September 2017 — yorkshirehayley.com

Greenland: Exploring Ilulissat

Ilulissat is a little further up the coast to Kangerlussuaq where I’d just come from and rather than being inland, it’s on the coast, right on Disko Bay. The sea ice was breaking up while I was there and there were huge icebergs out in the bay. And when I say huge, these are staggering proportions, they are almost unbelievable. It’s impossible to describe how enormous they are, and in fact, the photos do nothing to give anyone an idea of the colossal size of these giant pieces of ice. You really do have to see them. From a distance they look massive, so the scale of them when you get up close is mindblowing.

In the town of Ilulissat with a huge iceberg in the bay behind me

I stayed in a guesthouse rather than a hotel in Ilulissat, I didn’t want a week in a hostel, the hotels were expensive, the guesthouse was a good compromise. There were 3 friendly Greenlandic dogs chained up outside. They had kennels, but the dogs didn’t bother going in them, they seemed quite happy to curl up and sleep outside in the snow instead.

When I arrived there was a clear view of the town and Disko Bay. 24 hours later it was snowing hard, there was no view out into the bay and it looked thoroughly unpleasant outside. But actually it was okay. It wasn’t particularly cold especially if you were wrapped up, it was just very low visibility and my cheapo $10 sunspecs I bought in the States a few years back came in very useful against the glare of the snow.

The snowstorm had grounded all the planes, so Pedro who was staying in the guesthouse was going to be lucky to get to Copenhagen today. He was from Brazil and had come from plus 40 degrees in Rio to minus 20 degrees in Greenland. He’d had to come a long way round to get here too, Rio to Paris, Paris to Copenhagen, Copenhagen to Kangerlussuaq and Kangerlussuaq to Ilulissat! He was going back to Copenhagen and then on to the Faroe Islands! Wow! Quite a journey.

On a day like this it was recommended I check out the museum, apparently you could spend hours there. No, you couldn’t. For a start, it’s only open 4 hours a day and it has 5 small rooms of exhibits. However, it is interesting, detailing the ancient settlements found nearby, the history of the town and the explorers from Greenland who went on expeditions around the Arctic. I spent just over an hour there and then headed off to the art gallery as my entrance fee to the town museum also gave me entrance to the art gallery.

Snow goggles on display in the museum don't look like they be very effective against blizzard conditions — Snow goggles on display in the museum don’t look like they would be very effective against blizzard conditions

The art gallery was very impressive for a small town. There was one artist, Emanuel A Petersen, a Danish artist who spent time in Greenland whose paintings from the 1920s and 1930s were displayed on the ground floor. They were definitely my kind of paintings, snow scenes, icebergs, I love those kind of scenery paintings. And my favourite was one of the Northern Lights. Upstairs was a photography exhibition by an artist from Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, and some ivory carvings. It was only a small gallery, but it was a good way to pass the time when you have nothing else to do.

On a boat trip in Disko Bay to see icebergs up close

The next day I went on a boat trip. In Greenland in March the weather is unpredictable and you can have blizzards and snowstorms at any time, so when the weather is good you have to seize the opportunity to do something. The boat trip took place on a small fishing boat and there were about 18 of us on board. There was plenty of space to move round and find a good spot for taking photos. The icebergs were amazing and what made it very special was the halo sun that lit up the sky and made the icebergs really beautiful to look at. A halo sun is a rare phenomenon where bright, white rings appear around the sun when light travels through ice crystals found in upper level cirrus clouds. Everyone get that? Just look at the photo and you’ll see what I saw. It was beautiful and as for example icebergs, some were very blue and glassy, others were white and some had jagged pieces on them or huge cracks down them.

If boats venture far into the sea ice they could get stuck

There was still quite a bit of sea ice, we went into a really small area of it, but we weren’t on a nuclear powered Russian icebreaker like the one I went to the North Pole in, we were on a small fishing boat, so the captain didn’t venture too far into the ice and risk getting us stuck.

We were out in the fjord amongst the icebergs for about 3 hours, so we got our money’s worth. It did get a bit cold, but I was well wrapped up and it wasn’t particularly windy and the temperatures weren’t that low. It was only about -4 degrees Celsius which is positively balmy for Western Greenland in March. Seeing the icebergs with the halo sun overhead was a bit special and made for stunning photos. But again, it’s impossible to describe how big these icebergs are, you just can’t explain it, you really have to see them. But it was well worth taking the trip, it’s fantastic to see them so close up.

