Wet Wookey
Christine aged 25 ish in Wookey chamber 20. Image: Clive Westlake. Image taken before a tunnel was mined through to allow public access to the chamber. At this time, the only way to see it was by cave diving.
Wookey Hole Caves will always have a very special place in my heart.
It is a weird, slightly crazy, slightly spooky tourist attraction in the middle of deepest Somerset. Many of my WetWellies caving clients have visited the 'other end' of the Wookey system, Swildons Hole, which has been dye traced to connect with Wookey Hole. When dye was tipped into the water in Swildons Hole it emerged TWENTY FOUR hours later at Wookey resurgence.
It has been the dream of every British cave diver I know to connect the two but alas, the connection has only ever been made by that dye.
Mark Burkey in Wookey Hole, right below the public gallery. Image: Christine Grosart
Swildons Hole ends at sump 12, a tight underwater passage which gets too small for humans and is a long slog to get to in any case. I've been to sump 12 twice and would take a lot or persuading to go back again...
Wookey Hole, at the bottom of the hill heading towards the city of Wells, is an impressive resurgence cave where a huge collection of water which has drained through the Mendip hills, comes rushing out of the cave mouth.
Divers conducted the very first hard hat dives in this cave in 1935 and Graham Balcombe and Penelope 'Mossy' Powell ventured upstream in Wookey Hole for the first time. It was from this underground chamber, chamber 3, now visited by tourists every day, that I made my first cave dive in Wookey Hole in 2005.
Penelope ‘Mossy’ Powell and Graham Balcombe in the 1930s, Wookey Hole Chamber 3. Image: Mendip archives.
Preparing to dive in Wookey Hole in the 1930s.
Modern day diving in Wookey Hole. Christine diving sidemount, open circuit. Image: Richard Walker.
On 17th February this year (2019) I took my Cave Diving Group trainee Mark Burkey on his first cave dive in Wookey Hole.
We were blessed with superb visibility so he could begin to get to know the place and he had the luxury of being filmed (for training feedback, of course) which meant bright video lights illuminating the large underwater passages.
Mark diving towards the 'slot' in Wookey Hole. Image: Christine Grosart
Mark is an outstanding cave photographer and I am very excited about the prospect of him being able to take photographs beyond sumps, as my mentor Clive Westlake once did, albeit mainly in black and white.
In 2009, Wookey Hole was the scene for my rather understated deep dive at the end of the system. Rick Stanton and John Volanthen of Thai Cave rescue Fame, had pushed the end of the cave signifiicantly in 2005 to 90 metres deep.
Christine preparing to dive the final 2 sumps in Wookey Hole, 2009 before her record breaking dive.
I had only just begin cave diving with the Cave Diving Group so whilst I was around to witness the aftermath of the record breaking dives, my only small part in the affair was to pick up the parachute after the run. Or rather, I was a ‘sump donkey’ bringing partially depleted exploration bailout bottles back to the show cave.
The river Axe roars through Wookey chamber 24. Image: Christine Grosart
Roll on four years and I was heading down to the new bits of the cave myself and earned a new ladies UK cave diving depth record (64 metres, solo) in the process. To this day no woman has ever been back. Now that chamber 24 (dive base for the deeper dives into the system) has had a dry route created, I wonder if any future record would count as much. I certainly did it the hard way over several days and with the help of several resolute and valued friends.
Wookey chamber 20, when it was only accessed by diving. Image: Christine Grosart
Wookey chamber 20, when it was only accessed by diving. Image: Christine Grosart