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Cow Pot to Lancaster hole (1/2/26)

route 3 (cow pot to fall pot) , route 1(fall pot to lancaster hole)

The entrance to cow pot was past pull pot of the witches, in an enclosure. Decending, I believe we took the direct route (it had been rigged the night before), involved walking over the edge and had two rebelays close together, about 9m from there a deviation, and then it followed on through a 30m airy decent to which you landed on the bottom. It took me around 20mins to get down, only because I manged to get the ropes tangled as well as my hand jammer getting stuck. (one of those waiting were nice enough to help me unclip it). It was stuck because I was unable to get the wait off. There were very little foot or hand holds.

From the bottom we should have gone up to the left (if facing away from the opening of the entrance). But we took a little detour and went down a decent the wrong way. Apparently it we manged to get to an area that was part of the "black book" (hard caving). This wrong way included use decending down to a little traverse, which got to a rebelay that was a bit of a squeeze, but I managed. As soon as I got down to the bottom a member of the group said we had to go back the way we came, the leader believed we were going the wrong way (he was correct.). Up I went using my hand and chest ascender and footloop. When I got to the top again the group behind us arrived.

They had gone the right way, but thought they had gone the wrong way as they could see that the sediment in the crawl was not disturbed. The leaders of both groups disscused the survay/route discription and figured it out.

We walked back up to the opening threshold and went to the right in which we went through a squeeze (I had to keep my arms to each of my sides and slide through with my stomach and back touching the walls. After the squeeze there was crawel. That leads to a junction (we went left I think). The passage was twisting and became wet. Eventually at some point we got to a fissure which lead to the next decent. Which I think would get us to fall pot.

There were two ropes rigged, one you followed down the fissure into a tall chamber with a stream running through, you switch to clipping in your cowtails as you near the floor. I jumped over a hole and clipped into a carabiner, once the person in front of me had told me I could countinue, (making the rope free for the next person.). The second rope was rebelayed twice, once at a sqeeze, making it difficult to rig the decsender. The next rebelay is not far and you have to be careful not to go to far, as it makes it quite difficult to switch over. I was given a warning before my go, as the person in front of me was unfortunate to have gone to far. I manged just fine, however I did get slightly nervous when after i tested my descender and unclipped my cowtails, something made a loud cling/clipping noise. I didn't fall so I took it as things were alright and it might just have been my harness adjusting itself in a way. At the bottom of the rope you wanted to tie a hard knot into your descender before you touched the floor, and pull youself across to the other side. There you clip your cowtails in and followed the rope traverse up.

We bumped into another group as we waited for others to get down. Once everyone had come down, we then started our way to lancaster hole.

I can't quite remember the exact details leading up to lancaster hole, but I remember we climbed over a boulder or two, which we had a rope attached, and went back over the same boulders as we had gone the wrong way (we had gone up a path which looked like it had stairs.). when we went back to the other side of the boulders and up we took a right and slide down a muddy passage, which we then went up into another rift, from which we could see the hanging rope of lancaster hole.

We took a few photos, some of which were us "scraficing a ripoff mars bar around 6 candles.
The ascend up was around 40m, involving 2 rebelays i think.. Because it took a little while to get out the ones waiting relaxed in the emergency shelter which the leader wanted to test out. When it was my turn to ascend I had to take at least 2 small breaks as my arms were becoming pumped. It later turns out I should have been using my feet more. And that using two feet in the footloop makes things a lot easier.

The entrance of lancaster hole is a lidded entrance amongst exposed limestone boulders about 100m from the Cow Pot stile.