After the boat trip, I did a hike from the power station in town which took me out to the fjord where the boat had sailed earlier. You get a different view from the land and the sun was setting too, so the colours of the sky and the icebergs were beautiful. However, as it was getting later in the day, no one else was on the path by now and I ran out of trail markers and footprints and I couldn’t tell where the path went. I didn’t want to get lost or stranded in the snow or the dark, so I simply backtracked, following my own footprints to get back to the power station. It was very pleasant for walking in though, I was so warm I had to take off my hat and scarf!

The following afternoon I was supposed to be going on a walking trip, unfortunately it was cancelled because of a blizzard. Not a lot anyone can do when the weather is as bad as that, but it was forecast to be much better over the next 4 days so I was hopeful that the rest of my booked activities would go ahead.

Despite the blizzard I decided to venture back into the town, so I put on all my layers and headed outside. It was thoroughly unpleasant outside. The wind was so strong it was almost knocking me off my feet, which also meant snow was blowing everywhere. It was difficult to tell if it was snowing or if it was just the wind whipping up the snow that was already around. There were some steps at the back of the guesthouse which were a short cut into the town. I was planning to use them, but there was a huge snowdrift covering some of the steps. I decided it was a bit risky going down them so turned round to come back and go the long way round, when a young lad came bounding past me and ran down the steps. The snow came up to his waist and he just ran through it. Obviously he was used to it. I continued on my route through town and as the weather wasn’t improving, decided it was time to go back to the guesthouse and I was going to come up the steps and not walk the long way round. Going up isn’t as bad as coming down and I had a railing to hang onto. On the very last section where the snow had drifted, that’s when the wind decided to whip up again and blow snow into my face. I almost fell over, but I managed to stay upright.

Wooden flights of stairs around Ilulissat get buried in snowdrifts

I went back into the guesthouse and poured myself a glass of wine. I certainly had no intention of venturing outside again today in the blizzard. It does seem a bit of a waste when you’ve come all this way and you stay indoors, but when the wind is trying to knock you off your feet, you can’t see where you’re going because the snow is blowing into your face, snowdrifts make the paths impossible to make out and you feel like Scott of the Antarctic, if you have got the option of staying indoors, sometimes you just have to wait out the storm.

I travelled to Greenland in the second half of March 2017.

I travelled to Ilulissat with Air Greenland from Copenhagen via Kangerlussuaq.

I went on the boat trip amongst the icebergs with Ilulissat Tourist Nature

I stayed at Paa & Jannik Guesthouse in a room on one floor of the house with a bathroom, living room and kitchen shared by 3 rooms. The guesthouse is located conveniently within an easy 15 minute walking distance to the centre of Ilulissat.

I visited Ilulissat Art Museum which is located in the centre of the town.

Greenland: My First Day

First photo of me in Greenland above the frozen musk ox lake

I love the polar regions. And I’ve always had a soft spot for the Arctic. I completely fell in love with it on my very first trip overseas, in the Canadian Arctic in 1991. I’d dreamed about going to the Canadian Arctic from the age of 14 after seeing a photo of the Virginia Falls on the cover of an Explorers Guide to the Northwest Territories. I didn’t go to the Virginia Falls on that occasion, but I experienced the Arctic for the first time and I loved it. I’ve explored various Arctic destinations in the 25 years that followed and Greenland was the only part of the Arctic left for me. It’s become a bit of an up and coming destination in the last couple of years and now seemed as good a time as any to see this island of ice which should really be called Whiteland instead of Greenland because all you see when you fly over it is snow from the permanent ice sheet that covers most of the country.

View of. Remote town of Kangerlussuaq from above — View of the remote town of Kangerlussuaq from above

I prepared myself for my flight to Greenland by putting on my “extra warm” thermals I’d bought from Marks and Spencer, jeans and a jumper over the top and my parka from when I went on an Icebreaker ship to the North Pole. I also had my waterproof trousers in my rucksack, 3 pairs of gloves, 2 hats and 2 scarves. I got on the plane, I was really going to Greenland after years of dreaming about it and bearing in mind it was March and should be warming up a bit, the pilot announced it was -25 degrees in Kangerlussuaq. I’d booked my window seat as soon as I booked my flight, so I got a good view of the east coast as we started to fly over Greenland. I’ve seen Greenland from the air countless times on my many trips to Canada, but this was the first time I was going to be landing there.

