Gaping Gill: Potholing in the Yorkshire Dales
The limestone walls glisten with moisture. If I reach out, I can touch them, but I keep my hands firmly on the bars of the cage, my knees tucked beneath me so that I don’t bash them against the rock. The air smells damp and the temperature immediately drops as I plunge out of reach of the sun’s summer rays. Beneath me is 110 metres of stale air and I find myself wondering when the last time the steel cable I’m suspended from was serviced. Around my neck is a metal tag that reads simply ‘136’. If it doesn’t return to the surface to be filed neatly between 135 and 137, a rescue team will be dispatched to retrieve me.
It's a clear morning in late May as we wander through the sleepy village of Clapham, which is the gateway to the Yorkshire Dales National Park. We pass an empty playground and a church that looks much too large for its 15th century tower or, indeed, the small parish that it serves. A sports car crawls past us looking for somewhere to park on the narrow lanes but, aside from the sound of its tyres crunching on the tarmac, we’re alone. The village is still fast asleep.
We’ve come to explore Gaping Gill, one of the largest underground caves in Britain. It’s a vast cavern measuring 129 meters in length with a roof suspended 31 meters above the bedrock. It’s made accessible to the public twice a year thanks to the Bradford and Craven potholing clubs who winch visitors through a narrow shaft which punctures the roof of the cave. This morning we’re on our way to meet the Bradford Pothole Club who are waiting for us at the entrance to the cave.
Our journey begins at the Ingleborough Estate Nature Trail, where we commence our steady ascent. The still waters of Clapham Beck slide silently by to our right, framed by the bright purple rhododendrons that were first planted by local early 20th century botanist Reginald Farrer who brought them back from his travels through Asia. Today a variety of Himalayan plants can be found in the gardens around Clapham.
The trail winds steadily upwards, past the commercially accessible Ingleborough Cave and through a narrow limestone gorge known as Trow Gill. Here, the early morning sun reflects off of steel in the rock and one by one a series of sport climbing routes reveal themselves like a dot-to-dot puzzle. The routes look overhanging and technical and, at what must be close to a two-mile, uphill walk-in, not for the faint of heart. Yet when we descend later in the day, they’re fending off multiple intrepid climbing parties.
Eventually we emerge onto the moors and it’s not long before we stumble across Gaping Gill itself and the buzz of activity that surrounds it. Nestled in the divot of a depression like the mouth of a volcano, it’s so narrow that we can’t see into it from the crater’s edge. The Bradford Pothole Club have set up a complex village of tents lining the small stream that feeds the cave, and a queue of around 100 punters snakes its way up the roughly hewn steps that lead into the basin of the crater. It’s 9am.
We settle in and get to know our companions. A rumour is passed down the queue that patrons are being admitted at a rate of roughly 20 people an hour. We brush off our word games from childhoods of long backseat car rides, dig out the snacks, and count ourselves lucky that the rare Yorkshire sun has seen fit to grace us with its presence today. After five hours of, quite literally, bum shuffling our way down the steps, we reach the front of the queue where we pay our admission fee and receive our dog tags – numbers 135 and 136.
We still have 90 minutes before we’re able to enter the cave, so we take the opportunity to climb Ingleborough, the highest of the Yorkshire Three Peaks that has been looming over us all day. It’s a civilised route to the summit and, after a mad dash back down, we pull on our waterproofs, hardhats and headtorches, ready for the descent. Finally, it’s our turn.
The Bradford Pothole Club winch lowering a visitor into Gaping Gill
Guests are lowered into the cave one by one. I cross the platform that’s been erected over the entrance and squeeze into the lift; a crude seat surrounded by protective metal bars and suspended from a steal cable. With a disconcerting lurch, it springs into life, and immediately I plummet what feels like several metres. The walls of the shaft are uncomfortably close, compelling me to tuck my feet beneath me as far as they will go, sure that I’m going to scrape my knees on the coarse limestone. After a while the shaft begins to widen, and I descend through a lazy cascade of water. The walls retreat and I start to feel exposed, the cavern imposing its impressive size on me before they fall away completely, leaving me dangling below the sprawling roof of the cave, as I’m lowered into vacant space.
