Mee Outdoors Photography

Caving is divisive. Labyrinthine, pitch black, with a fairly endless array of other hazards, caving is a specialist art requiring equipment and skills far beyond the average outsdoorsman.

In most cases, one does not simply rock up to a cave, certainly not one with any of the typical and more extraordinary features one would expect to find – such as waterfalls, swimming activities, wildlife and extra curious rock formations. They are indeed, a bit of a thing.

Caverns, as wide mouthed, spacious chambers are far more accessible. And yet isolated, geologically fascinating and, of course, free to enter caverns seem to be few and far between.

Happily, the Yorkshire Dales has infinite entry points to its underworld. Some of these entrances even admit a day hiker without trying to kill them.

Still, it’s best to approach a good degree of caution as cave systems under the Greater Ingleborough-ish area make up the two largest networks in the country. Many of which, will certainly make a thorough attempt to kill us all.

I’m fairly sure a left turn just under a fall in far Kingsdale I’m overly fond of leads one inadvertently into the depths of Rowten Pot, which is almost certainly best avoided.

It’s not at all uncommon to wander past ropes, loops and hatches descending below. Though, just looking at these portals into said underworld give plenty of folks that free-falling sensation of kinetosis. Much like taking a bridge at speed, or looking Over the Edge of things. They can make one feel… funny.

Canyons – or gills, ghylls, cloughs or ravines depending on your dialect of choice – are all terms describing a steep, narrow valley in some rocky depression or another.

Combined with caves and caverns, canyons too make me think differently about our landscape and you see if from a different perspective. They add a completely different element to a hiking trip, especially in the full light of summer.

Switch from a blazing, bright blue vista, to a dank, dark and reptilian tunnel. Colour, temperature, terrain and textures to the irrevocable cavescape. The experience becomes richer as the contrast is drastically dialed down.

Here I’ve been hugely fortunate as numerous, and potentially questionable, wanderers the Yorkshire Dales, has let me into walker-friendly caves under the moors.

The textures are beautiful, look like a collage or an artistic interpretation of a landscape, rather than the ingenious and organic.

There’s nothing quite like crouching through the twists and turns of a friendly cave, feeling the damp and the dark on your skin and then into your lungs.

While returning from the slippery wonderland of my joint favourite gill for some waterfall and plunge pool action, my good friend and adventure partner simply commented how it dragon-like the canyon was.

Zooming in on the pictures, I have to wonder: am I traversing a cave or the hide of a dragon?

Running away with that thought, it seemed only apt to describe it through poetry.

Enter the Dragon

Such brilliant green
Wet to the touch
A chasm coated
With concave scales
Green turns black
Enter the dragon
Down and round
Cool and cold
Alive
Flexing rock
Arch and rise
Carved by time
Slime slick and glisten
Climb through a fall
Step in, step through
Plunge in the pool
Enter the Dragon
Stare down to black
Submerge to the core
Break through the surface
Breathe it’s breath
Feel your pulse
Plunge again
Surrender yourself
Manic and possessed
Alight
Exultant
An ancient gift

Inspired by Kingsdale, August 2023