Kangerlussuaq is how I imagine the eastern Canadian Arctic, Nunavut to look. No trees just a few houses and lots of exposed rock. From what I can remember from geology, the oldest rock in the world is found in Greenland, gneiss rock. But I faintly recall that’s just in Eastern Greenland. And there really is nothing in Kangerlussuaq. Air Greenland have chosen this town as their hub because of the air base there, but there’s very little here except the airport and a few houses spread out. The locals call Kangerlussuaq a city. I can tell you now, it is as far away from a city as you could possibly imagine.

As for the accommodation, well the Old Camp is a series of buildings and the one I was in was like the Halls of Residence I lived in when I was at university. A long corridor with about 16 rooms, a shared kitchen, dining room, living room and 4 bathrooms. The rooms were very basic. But I can’t say I expected anything else. It’s not that bad. But it’s not that good either. I had my own room. I had to put my own sheets and pillowcases on the bed. But for the extra cost of a room at the hotel and probably not vastly higher standards, I decided I could cope for 2 nights. The bonus was they gave me the room for 3 nights at no extra cost, so when I wasn’t sleeping the following night in my tent on the ice, at least I could leave my luggage in the room.

When I arrived at the airport I got onto a yellow school bus which took me to the camp. Then I got on another bus shortly afterwards to go on a musk ox safari.

There’s a mineral lake where the musk ox like to go and drink and even though it’s frozen in the winter, the musk ox forget and apparently go there every day to try and get a drink. But not today. Today, they’d remembered it was frozen. So all I saw on this musk ox safari was the Greenlandic equivalent of RAF Fylingdales when it still had the golf balls and a couple of distant reindeer. Wow!

The throbbing metropolis of Kangerlussuaq

We did go up to a viewpoint to see the town below us and the fjord, but it wasn’t exactly exciting. I got the “city bus” into town later in the afternoon to have a look around. There were 4 shops, only 2 of which were open, a post office and a supermarket. I bought another pair of gloves from the supermarket because they were waterproof and you can never have too many pairs of gloves. Your hands lose the feeling in them very quickly without gloves in these temperatures. I wasn’t sure how was going to take photos because I don’t do well with gloves on, but I couldn’t take them off or I’d lose fingers!

Polar Ber sculpture outside the Old Camp - and the closest I got to seeing any big animals in Greenland! — Polar bear sculpture outside the Old Camp – and the closest I got to seeing any big animals in Greenland!

What I concluded on my walk back to the Old Camp from town, because it didn’t look that far and I couldn’t be bothered to wait for the hourly bus back, that however daunting Camp Ice Cap might be, it was preferable to spending 2 days in Kangerlussuaq doing nothing. I was genuinely scared about being incredibly cold and anticipating getting no sleep whatsoever. I got none when I camped out on Antarctica. I’ll make sure I pack a fully charged iPod. Why did I decide camping out on the permanent ice sheet for the night was a good idea? But unless you’re booked on activities there was literally nothing to do in Kangerlussuaq.

I was tired, so I thought I’d try to get an hour or two sleep and then get up to try and see the Northern Lights. Kangerlussuaq is famed for its cloudless skies so is a really good place in Greenland to catch the aurora. I had a wander outside and could see the start of it, decided that I needed to wrap up warmer, so I went back inside and put more clothes on and then headed back outside again. I watched the skies for a bit longer, the aurora which was a pale white light at that point wasn’t doing much and I wondered how much longer I should stay out in the freezing cold looking at the sky. The sky was promisingly clear so we might get a good show.

A green leaping tiger in the clear night sky? The wonder of the Northern Lights.

I ended up joining a trip where we drove out of town and found a perfect spot for the wind to hit us and once again make me wonder how the hell I was going to survive a night on the ice. Then we drove to a more sheltered spot and that’s when the lights started to dance. And when they start to dance they start to glow colours. Mostly green with flashes of pink and purple. It was pretty spectacular to see. The guide said he’d been there 4 months and gave it an 8 out of 10 for the show the lights put on tonight. They were still dancing when we drove back. I hoped that I might see the aurora again while in Greenland, maybe even the following night when I was out on the ice and finding it impossible to sleep… Anyway I can now die a happy woman and I have got to see the Northern Lights.

