Jim Hanwell, Duncan price, Richard Witcombe, HB, 352pp
Profusely illustrated in colour and black & white (with many never before seen photographs), tell the stories of the Wookey Hole Divers, first hand, from the 1935 expedition led by Graham Balcombe using hard-hat diving gear to the present day work by modern cave divers using innovative mixed-gas rebreathers to dive deeper and further under the Mendip Hills. "Wookey Hole - 75 years of cave diving & exploration" is an ideal companion volume to the highly acclaimed "Swildon's Hole - 100 years of exploration"Since the Middle Ages, visitors from all over Britain and beyond have been drawn to the magnificent cave system at Wookey Hole in Somerset where the River Axe flows through a series of grand chambers before emerging at the head of a rocky ravine. For the last 75 years, ever increasing numbers of tourists have been joined by an adventurous band of cave divers whose aim has been to explore the subterranean Axe and follow the river ever deeper into the Mendip Hills towards the feeder swallets on the plateau above. This book chronicles the saga of exploration from the hard hat, lead booted pioneers of the 1930s through the post-War "frogman" era to the high-tech, deep divers of the present generation. A story of triumph and occasional tragedy, it is told by the divers themselves and those who knew them well