Good morning everyone!

How are you. I'm back! Thank you Margo for a super Fem Fri last week. I had a lovely holiday, which included a trip to Wookey Hole caves where I saw an amazing/horrifying film about cave diving. DID YOU KNOW that more people have been on the moon than have been to Chamber 25 of Wookey Hole which is, literally, just there (gestures westward)?

As a treat this week, I have done a search for women cave divers and their amazing acheivements. It's a treat because it means that you, personally, do not have do do an internet search for "cave diving" which pretty quickly turns up articles called, for instance, TWENTY FIVE HORRIBLE CAVE DIVING ACCIDENTS YOU HAVE TO READ ABOUT NOW.

I mean, you get a sense of the danger from this interview with Christine Grosart, who is here talking about Wookey Hole. If you are claustrophobic, I'd honestly advise you to delete this email now, go through to the kitchen and make a nice cup of tea. Fem Fri will be about something different next week:

When I returned through the penultimate sump, which leads back to the dry Chamber 24, I couldn’t get back through the hole in the boulders I had come through. I had 4 bottles on and the hole was a different shape on the way home. In zero visibility I had several attempts but just kept getting jammed. I sat and thought about it for a bit. I could return back to the ‘Lake of Gloom’- a large airbell between sumps - but by which time I would not have enough gas to make another attempt and would have a very, very long wait for help which may or may not come. Or I could take some bottles off which would leave me with less gas. Or I could just keep trying.

https://www.girlsthatscuba.com/christine-grosart-cave-diving-female

Christine Grosart has also made a short (25m) film about cave diving in Croatia, which is a fantastic place so lots to enjoy here (again, if you are not claustrophobic):

https://vimeo.com/374157702

Now here is Jill Heinerth, who has done some pretty extreme diving including under icebergs! It sounds beautiful and scary:

 Icebergs are constantly moving and morphing, calving and rolling. The dives were unpredictable and risky. On the first exploration of an iceberg cave, Paul and I cautiously entered a deep underwater crevasse and found a gaping fissure that extended out of sight, and sheer white walls dropped interminably in a narrow crack. We swam into the fracture a good distance and drifted down to the seafloor. As we hit 39 meters, we discovered that the berg was undercut and we could continue our swim below the mass. We found a dazzling world of colorful tunicates [marine invertebrates], sea stars and curious creatures.

https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/down-earth-underwater-cave-explorer-jill-heinerth

Have a lovely Friday, lovely people,

A xxx.