Report by Jules Barrett
Cavers: Jules Barrett
(EPC), Chris Schofield (EPC)
After
a trip down Eldon Hole we had some time left and since neither me or
Chris had
been in Perryfoot Cave we went for that. It's not a long cave (less
than 200m of
passage) so we didn't expect that it would take long. After getting
permission
from the farm we walked to the entrance and headed in to the cave. We
quickly
found ourselves in a chamber with a tyre in it ('1st Chamber') and the
guidebook said that two
alternative routes were possible from here to the final chamber at the
end of
the cave; one via the Iron Maiden squeeze and the other easier
alternative. We
went straight ahead dropping down into a low section with cobbles on
the floor
('The Rack').
This emerged in a small chamber with two possible routes on. This was a
bit of a
surprise as CotPD just says that a series of crawls and pools leads to
the Iron
Maiden and the final chamber with a sump. We had a very brief look
up and
right and could see what looked like a small sump with a black flexible
pipe in
it. Everything else this way looked blind. Given that everything
looked
impassable here we took the left-hand option (the 'low road') which led
up over a short wall and
into comfortable crawling passage. This continued for a way until a
body-sized
horseshoe-shaped hole at floor level. Chris went through the hole and I
followed
him through. On the other side of the hole the rifty passage seemed to
get too
tight. It seems that this part of the cave may be
what's called
the 'low road' which eventually becomes too tight. From here we
re-traced
our steps back to the 1st Chamber and followed the alternative route
to 'Flood Passage'. This was easy enough to follow and eventually led
to a
sump pool and concrete dam that had been used for bailing. According to
the
guidebook the route through the Iron Maiden etc. should emerge in this
chamber
but despite looking everywhere we couldn't really see where the Iron
Maiden
route could enter. We exited the cave after a couple of hours. Have
since seen a
survey and it all makes more sense. Will be returning for another look
but it
seems that there's more water in the lower parts of the cave than there
used to
be and it's possible that some parts of the cave can't be accessed any
more.
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