Boxing Day: I drove up on Boxing day morning and arrived at the Helwith Bridge at about 2.30pm. Phil and Ems arrived 5 minutes later and after hastily unpacking and repacking cars we headed off for Aquamole Aven via Ingleton.

27th December: With a whole day of caving before the hoards arrived Phil, Ems and I wanted to get decent days caving done. Large Pot was selected as the venue in preference to Brown Hill (my suggestion). I'd been down Large but not for some time so this sounded like a good idea. We planned to pop down Collossus and then head over to the Red Herring series on the way out.

28th December: The Soton and Cardiff crowd arrived at the YSS with several cavers who hadn't done much SRT. So we thought Swinsto (i.e. just abseiling) would be perfect. A fairly quick and painless trip which everyone seemed to enjoy.

29th December: Greg and I met up with Marcus Crabbe (Derbyshire CDG) for a dive in joint hole. This was a nice dive for me in my drysuit at 7 degrees but Greg split the neck seal on his whilst getting changed and had to dive in a wetsuit! Afterwards I headed back to the hut to take a trip down Ireby fell cavern with the freshers.

30th December: Phil, Rich Bayfield and myself were planning on a Quaking pot trip but unfortunately the weather put a stop to this. Instead we went over to Juniper Gulf, the rain was torrential and despite the fact that i'd been down the cave in bad weather previously and got to the bottom - the final pitch was impassable today.

31st December: New Years Eve day was spent in Gaping Gill - We wanted to treat the feshers to a Gaping Gill trip as I think no first trip to Yorkshire is complete without one of these.