Helen Stephenson's Derbyshire Break Pictures - December, 2005 - Treak Cliff Cavern

Stephen and I went into one of the caves near Castleton. They mine Blue John stone in most of them. It's purple, by the way! I would have liked a piece, but decided that it was too expensive. After we left Castleton and the caves behind, Stephen told me that one of the items he's salvaged from a charity shop is a rock tumbler. I could have bought an unpolished piece cheaply and done it myself.

Treak Cliff Cavern is actually two caves for the price of one. You go into the area where they mine Blue John stone first. This has been dug out by human activity. However, the miners broke through into a natural limestone cavern beyond the area they were mining, and the tour of Treak Cliff Cavern takes in this as well as the area hewn out while mining Blue John stone.

We went to the cavern on a day when the weather forecast wasn't that good outdoors. However, we found out that down in the cavern, there's continual dripping of water, albeit from rain that fell several weeks previously. My camera spent a lot of time tucked under my ski jacket when I wasn't actually using it, which was no mean feat considering that it had my big flashgun mounted on the top of it and my 28-300 lens mounted on the front of it.

I saw this floodlit fern just inside the cavern.

Here's a vein of Blue John Stone. and some of the lighting within the cavern.

Here are some fossils. The thumbnail hasn't resized very effectively, but if you click on it, the larger picture is much better.

The Blue John area just looks like rock and isn't particularly pretty, but as it was December, they had an area decorated up for Christmas and were selling tickets for a Carols in the Caves event which was taking place a bit closer to Christmas.

The limestone cavern was much prettier to look at with a delicate lacework of limestone across the cavern ceiling. There were also plenty of stalactites and stalagmites. One set of stalagmites is known as the "Seven Dwarves" and you're supposed to pat the first one you come to on the head as you go by and he will bring you luck.

Their best stalactite is known as "The Stork". It's behind a wire mesh fence and you can't get particularly close to it with a camera. I had several tries, and my back panel indicated that I was failing miserably, but PhotoShop came to the rescue and salvaged something out of my nearly-black pictures.

Here are some more limestone formations.

Here is a wider view of part of the limestone cavern.

All that water that drips through into the cavern is put to good use: they have plastic sheeting under some of the drips to direct them into a storage tank. The water collected this way is naturally filtered on its journey through the limestone and is used in the tea rooms at the cave entrance for making drinks.