Great Douk Cave

Great Douk must have been known for a very long time, but the first reference to it may be found in John Hutton's Addendum to the second edition of Thomas West's Guide to the Lakes published in 1780. Hutton and party explored the cave for some 50 yd beyond the Little Douk Pot window. Thereafter a visit to the entrance at least, seems to have been on every passing tourist's schedule, featuring, for example, in the 1853 edition of Garnett's Craven Itinerary. In 1850, Howson in his guidebook to Craven reported that it was possible to penetrate beyond Little Douk for "about seven hundred yards", and the Balderstons in Ingleton: Bygone and Present published in 1888 described how the cave can be…

The main entrance is in a large collapsed depression, at the bottom of which is the scaffolded entrance to Great Douk Pot, and at the south-eastern end is the obvious entrance to the cave from which a waterfall issues. The cave can be entered by climbing up the waterfall, or crawling through an open bedding above. To the left, a low passage leads to where the Southerscales Pot stream flows out of a short sump. Straight on is easy walking, passing under Little Douk Pot, an alternative pothole entrance, and 70 m beyond beneath another skylight to the surface. Eventually a pleasant succession of cascades is met, and the passage passes through areas of fine flowstone. Soon after an oxbow…