I got into the bed I made myself, there were two sheets in the wardrobe, presumably as there are 2 beds in the room, so I made the bed up with a bottom sheet and a top sheet, with hospital corners and everything to try and make it as comfortable as possible. Once again, I had no idea how I’d manage on the ice, I remember very little about my night on the ice in Antarctica apart from I didn’t close my eyes once and spent the majority of the night listening to a rock band called the Little Angels, probably because they’re from Scarborough and that’s exactly where I was wishing I was at that moment in time. But that was tomorrow. Tonight I had a real bed in a warm room in a proper building. And I’d survived my first day in Greenland.

I travelled to Greenland in the second half of March 2017.

I stayed at Old Camp in Kangerlussuaq.

I travelled to Kangerlussuaq with Air Greenland from Copenhagen.

Yorkshire: Gaping Gill Winch Meet

Megan being winched back to the surface through the waterfall

I’d come to the Yorkshire Dales specifically for the Gaping Gill Winch Meet which happened just twice a year, once in May and once in August. Gaping Gill is a cave in the north western part of the Yorkshire Dales with the 100m Fell Beck, the highest unbroken waterfall in Britain inside it. However, most people don’t get to see this waterfall because it’s inside a cave and access is restricted. You can only go in the cave if you’re an experienced potholer, the general public aren’t allowed in. Except, that is, twice a year during the winch meet when around 2,000 people get to be lowered into the cave to see this wondrous, extensive underground cavern, the biggest in Britain.

You have to be serious about wanting to see the cave because the access isn’t exactly easy. The nearest village is a 90 minute walk away and we’re not talking a gentle woodland stroll either, some of it is quite challenging terrain. But it’s nothing that isn’t manageable if you’re careful and take your time.

At first, I was planning to do this adventure on my own, but after the success of our long weekend in Snowdonia last year, I asked my niece and nephew to join me as their birthday treat. My niece, Megan, turned 22 back in April, but Tuesday when we were making our way through the Yorkshire Dales up to Clapham village where we would be staying overnight before the winch meet, that was my nephew Dylan’s 19th birthday. After overnighting in the village we’d walk to the cave on Wednesday.

It’s not possible to make a reservation for the winch meet at Gaping Gill. You turn up, register and wait. They can only winch so many people into the cave each hour, get there late and you have either a long wait or worse, the capacity for the day has been reached and you can’t get into the cave at all. And it’s a long way to walk for nothing. I asked advice at the bed and breakfast where we were staying and was told that on Monday some guests had left at 8.30am and got to the cave at 10am and had to wait 2 hours. On Tuesday the guests had left at 7am, got to the cave at 8.30am and had to wait 45 minutes. They didn’t actually start operating the winch until 9am, so I decided to aim to set off at 7.30am and hope for the best!

Megan and Dylan in the Gaping Gill cavern

It was a nuisance dragging out of bed at 6.30am, but I knew we’d regret setting off too late, so I made sure Megan and Dylan were awake and out of bed, we had a light breakfast, I put bottles of water and waterproofs in my rucksack and we were ready to go.

The first part of the walk is easy, wide path through the wood, slightly uphill, but not a problem. It took around half an hour to walk to Ingleborough Cave and Dylan thought we were there already. It is part of the same cave system, although this fact wasn’t discovered until 1983, but Ingleborough Cave is a show cave that is open year round, not the one we were going to be lowered into. It was another hour to walk from here.

Swaledale sheep - emblem of the Yorkshire Dales National Park — Swaledale sheep – emblem of the Yorkshire Dales National Park

We passed a few of the iconic Yorkshire Dales Swaledale breed of sheep with their curly horns, the emblem of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. The path was still wide and relatively flat at that point. And then it started to get more difficult. The path was narrower and slightly steeper and it started to rain making the stones wet and slippery. There were quite a lot of puddles and muddy parts of the path to negotiate too.

Then ahead of us, the gorge of Trow Gill and a steep, narrow path through the centre of it. Megan looked at it and said was that where the trail went. I wasn’t sure, but on closer inspection I realised there was no other way through. Megan was not happy about having to climb up there, she’d dodged the steeper paths the day before. I said we had to go that way to get to the cave. Megan had no need to worry; she leapt up that path like a mountain goat! Dylan is very tall with long legs and had no trouble either. It was poor old Auntie Hayley, more than 20 years older, with shorter legs and carrying the rucksack that was struggling! But I made it. Going up is generally not too much of an issue provided the steps aren’t too deep for my little legs. Coming down is always the scarier prospect for me. But I’d worry about that later. For now we were at the top and on our way.

