Saturday morning nice and early for the DCC Derbyshire weekend, myself and Oggy met Tom at Peveril Stores in Castleton, but not before a quick trip to Hitch and Hike who have aquired an extra sock courtesy of Owen lol. We were not sure if anybody else was going to turn up so had a butty and waited around, when it became clear nobody else was joining us the decision was made to do Oxlow Cavern. Kieran had lent Tom some rope and after a long time getting ready and faffing about with bags and stuff in the freezing wind, we set off with a bag each up the slightly snowy hill to find the entrance shaft to Oxlow.
The cemented mine shaft is fortunately in a nice sheltered area of the hill where we could rig the shaft and contemplate our descent out of the wind. At this point Tom and I may have uttered something to this effect: "Shall we just go to the pub and watch the rugby instead?" We might even have discussed dirtying Kieran's new rope somehow and lying about going underground... But it was 11.30am, the pubs were not open, and Oggy hadn't been caving for ages so Tom went first down the entrance shaft. I then realised that I really wanted to be in the middle for this SRT trip, to learn some rigging and be overseen by my vastly more experienced fellows.
Oxlow Cavern is a mostly vertical trip the majority of which is fairly dry. We followed the mined passages down slopes and short drops until we reached the West Antechamber.
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