Saturday 2nd of September - Vicarage Pot & North West Stream passage:
Andy Kyzyk, Rich Beer, Duncan Butler and myself went down Swildons to have a look as some of the less popular parts. Vicarage pot can be found at the end of Vicarage passage, about 75m from where the route to the landing joins the passge. A ladder takes you down the pot and large iron spikes take you up the other side. There is a bit of a scramble and then a slope to head up, with a hole to traverse over. Above this is a small chamber at the bottom of which a slippery tube exits. This heads up to steeply to another chamber with approx a 3m climb to the floor (there are several options). From here you can follow the large passage to see a dig or drop down through a hole in the floor. The hole leads to a 'boulder filled rift' - which didn't have many boulders in it. Then a wet squeeze before a drop ... 

Saturday 16th September: Open water diving out of Swanage on the Swange Diver (skippered by Pete). Started with a drift dive (max depth 32.3m, time 40min  ). Buddied up with Steve we dropped of the back of the boat and then straight down to 20m. I sent up an SMB as we started to drift along then just relaxed and enjoyed the dive. Hit a big hole which we floated over until we reached a wall - then up to 16-17m.  Next a great dive on the Kyarra (28.7m, time 43min using EANX 32).

See a picture of the wreck on Divernet.

On saturday night we hit the pub in Swanage for a few beers before retiring to one of the caravans to eat a take away curry.

Sunday 17th Septemeber: I was up early for an 8.45am morning dirft dive, max depth 22.3m  time 45min. All in all an enjoyable weekends diving which made me want to go back for more UK wreck diving in particular.

Saturday 26th Langcliffe Pot caving trip (Rich Bayfield, Charlotte Harris and myself) :
I'd had Langcliffe Pot in mind for some time after reading about the cave in Adventures of another Pooh and the bank holiday weekend presented the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately we didn't have a copy of Northern caves 1 so we had to borrow one from Andy Rumming who was also staying at the YSS.

Andy's copy was the old one so it had no mention of the oddmire entrance (we didn't know about it till Monday night) or access arrangements. However the description seemed ok so we copied this down and headed off to Ingleston to pick up a few bits where we asked about access in Bernies and was told that it was no problem (since read this may not be the case).

We headed up the hill and soon reached the cave, the decription had been for ladders but we were going to do it with SRT as we didn't have enough ladders. The top of the entrance pitch wasn't a problem but lower down you reach a large ledge and the ptich really isn't rigged for SRT. Rich Bayfield came down after me and managed to get a deviation in which fixed it enough for us three.

At the bottom of the pitch we stripped off our SRT kits ...

Saturday: I'd been planning the Belfry BBQ for quite a while and was really looking forward to it. It was my birthday as well so this was even more reason to be excited.

I had no idea how much work and preparation the other BEC members were putting in so I was surprised and delighted to see the car park covered in lights when I arrived on Friday night. We spent Saturday getting ready, putting up the CHECC marquee (which we'd brought from Reading and amazingly the poles fitted in my car!), decorating the marquee, cleaning and putting up more lights.
Ivan arrived with a massive sound system in his van and huge speakers to spread out, we also had a hanging fire and when the event kicked off at 7pm a massive Belfry Bat - constructed by Ben, Henry and Tony J was hoisted into the air. Fiona, Dany and Ben did lots of cooking and the event was well attended.

We had numerous people including Paul Brock, Mad Phil and Henry DJing and we danced in the rain around massive braziers. Ivan treated us to a demonstration of fire breathing and we all treated our selves to lots of Beer and Cider. Bob Cork provided us with a free barrel of the latter and we polished off that and three barrels of beer by about 2.30am. However the party didn't stop there and music was still going till the early hours. All in all - an excellent night which we will be repeating next year.

Thanks to everyone who came and eveyone who helped organise and do things for the BBQ. You made it a great event and a great Birthday for me! Pictures on the BEC site.