Mossdale

On 24 June 1967, in the world's worst caving tragedy, six young men perished by drowning in the tortuous extremities of Yorkshire's Mossdale Caverns. Classed as Super Severe, the cave was notorious as being Britain's most testing – to this day, fewer people have seen its far reaches than have walked on the Moon. For four nights, 300 volunteers, working in shifts, built dams, dug trenches and risked their lives to try and reach the six young explorers trapped hundreds of metres below ground. On the fourth day they found the bodies. The Coroner ordered that the bodies be left where they lay and the cave system sealed.

 

And so for the next fifty years the cave - now a tomb - remained shut and its legendary passages unexplored and out of bounds. Waiting for the next generation of explorers to stake their reputation on achieving the impossible.

 

Simon Beck grew up in the shadows of Upper Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dales and attended the primary school that lies at the resurgence of the river Keld, some miles below the fated Mossdale Cavern entrance.

 

Drawn to the potential of the hidden passages, Simon has one objective - to make the breakthrough that has eluded all that have preceded him and to discover the fabled passageway that connects the cave entrance to the resurgence.

 

Mossdale is an epic exploration of the darkness within all of us, and the longing we all have to explore the hidden and undiscovered passageways of our youth.