Lancaster Hole Midnight Slugworld!!

Saturday February 21st 2026

Members present: Abbie Heathcote,  Will Barlow

The infamous midnight slugword! A couple of failed attempts across the last year brought us here, sitting at the NPC table, eating cheese, dreaming of being in slugword, right now. It’was about 11:20pm on Friday night when Abbie and I finally decided to just go. After failing to convince anyone else to join us, we began to confuse everyone getting/giving/spectating the hair cutting that was happening in the SRT room, by packing our caving gear. Unbeknownst to me, Abbie had obtained Elly’s camera. So thanks to Elly’s kindness, we have photos to immortalise this late night adventure which I’m sure shall be attached to this trip.

The drive alone was pretty epic, our excitement was wonderfully accompanied by us singing along to Taylor Swift on the whole journey to Bullpot Farm. It was actually pretty warm when we got changed, rather uncharacteristic for the time of year, and time of day. Being very slightly worried someone staying at the Farm might get a little suspicious of what two random cavers could be doing at midnight, we discretely passed though and headed for Lancs. On the way, we found a slug (see photos), which made us very happy.

Once we found the hole, an efficient descent followed, with the lower half of the descent being very drippy. Once we had both landed in the puddle that was the bottom of Lancs, we removed SRT kits and squelched our way towards the crawl. Some mega efficient crawling brought us to the first slug. Here I remembered seeing a photo of Erika kneeling next to what I thought was this slug (though I later found out it was actually in Easter Grotto), so we decided to recreate it. Some photography and backlighting shenanigans later, we continued our short, but enjoyable, journey to the world of the slugs. It was about 12:30am when we reached slug world. Midnight slug word, achievement unlocked. Some photography, and general appreciation of all the pretties followed. Before beginning our return journey.

Some more photography occurred on the way out, and me pretending to be a worm in the crawl. Before reaching the bottom of Lancs once again. I headed up first, Abbie derigged, and we headed back towards the Farm. Not long after we left, we found ourselves in a field surrounded by so many mushrooms, much to Abbie’s delight. Another small bit of epicness was that the slug we found on the way to Lancs, was still hanging out in the area we found them earlier, just waiting for us, ensuring we made it back safe.

A quick change, followed by even more Taylor Swift, led us back to the NPC. Arriving back not long after 2am to find everyone heading off to bed after what looked to have been a big night there. Some hot chocolate to finish off the night, and off to bed we went, probably dreaming of slugs.