The beautiful Yorkshire Dales National Park

It was warm work walking this trail, I’d taken my waterproof jacket off earlier and when it began to drizzle slightly, it was quite welcome, cooling me down nicely. But then the rain started to come down a lot harder, not only making me very wet, but also making the path muddier and the stones more slippery. I put my waterproof back on and put my hood up. I didn’t say anything to Megan and Dylan, but when it started to rain quite hard I was a little concerned because I knew that they suspended the winching into the cave when it rained. If the winch meet was cancelled either a notice went up at Ingleborough Cave (which we’d already passed) or the potholing club who ran the winch meet posted something on Facebook or Twitter. There was no mobile service out here, in the middle of nowhere. So once you were past Ingleborough Cave it was the point of no return and you just had to hope that conditions wouldn’t deteriorate so rapidly in the space of the next hour that you’d done that hike to the Gaping Gill for nothing.

Thankfully as we walked further, the rain did ease off making me more hopeful that they would still be operating the winch by the time we arrived. We came to a style and a sign on the wall saying Gaping Gill was now just a quarter of a mile away and once at the top of the nearby ridge, the tents that had been set up for the week long winch meet were in sight. It was still raining, but as we approached the registration tent we were handed a form to complete and told it was about an hour to wait to go down into the cave. Thank God they hadn’t cancelled it!

Gaping Gill main chamber is the largest natural underground cavern in Britain

We went to wait in the beer tent where planks of wood had been laid across beer barrels so there was somewhere to sit. You could smell the beer, but none was available for consumption, at least not at this time in the morning. It was about 9.10am by now and we were numbers 21 to 23, so there weren’t too many people who had arrived ahead of us. A few minutes later numbers 16 and 17 were called, so I was optimistic we wouldn’t have too long to wait. I had certainly made the right decision leaving at 7.30am because in the next half hour a lot of people turned up. Had we been much later, we would have had a much longer wait. As it was, before 10 o’clock one of the potholing club staff came to the beer tent and called numbers 18 to 23, they were ready to lower us into the cave!

We got kitted up in hard hats, I’d already put my waterproof trousers on while waiting in the beer tent, we were ready! As I waited for my turn I chatted to the man taking our wrist band numbers so he had a record of who went down and could also therefore check we had come back up again! He said the weekend hadn’t been that busy, but Monday and Tuesday had been busier than expected. He told me around 160 people went into the cave each day.

In order to be lowered into the cave I had to sit in a yellow chair, lean back, I was strapped in, instructed to keep my arms in and legs tucked under and enjoy the view on the way down and they started the winch up.

It went a lot faster than I expected, I was really motoring. The descent is 105m, so it is a long way down! A waterfall was pouring from the main shaft entrance to the cave and I was lowered down through the waterfall! It was a great view going down; I was looking around in every direction, amazed at travelling through the waterfall and then when I got to the floor of cave, I saw more waterfalls.

It did occur to me that you go down into the cave through the waterfall, so I wasn’t sure why they stopped operating the winch when it was raining, you got wet anyway! It would only be if the cave was flooded there would be an issue.

You only get an impression of how high the waterfall is when someone is in front of it

You don’t get the impression of how high the waterfalls really are because the cavern is just so big. You wouldn’t guess Fell Beck is the highest single leap waterfall in Britain because of the loss of perspective of height inside the enormous cavern. The main chamber of Gaping Gill is the largest natural underground chamber in Britain and it’s the size of York Minster. And the main shaft of the Gaping Gill is the deepest open pothole in Britain. A lot of superlatives for this cavern in the Yorkshire Dales! Makes me very proud to be a Yorkshire lass!

I waited for Megan and Dylan to be lowered into the cave, we were given an information sheet and a torch and then we were free to explore the cavern floor. There were lots of passages out of the cavern as part of this vast cave system, but we were told not to go crawling through any of them, there were 10 miles to search for us if we went missing!

I went right round the edge of the cavern and took photos of the waterfalls and the rocks. The floor of the main chamber is composed of around 70 feet of rubble. The North Passage is a large tunnel filled with glacial material from the last Ice Age. This section is still being explored in the hope that more passages of the Gaping Gill cave system will be discovered.

