Sas' World Of Adventure: Caving - Hilliers & Fairy Cave

Sunday 8 July 2012

Caving - Hilliers & Fairy Cave

Caving - Hilliers Cave & Fairy Cave

Tim and I arrived at the car park just gone 10 and met Rob - This was Rob's first visit to the caves of Fairy Quarry. Once in the cave we took a right turn to pass into a grovelly gravelly crawl to get into the system. There were broken formations littering the floor in the initial passages - this was down to old quarry blasting. There were also some rather dodgy looking rockfalls on the floor! We then reached Tar Hall which is a chamber covered in tar which had dripped down from the quarry.

Stal formations

Me and Rob (who had just farted!)

A bit further on we passed the connection to Fairy Cave where we would come back to later. We continued through various passages to the Upper Grotto, Cambridge Grotto and on past Brenda's Chamber. Occasional stops on the way for Tim to take photos.

Formations on the way to Upper Grotto

Me and Rob in the Upper Grotto

Formations

Just on from Brenda's Chamber we stopped for a short while to explain the next section to Rob - The passage that leads into the Red Room is called Suicide! - The reason being that the boulder choke you have to navigate through doesn't look all that stable, though there have not been any reports of rock movement! We made it to the Red Room and it is immediately obvious how it got it's name!

Me and Rob

The Red Room

We then retraced our route back to the Fairy Cave connection. It starts with a traverse across to the bridge connection and then a crawl along some mud banks. Eventually you come to the puddle!! there had been a fair bit of rain and the puddle was quite full. We decided it would be best done with helmets off to allow more breathing room!!!