A strange man grabbed my butt

‘Strange man’ as in I didn’t know him, rather than ‘strange’ as in weird. Somehow I don’t think that makes it any better.

A couple of weekends ago, I did something that was more stupid than strange. I paid good money to investigate ancient limestone caves in the Forest of Dean (that’s in Gloucestershire, for those who are geographically challenged and even fail to negotiate Milton Keynes’ roundabouts). They had been mined for iron and ochre (clay deposits containing ferric oxide) for centuries if not millennia. Small amounts of coal continue to be mined locally – don’t tell the eco-nuts or they’ll glue themselves to the mine shafts … actually, DO tell the eco-nuts and leave them there.

The reaction to my caving-announcement was incredulity if not horror – the dark, the cold, the wet, the claustrophobia, the falling rocks, collapsing tunnels and slipping into crevices. Magic, said I, remembering my adventures with the Yorkshire Subterranean Society when I was young and daft. Now, I’m older and dafter.

The cave entrance was a ten-minute walk from the hotel. Off I trotted after a night of champagne cocktails and a breakfast of eggs florentine, pain au chocolat and three strong coffees. At the tourist centre, I met five other mad adventurers: a couple of ecologists, a middle-aged couple who I guessed were embarking on a new relationship because they were so giggly, and the chap who would eventually, well, ya know. We were handed filthy, over-sized, ripped boilersuits to don over our own clothes, plus hard hats and head torches. I was wearing my trusty walking boots but was offered a pair of communal wellies, on the grounds I might get my boots wet. Do I look that precious? In any event, wearing a boiler suit that at least 69 other people had previously worn was enough to awaken my not-too-latent hygiene-OCD; the thought of coming into close contact with athletes’ foot and veruccas/veruccae was a step too far.

Our guide led us through the forest to a mine entrance at the end of a slippy gully, down which she slipped, careering into the gate. Then she struggled to unlock the padlock, at which stage I realised I’d forgotten to go to the loo before I left the hotel, and this adventure was scheduled to last for three hours. Shouldn’t have had that third coffee.

Eventually she opened the gate and beckoned us to follow. Everyone hesitated so, ever the impatient one, I went first. I stepped down carefully and managed not to slip, but the strange man wasn’t so circumspect; he followed me too closely and nearly took me out. I had to jump out of the way without jumping off a ledge into an Indiana Jones’ nightmare.

Once we’d accustomed ourselves to the low light and uneven surfaces, we went from cavern to cavern through passageways and tunnels that varied from intriguing to tight to steep to slippy to treacherous to low to hells bells. The ghostly calcite formations, remnants of iron ore threads sparkling in the torchlights, and splashes of purple, red and yellow ochre were worth the risks. And the bats! I thought we were going to lose the ecologists; they couldn’t tear themselves away from the critters. They were horseshoe bats (can’t remember if they were of the greater or lesser variety), really cute with their wings wrapped round their little bodies as they hung upside. I wondered if that position would make a hangover better or worse.

Frequently, the miners had built substantial columns of rocks to hold up the ceilings in case they came crashing down. But these were boring compared to ‘The Sword of Damocles’, a huge slab that appeared to be hovering an inch off the ground. It was actually wedged further up so “no danger of it squashing us”, we were told.

After marvelling at the number of man-made tunnels radiating from one particular cavern, the guide asked me to lead everyone through that one over there and to wait in the next cavern. I walked into the tunnel, then I crouched a little before bending double, squatted, then shuffled painfully on hands and knees for a few metres. Then it got ridiculous. I found out later it was nick-named the worm hole and yes it was like heading into a parallel universe. I resorted to lying on my stomach and pulling myself along with my arms underneath me, but soon had to just wiggle forward inch by painful inch by digging my hip bones into the hard rock. I wondered if I’d headed into the wrong tunnel. 

At last when I looked up, crashing my head on the ceiling for the hundredth time, I could see another cavern. Problem was, the tunnel was now inclining upwards and as fast as I wiggled forward, I slipped back again. I was exhausted – to say nothing of wishing I didn’t have to put so much pressure on my bladder. 

I looked over my shoulder as much as I could and yelled, “Just having a breather and a think.”

“Take your time,” the guide yelled back. Gee thanks.

I managed to get my arms in front of me but there was nothing to grab hold of. I dug my toes into the ground but again couldn’t get any purchase. I felt around with my hands and feet anywhere they would move and thankfully found a small scoop in the wall for my left boot. I kicked hard for all I was worth and shot upwards far enough to grab a handhold to pull myself out of the worm hole. I wondered if I’d dislocated my hip. I was relieved when everyone else had difficulty, except for the guide who, for the last couple of yards, rolled onto her back, grabbed the top of the tunnel entrance and easily pulled herself out. Why the eff hadn’t she advised us to do that?

I assumed that would be the most difficult part of the adventure. I was wrong (not often I say that). We came across a ‘window’ over six feet off the ground and were instructed to scramble up the sheer rock face and pull ourselves through the window onto the ledge on the other side. I watched while a couple of others tried it first and had a feeling of desperation in my water. I knew those foot and handholds weren’t going to work for me because I have long limbs, and the leverage would be all wrong. I was right (I say that a lot). Right foot and two handholds later, my left foot didn’t know where to put itself. On here, said the guide. Yes but that’s the wrong angle to push me upwards. She grabbed my boot and pushed it onto a different dubious foothold, dubious because it wasn’t sufficient and the boot slipped out and I bashed my knee. Ouch said I, or something else with four letters. I’ll hold your boot into that indent, she said, and you step up and grab that handhold there. Where? There! There? There! You gotta be kidding me!

Plan F invoked, I kicked down as much as I could with my left foot and got both arms and elbows on the ledge, but started to slip backwards. Grab my butt! I yelled to the guide. But the strange man was only too ready to oblige. At which point, I miraculously found the strength to struggle onto the ledge, where I scrambled to my feet with the biggest false smile on my face and said, “Piece of p-ss.” Under the circumstances, a silly thing to say.

Getting stuck in a worm hole, being squashed by a tonne of tumbling rock, falling any which way but loose off a sheer rock face and being molested by strange men, I can handle. But when we got back to the gate at the exit to the mine, I was just about to nonchalantly haul myself out when one of the ecologists said, “Ooh look at the size of those spiders!”