Graham wrote at the time:
The crew, Mike, Alex and myself met at Inglesport for breakfast, and soon after headed
up Kingsdale. All though none of us had done Bull Pot before, we decided it would be a good
trip for some rigging practice, as it goes we got some practice with ropes but not in the normal
sense, but more of that later. After changing we took a leisurely stroll up the hill to the
entrance, walk up as if you are going to Jingling Pot, but veer right once over the
limestone scar, entrance is just above a small lone tree. Quite surprisingly the entrance is an
open pitch but with no fence or cover over it, all the the remains of some past structure lie at
the bottom of the pitch.
Mike gave me a quick lesson in knots and rigging and with that the first rope was in. We abseiled
down, travelled a few feet then Mike took over rigging the traverse and the second pitch. The
second pitch does drop you into a bit of a pool unless you swing away from it. From here, the
obvious way on is not the hole in the floor. We took the obvious way on to a third pitch, rigged it,
descended it, but by then realised that we would have to swing on the rope through a waterfall to
reach a side passage. We went back up the rope to the hole in the floor (The Slot), this was rigged
with a rebelay, and descended. Further traversing brought us to the head of fourth pitch. Mike again
leading the way, rigged and descended this pitch, there seemed to be some difficulty in getting the
rope in and out of the water, about which Mike and Alex had a discussion......
Given the wetness of the pitch Mike came back up the rope and we decided to call it a day. I went
first up the third pitch leaving Alex and Mike to derigg. I was last up the second pitch, and had tied
a rope bag on the bottom of the rope to keep some tension while I prussiked up, Mike had made his
way out by this time leaving me and Alex to derigg. This is where it went a bit Pete Tong.
Once at the top of the second I pulled up the rope bag and then started derigging the traverse, the
mistake I made was not putting the rope in the bag as I went, and due to the amount of water in the
streamway, the end of the rope (with a knot in) ended up jammed in a rock cleft near the bottom of
the pitch under the waterfall. After much pulling we realised the rope wasn't going to come free
easily, and Alex rerigged the pitch to try to free it from below, with no success. By this time Mike
had come back down the first pitch to see what was going on. From here on in Mike was in charge,
he dropped to the bottom of the pitch, and after two long immersions in the waterfall the rope was
released.
Once out, Mike and Alex had a quick look round a shaft just below Bull Pot entrance, but it goes
nowhere, so they came back out, we then headed to the Marton Arms for a sherbet and a debrief.
In summary I would say probably not the best cave for teaching basic rigging, but for an improver it
would be good with pitches and traverses and very little horizontal travelling. A good SRT trip all
round but remember to take The Slot not the obvious pitch, and watch out for the deviations and
rebelays to stay out of the water.
Alex says : “Just to add a little as Graham could not see from his vantage point, the rope had not
only got trapped under the waterfall it had managed to go down stream beyond the waterfall and
wrapped it self around some chawlkstone. After as Graham said I went down again to try and free it
from my side of the waterfall, Mike braved the waterfall while still on the rope to not get swept
down the next pitch and retrieved the rope from beyond.”