After 110 metres and 60 long seconds of descent, I reach the cave floor and a man materialises from the darkness to release me from the chair. His cheeks are covered with a thick beard and a cigarette dangles from his lips. An open flame carbide lamp perches on his helmet and for a moment I fear I’ve been lowered back into 1926. The cave is lit by a few floodlights, but it’s so vast that its darkness envelopes most of their light. I mumble my thanks and stumble down the gravel slope, finding somewhere stable to stand while my eyes adjust to the darkness.
A map of Gaping Gill provided by the Bradford Pothole Club
This area of Yorkshire was once a tropical sea (cup of our finest Yorkshire Sea, anyone…?) and its remnants can be found in the walls of the cave, which are covered in fossilised shells and coral. The shaft through the roof of the cave was cut by running water, which has gradually eroded the 350-million-year-old limestone over the course of the 12,000 years since the last ice age, forming what has come to be known as Gaping Gill.
Eyes finally adjusted, we leave the small crowd behind and head to the east of the cave to start exploring.
Huge rockfalls line the corners of the cave; mountains of rubble the size of large buildings. In the eastern corner, there’s an enormous slope of debris to our south and we can see the light of headtorches bobbing away towards its peak. We turn our attention to the more modest, northerly slope and begin to ascend. We’re both experienced scramblers but even we struggle to pull ourselves over the boulders, not helped by the slick layer of mud that coats them all and swallows our feet, several inches thick in places.
We appear to have climbed as high as we’re able but a reluctant ascent of two final particularly stubborn boulders reveals the North Passage beyond the rubble. With nothing more than the light of our headtorches, we follow the corridor as it meanders into the rock, growing increasingly narrower and lower until it forces us to our knees. A set of what appear to be mining tracks descend further into the rock but, short of getting on our stomachs and crawling through the squeeze, we’re unable to follow them. We retrace our steps to the main chamber, slipping and skidding through the mud.
Back in the main cave, our eyes now fully adjusted to the dim light, we’re finally able to appreciate its features. The centrepiece is the UK’s highest waterfall, and the water reflects the thin column of light that pours from the roof of the cave. The different layers of sediment are clearly visible in the walls, their height divided by a clear porcellanous band; a seem of fine limestone that runs throughout the dales and appears much lighter than the surrounding limestone – like a Victoria sponge.
Most curious of all, though, is the mudbank, which sits at the cave’s western end. With edges so defined and precise that they seem manmade, it looks like a great stage built to entertain the intrepid explorers, as if the whole cave were one big arena. In reality, it’s been carved out by the water as it flows from the waterfall into the cave’s western corner.
The geological formations are fascinating but we’re craving one final adventure before it’s time to return to the surface. We head back to the south-eastern corner of the cave and begin to clamber over the boulders that make up the enormous rubble slope we’d initially dismissed. Our plan is to climb as high as we are able but, before long, we notice a passageway behind the rubble, descending into the earth. We decide to abandon our ascent to see where it takes us.
Unlike the uniform, comparatively civilised corridor walls of the North Passage, the South Passage is a wide and sprawling mouth with jagged teeth, reminiscent of something Gollum might call home. Smaller tunnels branch off left and right like fingers or the roots of a tree burrowing into the earth, and we have to keep track of the turns we’re taking so that we can later retrace our steps. The ceiling is low, forcing us to stoop, and in some places, it’s covered in stalactites; in others, riddled with almost perfectly spherical impressions. More than once we stumble across large pools of water that are fed by a source that appears to come from another chamber.
Gaping Gill is fed by 16km of tunnels, so it’s with some reluctance that we abandon our exploration and head back to the main cave for our return trip to the surface. Our eyes now fully adjusted to the dark, the ride back out is a much harrier prospect as the chair bumps and swings on the end of the cable, high above the cave floor. This time I can see the experienced cavers around me, jumaring the best part of 100 metres to the Potholer’s Entrance – a tributary just off the main entrance shaft. Suddenly my free ride doesn’t seem so bad.
Useful information
The Bradford Pothole Club Gaping Gill winch costs £20 and must be paid in cash on the day – it is not possible to pre-book
The next meet is between 25th May and 31st May 2024 – find out more
To avoid disappointment, make sure you arrive at Gaping Gill before 9am
There are camping toilets at the Gaping Gill site but no refreshments so make sure you take plenty of water and snacks – there’s a small shop at Ingleborough Cave on the ascent
The Bradford Pothole Club provides helmets but you need to bring your own waterproof clothes, sturdy shoes and a headtorch if you plan to explore Gaping Gill’s passageways