Chapter 16

I was back at the cottage, and for the first time in days, it wasn’t raining. There had been a lot of flooding locally, the runoff from the fields was making some roads impassable, and the river in the valley was really high, flooding some riverside properties. The worst for over ten years, they said, but at least the rain seemed to have finally eased; perhaps the worst was over.

It was time to go and get out and enjoy my countryside. I put my walking boots on and went out for a walk. I wanted to explore the copse a bit more; the trees were ash, elm and sycamore, as best as I could tell, with some hazel around the edge that produced cobnuts. It was unusual for this part of the country; cobnuts are more typically on hazel bushes down south.

I had walked past the copse several times but never been in and explored; today I would rectify that. There was an owl that lived in an old knot on one of the sycamores; the copse floor was littered with the pelleted remains of the small animals it consumed, and I could hear the hoots occasionally at night.

I climbed the fence that surrounded the copse. Odd that it was fenced off, I thought; surely it is just a load of trees. Perhaps the fence was to try and keep animals out. Was it a plantation, I wondered, or just the remnants of an older and larger wood that had been removed for farmland or even just used as timber for building?

The copse floor was covered in owl droppings, leaf litter and broken twigs and branches, the results of previous storm damage, and there was little or no sign of human interference, no crisp packets, drink cans or that sort of thing, just natural litter, nothing man-made. As I wandered through the copse and looked at all I could see, I saw that there was a dark spot near the centre that warranted closer inspection.

As I got closer to the dark area, I realised it was a largish dip in the ground; I needed to go carefully, as it was relatively dark under the tree canopy, and if I fell, there was no one going to come and rescue me. As I got closer, I realised it was a cave, although how big was difficult to tell. I very carefully stepped down into the darkness of the depression and tried to get a feel for the depth. It sloped relatively steeply, and underfoot it was rock, and even though I was worried it would be slippery, it wasn’t; there seemed to be no moss or rotting leaves, just bare rocks.

I took a few steps down, going slowly to allow my eyes to adjust. There was a rope fixed to the side of the cave, like a handrail almost. I guessed it was either to help you if the cave path got steeper or to help you find your way out if your light went out. I didn’t have a torch with me, so I didn’t plan on going far. Obviously, this had been an explored cave if there was an old rope handrail. I wasn’t the first to go this way.

As I stepped further into the depths of the cave and my eyes adjusted to the dark, I realised that there was a luminescence that allowed me to see comparatively well. I had a sudden thought about radioactivity; I vaguely thought radioactive minerals glowed, but then my brain said that if it was radioactive, then the authorities would have noticed it by now and it would be securely fenced off.

I closed my eyes tightly for a minute and then slowly opened them; the cave now seemed much brighter, my eyes having adjusted. I carried on venturing down; the slope was quite steep, and even though the path was surprisingly dry, I was glad of the rope. It gave me a feeling of security. I wondered how old the rope was. Would it be rotten and fall apart in my hands? It didn’t have an oily feel to it the way some old ropes did, especially those that were used on boats; no, it was dry and slightly rough.

The cave levelled out and opened up into quite a large cavern, with luminescence all over the walls and roof, probably at least twenty feet high, I thought. I suddenly realised that there was still water at my side. I remembered years ago going on a boat ride in a cave in Derbyshire, so I guess it was probably a common thing; I had just never thought about it.

There was a small wooden boat beached that I decided I was not getting into without a torch; although I couldn’t hear pouring or falling water, that didn’t mean that there wasn’t some sudden drop that would take me over. I am not a strong rower, so, no, that could wait for future investigation. Also, how long had the boat been there? Was it worthy, or would the bottom fall out as soon as I pushed off?

I carried on slowly walking around the edge of the lake, and then the path started to rise a little and then went through a low passageway and opened into another small cavern; the luminosity here was much brighter than by the lake. I looked around; there seemed little sign of previous visitors. I was wondering what had formed the lake. Was it rainwater? Would all the recent heavy rain percolate down her and flood the passageways?