Underground trip for women

I stopped going underground on a regular basis for reasons of excessive laddishness of the men I had been going with. Since then, I haven't done that many trips, and quite a few of them were just me and one other woman. Maybe two. Occasionally a man or two. And Miles isn't very laddish and if it were up to me, I would go underground with him a bit more often. I think we went once.

There are ways of connecting with larger groups going underground that have guaranteed absence of excessive laddishness: there is an initiative called speleo sisters, and they do caving weekends. But I think that is a bit much for me. Firstly, it is a national initiative, so it could be very far away from where I live. And secondly; if you do a whole weekend you want to do some epic caving, but I am so out of it! I have therefore never joined a speleo sisters weekend.

Then I started noticing announcements of women only caving trips in North Wales. This initiative was associated with the club UCET. We have quite some members of UCET in the cave rescue team. It looked interesting! But I was never available on the day.

Then I saw a trip to Parc announced, on a day I could make. Parc is not very far away; that matters, as UCET is based quite far east, so some of their trips might well be an hour’s drive away, or two hours, or maybe even more. Parc is only 30 minutes away! I signed up.

I did what nowadays is my usual thing: on the way there, I wondered what I would have forgotten. It turned out I hadn't forgotten anything. And on the parking lot I changed into my gear. It turned out we were a group of seven. Not a bad score! And most of them I already knew a bit because they are in the rescue team. It was a nice crew.

The idea was that we would go down to the lower level and have a look around. We didn't really have a particular goal. We first had to get there! 

On the level between the ladders and the pitch (pic by Mary)

Starting down the Pitch (pic by Mary)

It took us a while get down the ladders (you can only have one person on a ladder at any given time), and even longer (or at least it seemed) to come down the pitch. Not all of us were equally experienced. But we all got down! And then we had a little walk. We saw the ore chutes, the submerged wagon; all the sights. I had seen all of them plenty of times before, but that didn't matter.

Group pic without Mary, who is taking the picture 

Distant lady on a ladder

The ore chutes (pic by Mary)

Some of us were wondering how deep the water would be in the passage to Kneebone Cutting. We all headed to the tube that gives access to this part of the mine, and a few of us would go and check it out. But then everybody came through. It seems to have been decided! This was going to be the way we would come out. And the very ochry water was up to our knickers.

The previous time I had been in his mine, it had been with Sharon alone, and we weren't quite sure how to climb out of the pit. We managed it, but it wasn't comfortable. But now we figured we knew how it was usually done. It was indeed a whole lot easier! I free-climbed out, but there was a rope for people who weren't comfortable with that.

We then walked back. It was getting late! I changed and left. Sometimes, these trips seem to end in the pub. But it was already past my bedtime.

I had had a good time! I really liked the atmosphere of this trip. It was really friendly and sociable. I'm definitely going to do this again if I am available, and the trips aren't stupidly far away. Although if they are, maybe some car sharing would be an option, and that helps.

I also had had a chat with Mary, the lady who organises these trips. She explained how they had come about. She is in UCET, and he was a bit dismayed there were so few women in the club. I know how she feels! And she said that if you managed to convince a woman to join, they show up once or twice, and then decide it is way too blokey, and never show up again. 

She figured she might be able to create some critical mass by organising trips for women only. Then nobody is put off by the blokeyness, and before you know it they go on a whole load of trips, and have a great time, and then maybe that way you can convince several women to join the parent club in a short span of time, and then they can together counterbalance the blokeyness. It may very well work! I am now thinking of joining UCET. And I wouldn't join every weekly trip. As I said; some of these are really far east for me. But if they venture a little bit further west it might well be an option. Thanks to Mary, this might be a club that is quite welcoming to women. And it's not as if that is unique; both the PCG and the YCC had good form there. But here in North Wales, I am afraid that is worth mentioning!