Easter in
We arrived at Penwy1lt
(S.W.C.C. Headquarters) at around 9 p.m. & bagged ourselves some bunks.
Mike Taylor was most impressed with the. set up at
The following day was Good Friday, & what a good
Friday it was. Glorious sunshine, very different to last
year. After breakfast, Keith, Mark Woodhouse & another troglodyte
(or is it Troll-odite) Paul Seddon
arrived. They had that keen underground look about them (even Keith) & were
not to be put off with thoughts of sunbathing. It was decided to do an action
replay trip of the previous year i.e. OFD2 top entrance to OFD1 through trip.
After a pleasant walk we reached Top Entrance & accompanied by 4 cavers
from S.W.C.C. made our way casually down Salubrious Passage towards Maypole
Inlet. On arrival there, I seemed to have picked the hardest route to climb
down as I was passed by the welsh party who had descended by a different route.
So much for your fearless South Wales Leader.
The Main Stream was not as
high as I had expected after the recent heavy rains but high enough to provide
some good sport. Most of the pots proved great fun. Having crossed a deep one,
I neatly side stepped another hidden by white water, but somehow I forgot to
tell Mark who was close behind. I turned to see him disappear up to his neck in
the water. He was not amused. After leaving the streamway at the Confluence we
continued on to Piccadilly, as we approached this large chamber Mark gave a cry
of anguish followed by several curses. My lights gone out, he moaned. This was
greeted with the usual Red Rose sympathy as Mark is renowned for his reliable
light.(See recent article on Vesper Pot.) There were
several comments regarding “duff gear”, which Mark again seemed to take in a
serious vein. We carried on to the Divers Pitch which leads into the connection
between 0FD I & 2, and came to an abrupt halt at the base of the climb as
another party were already ascending
it. This group turned out to be the Furness Underground Group with Alan Ball in
charge (as usual). I asked him if he had a permit, but he didn’t seem too
impressed. After this exchange of pleasantries, we had another wait while a
second party descended.
After this delay we carried on at a leisurely pace, mainly due to Marks inability to keep up. You would think by now he would be used to caving without a light. The OFD I streamway was finally reached & a rapid exit made into a lovely sunny afternoon.
SATURDAY.
An early start was intended but the best laid plans usually go astray, and even
though Pete arrived on time we were held up by the campers cooking breakfast. I
had arranged a trip in Ogof-Craig-A-Ffynon meeting at
Whitewalls, the Chelsea Hut, at II a.m. but ….
We finally arrived at the
cave to find some well known northern caving figures armed with a crowbar &
an axe, examining the recently destroyed gate on the cave. Mike Starr our
leader from
The cave is located high up on the north side of the Clydach
Gorge, to the east of Brynmawr. It lies in an old
quarry, near some lime kilns just down the road from the Rock & Fountain
Inn. The entrance passage is an
excavated crawl to a small boulder filled chamber, which leads via a tight
bedding plane duck to a larger well decorated chamber. Keith as might be
expected had trouble in the duck, but we talked him through. We continued in a
large well decorated passage to the First Boulder Choke, of which there are
five. This is short but loose and you ascend into an even larger passage. The
roof eventually lowers to a bedding plane canal section which is liable to
flood. Most of the stream appears from a sump on the left at this point,
apparently in dry weather this becomes a duck which leads to about I500ft.of
streamway. We continued on past this to the 2nd Boulder Choke. At
the bottom of this were two short climbs, normally laddered. This proved an
interesting free climb which I made a pigs ear of,
much to the amusement of the others. At the top of the pitches a rift lead
straight into the massive second choke. This appears to have been dug and
blasted along most of its length. It was hard work going through here. It must
have been a long & arduous dig.
Once out of the choke a hands & knees crawl followed a taped route through a boulder pile end broke out into a passage of enormous size, containing fine formations & several dome shaped chambers. We all stood stupefied in one chamber, looking up into a large passage in the roof nearly 100 feet above us. Large stalactites hung from the ceiling while the floor, some 40 feet wide was covered in large active travertine dams.
The final chamber in this section “Hall of the Mountain King” is even larger than this but leads immediately into No.3 Boulder Choke, This is short through a tight bedding plane to about 800 feet of crawling. This time we couldn’t talk Keith through. I think he thought he had done the cave as he had been to the pretties, but in fact he was only half way in. He returned to the surface with the well known northern cavers.
At the end of the crawl a
long phreatic tunnel leads to a complex breakdown area, parts of which looked
very unhealthy. Mike Starr carried on to do some
banging in a streamway below the main passage, while we carried on towards the
4th.
SUNDAY.
Yet another sunny day & yet another late start. It
was 11:30a.m. by the time we got up to Dan-yr-0gof.
Keith & Mark staggered towards the show cave under the weight of camera
gear and we all tried to look hard in front of the tourists. We passed quickly
through the show cave & down into the Lakes. These were fairly high with
about 18 inches of airspace in
Without Keith we were
quickly through the Long Crawl and. into DY02, Pete with my assistance,
attempted to take pictures of Flabbergasm Chasm and
Cloud Chamber, but the “duff gear” syndrome
struck again & most of Petes
flashguns failed to work and he was limited to close-up shots. (Hard Luck, Pete. Ed.) (Hee-Hee). At the
MONDAY.
Another fine day - Mark & Keith set of for home. Mike went to O.F.D. 2 with
a friend of mine who ran him round the dry passages in a wet suit. I went up to
the dig at the back of the
Finally, I would just like
to thank everyone for helping me and my duff gearout of ,Craig-A-Ffynon.
A.
Hall