Team: Jon P, Sam P, Ben S, Jim T
I’d been keeping my wetsuit fresh for this one. As Captain Rob was away and we’d been talking about it for a while, the target was a through-trip – down Cliffstile, up the sough into Glebe and via Doom for a Cussey exit.
Meeting up on a glorious evening, I arrived in plenty of time to observe the trough-newts in Eyam until it was confirmed I was in fact in the wrong place. Error rectified, and keen to crack on, I soon regretted getting into my wetsuit so early as I itched and sweated in the sun.
After a very pleasant walk through the village, past the odd bemused smirk, we were lifting the heavy lid on Cliffstile. What a shaft! Plumb vertical, 80m straight down and nicely ginged.
Ben headed down first whilst ever supportive, Jon asked me if I still knew how to pass a rebelay….
It was amazing to look down the shaft once Sam had headed down and see his and Ben’s lights way down at the bottom, clear and bright in spite of the distance. I got on the rope, unlocked my Stop and enjoyed the ginging as it rolled past and soon reached the first rebelay, where the craftsmanship transitioned to mining and the shaft became solid limestone. Soon enough I was clipping my super short cowstail into the second anchors. Stop off, reinstalled and then…. Everything I tried just made me pivot on the cowstail. I might as well have clipped my D straight onto the hanger. It seemed I hadn’t forgotten how to pass a rebelay, but nevertheless we were in for a bit of faff. Jammers on, climbing the rope above, the short cowstail was definitely too short for this one. Jon appeared above me and after a minute of kicking and pushing me in the back, I was released and got down to rejoin Sam and Ben through the small hole access to the sough.
The cold water of the sough was welcome after that, and we started upstream, stooping at first and with some resistance from the water, such was the level of flow even in summer. Stooping deepened to wading, semi floating in a seemingly endless perfect arch of perfectly cut thin gritstone blocks atop the underlying limestone. Seriously impressive engineering.
Eventually we reached a sharp turn in the sough, to be greeted by an old ladder heading a fair distance above. A bold step off it halfway up it onto a ledge took us into Glebe, and had a look about the various levels and rooms in there. All quite urbex-y being relatively modern, with rails and metalwork, hose, cables and concrete steps.
Knowing nothing of the place, I followed along and at some point we headed into middle-level Doom. This was more like it. Lots of natural and Jon pointed out a number of leads waiting to be pushed or continued. Signs of t’owd man were everywhere, including a complete clay pipe looking like it’d been left there yesterday. All over the walls were small pockets of clay with fingerprints in them and some impressive dry stone walling protecting the walkway from a deep hole on the edge.
Keen to press on we climbed up a wall, handily equipped with rebar staples, and entered the – to me notorious - Loperamide Lust, a key feature of Cussey Pot for so long and yet this was to be my maiden grovel. Unlike the various videos and stories I’d heard, it was not the soaking wet slop-fest I expected. The mud had dried out to an almost plasticene consistency and I found myself wishing it was a bit wetter. Nevertheless, with hands out in front and toes doing most of the pushing I made decent progress and eventually found myself at a fairly significant change in angle. This up-slope was an absolute bastard. Already feeling it by this point, I struggled to make any upward progress. I felt hands at my feet – Ben to the rescue – and apologised in advance as I started to kick and push, and in no time I was turning onto my back looking up into the relative vastness of Inglorious Bastard… I knew where I was now and was ready for the familiar climb out of Cussey. As my last trip down and back out from here had felt easy, I looked forward to the technicalities of the Shattered Dreams squeeze and Coconut Airways, and set off up the rope…. Listening to the others chatting at the bottom, I was a bit too keen to hang on the rope at the top and join in the conversation….but resting doesn’t equal moving so off I went again to get off the pitch and make my way over the hole to the next rope. By now nothing felt easy, so I reminded myself to take it steady… something I’d heard about most accidents happening after a long drive occur a mile away from home, now wouldn’t be a good time to do something daft. The shattered dreams pitch felt awkward and horrible, but I was nearly there. A couple of months ago, the sight of the vertical squeeze up would have been met with anything but relief but here I was, I knew how to do it just right and just slid up and through it, and like every other time, it felt amazing. On to Coconut, my new route up it making it feel like a normal climb rather than the living end that my first journey up had been, albeit one where the pull on the stemple took a concerted effort to engage with.
All that remained was to make the entrance pitch feel and operate like I really had never done SRT before, and I hauled myself out into the balmy Eyam dusk. The walk through the village really did feel like a trek so I was very grateful to Sam as he’d already got changed, closed the Cliffstile lid and retrieved my spanner.
Back at the vans, it felt amazing to be chatting and laughing with such a fantastic bunch, and as I have done a lot recently, I felt elated at the trip we’d just had and moreso at the team I had to do it with. Particularly as at this point I discovered that I literally couldn’t get my wetsuit off so one of them had to draw the short straw and peel me out of it.
Ben treated us all to cake and the beer went down as the dusk turned to darkness.