After eventually finding Stoke St. Michael we parked in the village and walked to the cave from there. The entrance has quite a lot of rubbish in it washed in from the streamway but once in the cave you are following a excellent stream. Eventually after following the river you come to sump 1. Just before this there is quite a tight wet squeeze. The sump only being about 3ft long was passed and we were soon down at sump 2. After this we went to find all the formations and after a bit of searching we found the climb that leads to the round trip in the 1st chamber after sump 1. The formations are outstanding, possibly the best on Mendip. The round trip took us back to sump 2 and then we headed out. Sump 1 was easier than I thought and I ended up going through first but had no problems coming up in the right place. A thoroughly good cave with excellent formations.
An unusually early start to what was to turn out to be quite a productive day. We got down to the dig site within about 1/2 hour as the ropes were already pre-tied. We managed to get the turfer up and running after beating it with a hammer and eventually were hauling boulders out the bottom of the pitch. 2 hours later and with some adaptions to the scaffolding the bottom of the pitch was clear, safe and there was a promising lead half choked with mud leading off at about 45?. The digging here was hard work as the mud is very sticky and the passage quite constrictive. We were soon able to get further in and after digging out round a right-angled bend we could see through into lots more passage unfortunately half filled with mud. The way out was extremely tiring and it was not a good trip to try and work out how my new ropewalking rig worked. Another trip will be planned to push the bottom further.