Trips & Reports

I must preface this report by saying that I am not discouraging anyone from doing this trip. I will, however, be naming just about every time that I cried during this trip because I thoroughly did NOT enjoy it. I am writing this report to prepare Daren Cilau’s next victims, as I was supremely underprepared for the journey to Hard Rock Cafe. The first time I heard about Daren Cilau was about a year ago from (I think) Elliot, who had... read more

i started thinking about daren cilau just over a year ago, and since then ive been plotting to get myself in. there had been talk of daren trips this wales week however complications and faff led to final preparations and plans not being organised till the week before (classic). we settled on an overnight trip in the first weekend with elliot, elly, sqwill, and me; the others who wanted to do daren made other plans for the summer. i borrowed... read more

Tyler lost a banana, had to turn around.

I wrote this instead of doing my formatives, sorry Simon. - After a delightful day of descending Brewery Shaft, exploring the Coffin Level Mines below, enjoying a lovely Yellow Thai curry, playing on the local park, bruising our hips squeezing through a tyre and imbibing in part 2 of an awesome cheeseboard… the thrill of descending the shaft lured us in once again. Will and I had been excitedly plotting our fourth descent of the weekend since we had emerged from our third... read more

Catchy opening line here. The weekend began the way all the best weekends do - up at 7:30 for a 9am materials/mechanics lab - truly the best way to build anticipation. Once I had fled the excitement of the innovation centre I was free to prepare for the Shaft. I walked home with a brief cameo from that funny Alfred guy and packed in time for Sqwill's scheduled 12:53 arrival. I thought all about how I had probably locked my door... read more

I'd first heard about JH as a huge connecting trip with Titan, so hearing about it as its own trip - let alone one I could do this Saturday - was pretty intimidating. A lot of anticipation built up over the coming few days, I think people (read: Ben) got pretty tired of hearing I was doing it :)) Sunrise, parabellum - the morning of the trip, my alarm tried its hardest to sabotage me but I was up and packed... read more

This was a very exciting trip for a number of reasons: a) none of us had been before, b) I’d heard amazing stories about the formations and c) this was my first time rigging. I think the other three will agree there was a look of absolute terror in my eyes when Rosie suggested that I tried rigging, but I’m pretty glad that she talked me into it, because I had a great time and it wasn’t nearly as scary... read more

The infamous midnight slugword! A couple of failed attempts across the last year brought us here, sitting at the NPC table, eating cheese, dreaming of being in slugword, right now. It’was about 11:20pm on Friday night when Abbie and I finally decided to just go. After failing to convince anyone else to join us, we began to confuse everyone getting/giving/spectating the hair cutting that was happening in the SRT room, by packing our caving gear. Unbeknownst to me, Abbie had... read more

The concept of a midnight cave is just so much more whimsical than a daytime cave… I absolutely love Slugworld, it has one of the few squeezes that I actually enjoy, the thrill of descending Lancs and all the pretties that your heart could desire. It began with a cheeseboard and a dream… despite the cosiness of the NPC, all we could could think about was how awesome it would be to be in a cave, like right then. It was... read more