Another midweek adventure, that I nearly didn’t go on.. Luckily I did! We met in Buckden car park, to be greeted by a large number of sheep and no Alex, despite his car being there.. We wondered if he’d be rounded up in the mass of sheep, don’t worry folks, he turned up from trying to get a signal higher up. We then drove a short distance to Hubberholme.
Had a pleasant stroll up Kirk Gill to a split, we followed the dry (right) branch, passed through a gate and spotted a wood covered hole with anchors. The drop was rigged, although we didn’t use the rope as it’s an easy enough climb. Headed upstream, I stopped after a bit, Rob and Alex persisted until the end. Reunited we headed downstream in what quickly became fine walking passage. Soon a waterfall is reached, with in-situ rope, over the top of the waterfall and another simple climb down behind a large flake. The next section quickly reaches some (new-ish looking) stemples across the rift, this makes for easy progress until a final drop to water and a simple stroll to the exit. Short but definitely entertaining.
Next was the walk along the fence line of the wood until we found the stream heading to Kirk Bank. Me and Rob went via a gate and waded through overgrowth, Alex somehow found a short cave under the wall, all reunited near a mini-gorge where the entrance was quickly located.
Dropping down and a crawl soon reaches an impressive 5m drop in spacious surroundings, easily climbed, more large passage, punctuated by the odd crawl led along a sometimes nicely decorated passage until we ground to a halt. A very low, too small grovel in the stream or climb up – to what was described as an evil, slippy down climb that nobody fancied without rope. We didn’t quite reach Dutch End but we were very close.
Two short but great caves, the evening was rounded off by a pint in the friendly Fox & Hounds, Starbotton.
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