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	The first sight to greet cavers entering the Cueva del Cuesos (Cheese Cave).- the cheese shelving. Like many of the caves in the Picos de Europa, it has been used for maturing the local cheeses, but was abandoned years ago.
	Oddly, however, the cheese makers never seem to have explored the caves further than was necessary for their work - even though their requirement for a draught means that there is normally more accessable cave. In this case, though, the previous years expedition had been halted almost immediately by a constriction, which they eventually passed after much bashing. - Here Geoff negotiates the Constriction of Doom, now very much tamed.
	Rubber bones would have been useful for the next obstacle, the Corkscrew - a less severe but more interesting constriction, here being tackled by Andy. It spirals down into the floor, with a "seat" in the middle on which a caver must sit in order to pass tackle bags through, and emerges at the top of the first pitch.
	The second pitch, which follows immediately after the first, drops into a well decorated chamber.....
	.....which kept the photographic team out of trouble for a few hours!
	The chambers pretties ran from attractive crystals.....
	.....of all shapes and sizes.....
	.....through rock formations from delicate, wafer thin butresses.....
	.....to some which were, frankly, weird (yes, the photo is the right way up!).
	Of course, no cave would be complete without calcite, and the second pitch chamber had more than its fair share of that, too, from huge expanses of flowstone.....
	.....to this tiny "stream" of milky white moonstone.
	Shortly after the big - 33m - Sword Pitch had to be descended.....
	.....followed by this short pitch, which, in a moment of black humour, was christened Bastard Rub Pitch, as it was impossible to rig without any rub points.
	I think this (appalling - sorry!) photo was taken in Cueva del Cuesos(Cheese Cave)- possibly in the passage below Bastard Rub Pitch.
	Another short pitch descends into the Waiting Room, where teams wait while they take turns bashing the terminal constriction, a short distance further, down a gear ripping crawl.
	The pitch into the waiting room is over a pool, allowing us to experiment with a more creative use for the indirect light provided by Andy's new flash slave.
Sadly, we didn't take any photo's of the terminal constriction, a keyhole in a small passage, which is slowly yeilding to repeated bashing. It draughts very strongly - enough to almost blow out a carbide lamp - and rocks thrown through create a deep echo, so there must be something big beyond it. However, the way on is a slot in the floor just beyond the constriction, and we won't know 'till we can get to it whether it will go.

Acknowledgements