It was quite dark, and other than the waterfalls, there wasn’t that much to see down there, the cave formations were much further away and only accessible by crawling through dark passages which we were not allowed to do. You could easily make out the fault line that ran across the cavern, a lot of the passages are above the fault line, a reason it took so long to find the cave system below. We had some fun trying to take a photo of our shadows against the cave wall! Megan and Dylan didn’t seem quite as interested in the cave as I was, but they had a wander round.

You can stay in the cavern as long as you want, there is no time limit, but when you can’t go adventure caving, there is only so much time you can spend looking at a big underground chamber and its waterfalls, so after around 45 minutes we went back up to the surface. The joke at the winch meet is, it’s free to be winched down into the cave, you just have to pay to be winched back out again. Otherwise it’s a long crawl through the underground tunnels in the dark to get to an exit or a cold swim through to Ingleborough Cave! Definitely worth paying the fee for the winch!

Megan preparing to be winched out of the cave

Megan and Dylan probably enjoyed the winch up and down into the cave more than the cave itself; that was incredibly good fun.

I love caves and have been in lots of caves all over the world, so for me it was a bit more special. The privilege of seeing this enormous cavern, the largest in Britain, and Fell Beck, the highest single drop waterfall in Britain, which very few people get to see, was well worth the long hike. The waterfalls, in particular, fascinated me. But all caves fascinate me and I will go out of my way to visit them.

So now, the 90 minute walk back to the village and to my car. Megan and Dylan took off in front which was fine. They walk faster than I do, they’re a lot younger than me and have much longer legs than I have. So I just took my time and let them gallop on ahead.

The main shaft is the deepest open pothole in Britain

I want to travel to Patagonia in the next 18 months and hike the W Trail in Torres del Paine National Park, which is 5 days through mountainous terrain. I did wonder as I was battling along this hiking trail in the Yorkshire Dales, if I was struggling here, how was I going to manage a 5 day mountain hike in Patagonia? The simple answer – I wasn’t! Not without some serious training. But that’s another post.

I got to the part I’d been dreading, the steep descent through the gorge. The rain had left the rocks wet and as slippery as ice. I held on where I could and took it one step at a time. No point rushing and falling and breaking my ankle. It was a long way for someone to carry me out of there and that was the last thing I wanted. I managed. There was no one behind me telling me to hurry up, I let anyone behind me come past and waited in a safe spot for anyone climbing up.

Reffected stalactites in Ingleborough Cave look like the Manhattan skyline — Reflected stalactites in Ingleborough Cave look like the Manhattan skyline

I finally caught up with Megan and Dylan at Ingleborough Cave where they’d stopped to have a drink. As Ingleborough Cave is a half hour walk from Clapham village and we probably wouldn’t be out this way again for some considerable time, if ever, I asked Megan and Dylan if they’d like to go in the cave while we were here. Ingleborough Cave is completely different to Gaping Gill, no being lowered in on a winch; it was a concrete path all the way, there weren’t even any steps. Megan was unsure about it, but we convinced her that this would be nothing compared to Gaping Gill.

It was an interesting cave, but it didn’t have a lot in the way of amazing formations. There was a beautiful archway formation and quite spectacular Manhattan skyline which was a series of small stalactites reflected in a pool. Megan did get a bit claustrophobic in one part of the cave where the roof was low and the path narrowed and I made a mental note that Megan is not going to be up for any adventure caving where she has to crawl through low passages and squeeze through narrow openings on any future trips. I’ll leave further adventure caving for when I’m travelling on my own.

After Ingleborough Show Cave, it was an easy half hour walk to get back to Clapham Village and we made a final quick stop by the side of the river to view Clapham Waterfall before heading back to the car. Our caving adventure in the Yorkshire Dales had ended.

Gaping Gill is in the north western part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park

Craven Pothole Club holds a winch meet at Gaping Gill each year in the week leading up to August Bank Holiday. We joined this winch meet in August 2017. The fee for the winch is £15 per person.

There is a fee for the hiking trail from Clapham Village to Ingleborough Cave which is currently £1 per adult.

We stayed in Clapham Village at Bridge Cottage B&B which has 4 ensuite rooms. Full breakfast and tea and cakes on arrival were included in the room rate.

Bradford Pothole Club also holds a winch meet at Gaping Gill each year at the end of May.

For more adventure ideas in England, check out these posts.
Norfolk: Hiking the Pingo Trail
Wiltshire: Longleat Festival of Light

Read about when I didn’t have such a great experience in a cave in Georgia and the bizarre events that followed.
Reporting a Theft – A Cautionary Tale