Cavers: Petie, John

Time: 5 hours.

Having been intrigued since my visit three weeks previously, I decided that digging at the end of Brown Shiver was a good way to spend Thursday. New passage was practically guaranteed and it was also an excuse to go poking into a few of the surface shakeholes. John Moore, back from his lengthy sabbatical was also up for some Shannonny goodness and so we headed off.

At the top of the track up to Tullyard we found the stream heading off towards Pollnawinch and followed that to the sink. Pollnawinch is a delightful two meters of soggy micro cave with little digging possibility. Once up on the moor we hopped over the fence into the southern counties. We had a look into each of the line of shakeholes running along the border. K3 was taking a small stream and also a tight shaft was found a short way away. Rocks thrown down here gave a fair rattle so I descended headfirst to see a tight squeeze and the floor going under a lip about 4m down. Possibly free climbable, a ladder would be most useful to wriggle downwards and see what exists round the bend. This I presume was dug out by Huddersfield in the early noughties, as there is no mention of this in COFAC. The stream in K3 and Pollnawinch would go most of the way to accounting for the water in Brown Shiver. Following on from this we found K4 and this time I bottomed the 4m shaft, a careful freeclimb. At the bottom the shaft sloped down to a crack, draughting, though capping might enlarge it. Fairly hopeless all the same.

After these diversions we finally made it to Tullyard and dropped the shaft. This was John’s first trip into Shannon for four years and he had an emotional reunion with the Rebirth canal, featuring the words “you cunt” and “fucking battery belt keeps catching”. At the Border Climb the cave playfully snagged the arse of John’s oversuit and ripped a dinner-plate sized hole in his arse, giving his undersuit a commanding view of the cave. Brown shiver is found easily enough walking downstream from the Border Climb. At the first boulder choke beyond the climb you simply bear left into the streamway instead of climbing upwards into the high level section. After getting your knees wet you are in a small chamber in the choke with the Brown Shiver stream at your feet. A bit of a clamber through threatening boulders leads to a squeeze at stream level, and means getting your arse wet. Some relatively stable passage follows and then some more crawling through ominous boulders gets you to a bedding plane crawl which gets lower until flat out. At the end the stream was emerging from a pool on the right where the water was falling from the ceiling and to the left gravel sloped up to within a few inches of the ceiling.

We began to dig. The going was good, despite the flat-out digging position. The gravel was easily dislodged and pushed to the sides and the rest dragged back. It was also reasonably aquatic, the gravel being only an inch or two above the level of the pool, which mean that water seeped in and turned the loose gravel to a wet concrete like mix – easier to move but also meant that the spoil tended to flow back into the dig. After 40 minutes or so I wriggled forwards into space and found myself in a small chamber. Another wriggle and finally the dig let go. To my delight I found a 2m high by .5m wide passage heading off, tantalisingly bending round a corner in the direction of the missing streamway. John followed through, throwing his FX2 battery ahead of him. We headed off into the passage, with the promise of a through-trip to lovely Pollnawinch in the air. It was gratifying then to find the passage choking completely after 15m of lovely stable passage. A small streamlet entered from a crack in the wall on the right, with the sound of more water bubbling in the distance. We decided to forge on at the mud choke. The passage here was 2m high and still a half meter wide so it was a bit more comfy than the wet concrete dig. The spoil was pushed backwards into a pool, meaning that accessing the dig meant slogging through 2m of quagmire into which at one point I sank up to my knees. The dig turned north at the end but didn’t show signs of going soon so we turned. We had laboured at the sticky mud for about an hour or so, digging forwards a meter and a half. Not a bad dig but there’s more promising areas in Shannon.

On the way out I was tempted to slide into the pool and duck up to where the water was entering the passage but this would have meant getting everything except my face totally soaked so I left it for a day when I’m wetsuit-clad. It may go yet. Also close to the main passage John pointed out a high level bit and I climbed up through more unstable looking boulders and on through a bedding plane crawl but it dropped back to the stream passage via a dodgy looking climb. We made our way out. Neither of us was very fit and it showed as we wobbled along like geriatrics on their way to pick up their pensions. We got to the top to realise that neither of us had remembered to bring the crowbar up the pitch with us. Oh well… The survey of Brown Shiver will be fun. Lots of short awkward legs.

Petie