Red Rose Cave and Pothole Club - Newsletter Vol. 2 No. 2 - Summer 1964
KETTLEWELL: DOW - PROVIDENCE
A LA RED ROSE ROUTE
Kettlewell is a corruption of the olde Englishe worde ‘Well-kettled meaning
'sup-up', so we did and found out that this was the only way
to beat the Yorkshire climate. The following day armed with two
guides and several hangeroners we entered Dow Cave,
Jim and Colin had done this fearsome pot before and we had hoped to learn from
their previous mistakes, but alas they made the same mistakes again, I have
never seen so many people sliding up and down the walls of a ‘cave’?
for so long without falling off, all except Cohn who did.
Anyway to cut short the agony we, thc
survivors traversed from Dow Cave to Brew Chamber except for a
detour when we descended to the stream and walked along a
spacious passage for a quarter of a mile only to walk back for half a
mile past the point from which we had descended to
start traversing again.
Eventually six, battered, kneeless potholers
reached the others at Brew Chamber and with Tom getting
lost in the lead we were soon out at Providence and
into a Kettlewell monsoon.
I have since learned that all ether clubs go from Providence to
Dow by the simple procedure of walking along the floor of Dowber-Gill Passage. The Rod Rose route is purely for
kicks and it is an offence to put any hand or foot on anything that
looks like a ledge. That night we took over the Blue Bell again and
later Dave found another way of keeping out the cold - he
burnt his tent down, unfortunately for Max
who was still in it. I gallantly dashed to the rescue and
threw a bucket of water on Dave's transistor which was playing Handels Water Music. The following day our tents had
turned into igloos and four frostbite cases were reported so
we returned to the Lancashire Riviera, where it doesn’t
rain and snow all the time.
The only people who enjoyed the weekend were the landlord of
the Blue Bell and Sandra and Melvyn who woke up on Saturday
morning at about 3a.m. to find that the tent flap had frozen
up and there was no one about to free them. The
poor devils were trapped inside that tent for 48 hours. It must have
been HELL in there. I could say more but I have been told to keep
this short.
Jim Eyre