Katie, Victoria, Hal and Fabian
On tonight's agenda was the Cliffstile shaft which would drop us into Moorwood Sough. I remember Moorwood Sough from one of the Cussey Pot Trips with Rob. But tonight Katie would take us into the opposite direction and explore an incredibly engineered Sough level with some amazing cartgate sections.
Meet up was near to Stoney Middleton Church where kit up occured. This is the point where Hal noticed that he had forgotten half his SRT gear and quick thinking was required to improvise. The idea was to piggy back down the pitch with Hal in tow and feed a Stop up to him by the means of a spare rope.
After a steep walk up the hillside inclusive of a little history tour about Eyam by Katie, we reached Cliffstile shaft. "I forgot to bring my helmet!"... A sentence you don't really want to hear just as you are about to enter the depths of the local hillside. I gave Hal my spare headlamp and started to descend down the shaft. The piggy back idea was quickly out the window as the spare rope reached only 10m into the 30m first pitch. I shouted up that it'll be problematic but needed to continue downwards as Victoria was hot on my heels.
Victoria and myself reached the bottom shortly followed by Katie and Hal who did the whole 80m pitch on an Italian Hitch! Can we claim this as a Derbyshire record? We quickly took off the SRT kit, stowed it in our bags and headed into the sough level. This was certainly lower than I remembered.
Katie in Moorwood Sough
Progress was easy enough in ankle deep water but up ahead you could already hear a couple of giggles followed by high pitched moans - water levels must have reached sensitive parts. And yes. Sure enough we'd find ourselves in waist deep water now.
Katie showed us the ladders up towards Rock Cottage but we continue onwards into the further extents of Moorwood Sough. This would be Katie's first explore as well so she exclaimed that she cannot be held responsible.
After various S-bends, roof levels which made awkward progress for Hal and myself and roots pertruding through the walls creating some very big bulges in the pack walls we reached crawling levels now. Everyone anticipated coming across a couple of Rats but rather we saw a lot of their 8 legged colleagues.
After one last right bend we ended up crawling out of the sough level and into Dale Brook we retraced our steps to the cars where we changed into warm clothes. Refreshments were enjoyed with a lovely chat at the Moon Inn. Another lovely trip in Derbyshire ticked off!
Fabian