Cave

I have a couple of days off during 15yo’s half-term. Today we arranged to meet up with 18yo at Clapham, at the foot of Ingleborough, a convenient mid-point station for him to come across to from Lancaster. 

This is a place I visited a visited fair bit when I was student as the uni had a camping barn just up the hill at Clapdale House. We walked past but I think it’s returned to being a farm these days. 

Nearby is the famed Ingleborough show cave. I don’t think I’d been inside since I was about eight, so we included that in our day. Although it had been nearly fifty years since I’d been there I still remembered the names of some of the formations. It’s now self-guided, and wasn’t too busy so we had a very atmospheric visit. I hadn’t known that all through the spring bank holiday weekend there were winching tours down into Gaping Gill, the other end of this cave system, a couple of kilometres up the hill. Maybe that’s something for a future year. 

Out of the cave we walked another kilometre or so up to Trow Gill, an impressive limestone gorge, and then we retraced our steps into the village, enjoying the cooling waters of the stream along the way. For some of the outside scenery see extras. Butterfly life along the way included Red Admiral, Orange-tip, Small White, Large White and Small Heath. 

What had been a great day was spoiled a little at the end as we had to wait on the station platform for over an hour for our late running train - a good chunk of that without any real information about whether it would ever show up. We did eventually get back though.