A babbling brook

For once, our British summer has been just that - summer. Warm - even hot for a while, plenty of dry, sunny days with a healthy smattering of rain. This babbling brook (Syke Beck) in the Yorkshire Dales was flowing fast but isn't in spate. The fresh, clear water comes from a spring a little further upstream, fed by rainwater percolating down through the limestone uplands into underground chambers. The cave-system feeding this stream has not yet been discovered but a team of divers are trying to do just that.

There is no way I could be a caver... just the thought of lowering myself down a tiny, dark hole into the unknown underground gives me the shivers. (Try typing 'caving' into Google images!) They then have to wade or swim up the flowing water underground, sometimes diving through narrow, flooded sumps - all in the hope that they will reach an amazing underground cave. Some of those that have been discovered are spectacular - but even that isn't enough to entice me. A few have been opened up so that visitors can have a tour inside (take a look at the website for White Scar Cave). They might well be worth seeing, but I'm not keen!