My aunt often (with the white hair in these photos) often asks me “Why do you lead caving trips Tim? What do you get out of it?”
This trip with her, Max and Ellie to a giant, drippy, upstream funhole is a perfect example.
The trip is not a first timers trip. It’s also not *that* gnarly. It is in the funzone.
My aunt: in her 70s. Lives in Essex. Caves only with us in Derbyshire. Occasionally. Other hobbies include extreme-DIY, sewing a lifetime of sailing. Had a hip replacement shortly before she took up caving about 1.5 years before this trip.
Max: in his 20s. Done a bit of bouldering. Slim, strong, good looking (or so the saying goes)
Now if you weren’t going to read on past this point, it’d be simple to figure out who’d find part of this cave easier.
And you’d be right. Max easily shimmied up an awkward thrutchy climb, whilst the caves walls blushed as Poll informed them in no uncertain terms, that despite her age, she still had some creative and withering swearwords to share.
And then it happened – the positions flipped. Polly raced off along this high level rift (see pic 2) whilst Max proverbially, in his own words, “shat his pants”.
To be clear – there’s nothing wrong with finding this bit, or any other bit of any cave scary. I might share a video sometime of me shitting my pants on a traverse in south wales one day.
So the reason I like leading caving trips, is helping people overcome their battles. Polly’s fight with gravity (and the cave walls). Max’s fight in his head to believe me when I reassured him that he had just watch a 70yro dance across this bit, and he could ignore his brain if he did what I told him.
It was a good trip – with great type 1 fun memories for me, and type 1.3 fun memories for a few others.
@thecavingcrew / @The Caving Crew
Originally posted on this post on Instagram
