Meccano Passage - Alan Brentnall

A warm night with a few spots of rain starting to wet the grass saw thirteen cavers meet up at the Knotlow triangle near Monyash for a trip through Meccano Passage, a low, crawly maze of a passage which gained a lot of notoriety back in the 80s when it was still accessed via a long signal box ladder from the foot of Waterfall Chamber.

As there were quite a few of us, we decided that an exchange trip was in order, the plan being for me to rig the Chapel Dale 210 Engine Shaft with John and Julian, while Katie rigged the Whalf Engine Shaft with Clive and Edvin, and Alan and Chris rigged the Whalf Climbing Shaft over in the copse. Jenny, Grace, Luke, Mark and Alex would follow my group down the 210 once Grace had found a substitute for the helmet she had left at home - Luke lent her his climbing helmet.

Over at the big mound which marks the top of the Chapel Dale Shaft, I opened upthe outer lid with my monkey wrench - I usually forget this, but it's one of the only devices I have for turning the mighty nuts at the top of the 210. What I did forget was to bring large krabs - even my Petzl OK krabs wouldn't clip the huge hangers on the cap. So I resorted to the old "captive knot" method, backing it up with a sling and the one (oldish) krab we'd found which would fit the hangers.

Nothing much happens in the field where the Knotlow shafts lie, and so, once the herd of cows who habitually graze the grass there realised that there was some novel rigging being tried, they had to come over and have a look, examining and sniffing at every knot, and passing meaningful looks between each other. Once it was all set up, we dropped the shaft, ignoring the rebelay at Chain Passage so that the rope could be simply lifted out afterwards - Katie ignored the Balcony Route in Whalf Engine for the same reason. Once down, I pulled up the lower section of rope, hanked it and tied off the upper section to make access to Meccano a little bit easier for the others.

Alex came down and suggested we carried on as they would be OK getting through the passage, after all Jenny had done this route a few times in the past; what could go wrong? So off we went, and pretty soon we were at the low coffin level where the water is met. Noises within the passage ahead indicated that others were approaching, and, consequently, we hung around. Eventually, Clive appeared ... muttering expletives, and reminiscing about the days when everybody wore wetsuits and wet crawls like that were so much easier etc. Clive was followed by Katie and Edvin, and we had a brief pow-wow about who was doing what and where before we continued into the wet bit.

Well was it wet! But it was no fuller than usual, and the "squeeze" which was removed by a portly caver three years ago was still not there - so it wasn't long before we were all through and crawling around in the more acrobatic section of Meccano; in fact, in what seemed like no time at all, we soon popped out into the roomy Whalf Pipe passages. Job done! At the foot of the Engine Shaft, we met Alan and Chris. John and Julian opted for the big prussick up the Engine Shaft, while I settled for the climbing shaft, because I wanted to check the condition of the two repair jobs we had sorted out below the packwalls in the top section. They still seem to be robust, and keeping the rocks in place, so that was a relief.

Once on the surface, I popped over the wall to join Julian waiting for John to jug up the shaft. We could see Katie & Co over on the 210 mound, and we could hear Alan and Chris surfacing in the copse, so it wasn't long before we were back on the Triangle getting changed. We waited for a while before sending Katie and John to check for emerging cavers at Whalf Engine. They returned, reporting that Jenny had surfaced, and Grace wasn't far behind, and that we were to retire to the pub. Jenny's group would de-rig the shaft and bring the rope down to the Monyash as soon as they had changed.

After a very long chat in the Bull's Head it was suddenly 11:15pm ... so the three DCRO controllers (Alan, Katie and me) discussed the situation, and decided that Katie would return to the Triangle to retrieve the rope, and would phone Alan (who is Duty Controller this month) if anything was amiss. The rest of us departed homewards. But there was nothing untoward; it just takes some considerable time for five people to prussick up the sizable Whalf Engine Shaft. But a satisfying exchange trip nonetheless.