by activity centres as a “warm up” for carlswark, but the rest of it is suggested to link to stuff, though no links have ever been proven…
Ivy Green Cave
This cave is the setting of probably the creepiest story in the Peaks, and I’m keen to visit. It’s a “proper” climb to cave, which is then a 200m flat out crawl, but we spotted a okish bolt and a shonky bolt, so we’d probably rig SRT up to it, after lead climbing it on trad.
Middleton Dale Mine Level 10
Immediately below Ivy Green, on a shelf, is an obvious hole leading to a pleasant series of chambers where pick marks and possibly blasting holes can be seen.
Middleton Dale Mine Level 3
Uninspiring section higher up the cliff – headed back into a crack. Loose ceilings and pretty dull.
Keyhole Cave
aka the balcony aka various names
We didn’t do the through trip, but this 3 entrance mini cave is one of the best value microtrips in the dale.
Cavalier’s Hole
Immediately to the right of the most right hand Keyhole Cave entrance, is the uninspiring-looking Cavalier’s Hole belly crawl.
Carlswark Resurgence Entrance
A obvious path from near the Gin entrance leads down a tiny scramble, past something interesting looking and into a flat area surrounded by crags. The resurgence is at the back corner.
When we were there, it was empty, echoy and looked surprisingly big immediately inside.
(Continued below)
Originally posted on this post on Instagram
