Aladin pot 25th May 2009 (Ogof Noethe)

Aladin pot 25th May 2008
(Ogof Noethe)
By Doug Thompson

The day started well enough, I met Mick Murphy and Ian Adams in the car park on the worlds end road, after a short wait our friends from Wessex caving club turned up.
I knew Les, Wendy, And Chris from previous joint exploits and we were soon introduced to Tim, Faye, Dave, and frank, whom I had not met before.
After exchanging greetings and discussing the likelihood of there being any sheep on the moor, because Faye and Tim were bringing their dog, (this was to have unexpected significance later) all of us except Wendy who likes to stay with the car and do her knitting, set off across the moor.
We had a GPS reference for the pot, taken when Mick and Ian had found it about a month ago, sooo finding it would be a piece of high nitrogenous liquid.
We went first due south, then after about 2 kilometres, due east, then due north, then west, then south again, the moor is like the universe in that it looks remarkably similar whichever direction you look.
Eventually we found the pot and quite impressive it was too, with a tight vertical entrance opening into a fairly spacious chamber below.
Mick went down first while the rest of us chatted, drank tea and rested after the strain of finding the place.
After what seemed quite a long time Mick appeared, claiming to have seen a sheep, obviously, this being Mick, we all said ********, but Mick insisted.
Eventually Frank went in to have a look, and yes there was definitely a sheep, Mick said, I told you, it was looking at me.
After some discussion it was decided that we would have to rescue the sheep, so I went down to check it out and take some photos with Ian’s camera.
We had stupidly not thought to bring the necessary equipment for rescuing sheep from potholes so we had to make do with what we had, which was, Faye’s dog’s lead, and a short bit of 6mm rope that I had in the bottom of my bag.
The most difficult part was going to be getting the sheep up the vertical entrance pitch, which was pretty tight, even for a wriggling bipedal caver, and impossible for an unaided Quadra pedal ungulate.
So this is how we set about it, I slid down the first pitch, followed by Frank, then we dropped down the second small pitch into the second chamber, the sheep had somehow got itself through the tight squeeze and into the third, smaller, chamber.
First we had to get the sheep back through the squeeze into the larger second chamber, so I wriggled through into the third chamber and climbed over the sheep,
I then put the dog collar over the sheep’s head and passed the lead back through to Frank.
With me pushing, and Frank, pulling, we got her into the larger chamber, then Frank climbed up to the first chamber and I got back through the squeeze, with more pulling and pushing, we got the sheep up to the first chamber.
Now all we had to do was get her up the final 6 feet or so of vertical shaft and through the entrance squeeze, this we did by tying her front feet with the 6mm rope and passing the rope and the end of the dog lead up to those on the surface.
The surface team pulled, while Frank and I pushed the sheep, pointy end first, out into the daylight.
The sheep seemed grateful, and set about eating grass the moment it’s head was out, the poor flocker had probably been in there for weeks and had clearly lost a lot of weight, it seemed a bit wobbly on it’s feet, but we thought it would probably recover after a good feed of grass.
We all had some dinner and a cup of tea and then the Wessex contingent decided to head for home as they had a long way to go, the sheep went with them.
Mick, Ian, and myself decided to explore the cave now that it was not blocked by a sheep.
As I said the entrance was via a tight vertical pitch of about 6 feet, this opens into a spacious chamber with room for 3 people, immediately there is a very tight squeeze heading back from the main cave which seems to pinch out after about 10 feet, and
a couple of similar holes to the right and left.
The next chamber steps down about 5 feet or so and is the biggest of 3 chambers again with pinched out holes both right and left, straight ahead is a tight keyhole slot which opens into a third, smaller chamber the floor of which is a couple of feet lower,
This chamber has a very tight passage to the immediate left, where there was evidence that someone had been in (some old gloves and other stuff) I could see about 15 feet before the passage turned to the right.
Further round to the right was another slightly less tight squeeze, Mick went down it feet first, after about 12 feet he turned to the left and disappeared into a chamber from which he accessed another lower system with a stream way.
Straight ahead and further round to the right was a tight slot about 4 feet wide and just high enough to get into, this opens into a low chamber with 3 more passages leading off, all very tight.
Ian drew a map of the system as we saw it and we set off back to the surface.
Curiously enough, on our way back to the cars we found a wartime unexploded mortar bomb, Ian later alerted the bomb disposal squad to it’s existence and whereabouts.
All in all it was quite an eventful day.

Superb write up again Doug - obviously