Stuck sheep & tight holes at Christmas

The May cottage meet was originally planned for Bar Pot - unfortunately, this was the week that the BPC had the system booked for the winch meet, so Saturday saw the Famous Five Reprobates crawling their way up Ingleborough towards Christmas Pot. It had been a long time since I'd been down into the dark recesses of Christmas/Grange Rigg an all I could remember was a demon deviation near the bottom of the entrance pitch.

Stopping at Gaping Gill for a few minutes to watch the winch was a bit disappointing - someone had misheard the discription and thought it was a Wench Meet, but all it turned out to be was a man in a chair!

We carried on over the moor, past the dunny, looking into every hole we could find. We were only about 20 yards from Christmas when Gerik made a discovery. A pair of doleful eyes peered back at him from the entrance of Penitent - a sheep , unfortunately the wrong way round.

After about 10 minutes to-ing & fro-ing with Flossie, Jim still couldn't persuade it to let him put a sling around it's mid section, so I set off for the Gill to find a crow bar & a shovel.

"Who's good wi't sheep?" I asked one of the Bradford lot.

"Pete, you're wanted!"

"What you wanna do wi' it; you've got your wellies - what more do you need?"

After a bit of explaining, a couple of them came with us, armed with shovels, etc to the hole. Tales of the previous night's storm were told; apparently, it isn't much fun wondering round Ingleborough in a storm with a length of scaffolding over your shoulder! Still - BPC? - it woudn't have made much difference to them, I suppose.

All was an anticlimax however, as when we reached the hole, the sheep was gone - obviously more than a bit frightened of Gerik & Alan.

So we set off down Christmas. The first pitch caused a slight problem as it turned out to be quite a bit longer than Alan's rope. Several rebelays, deviations & Y-hangs later, I met up with Ian, scratching his head.

"Which way now? There's a streamway, but it doesn't look right big."

Let's try this one up here then", I started. "No, that's a bit tight - it must be the streamway."

So I set off down stream; bloody tight, what?!!! I heard the others shouting "This way!" and forced my way back out to find they'd dissapeared bown the passage I'd rejected! After some thrutching, an extremely awkward climb down was followed by two shorter pitches into what must be one of the best-decorated passages in Yorkshire (China Shop excepted). The 10' high passageis bedecked with formations of all sorts - everywhere was a brilliant white; a photo session was definately the order of the day.

Back on the surface, the sun was shining and we actually had a nice walk back down the hill to the Inn of Happiness and a bowl of chips in the baa!

Those happy chappies o' Ingleboro': Kev Sheard, Alan Bolton, Gerik Rhoden, Ian Goodfellow, James Brooks & Flossie the Sheep.

Kev