Trips & Reports

Faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff incompetance faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff faff, oh, and FAFF. It only took an hour an and a half to find a photo copier. Why is Wales always closed? Once we finally got into the cave after MORE FAFF with the lock, it was a good trip.

Yes, a bit of a faff, but we got to see more of Merthyl Tydful, which we seemed fated to do considering every road in Wales leads there. The lock into the cave almost defeated us but finally we were in. Didn't like the squeezing very much on the way down, am sure I almost didn't fit! On way back up my light fell off and went out just as I was half way up a waterfall... read more

Erm.... Faff!!!! Never seen Gary so annoyed before!!! Once we actually got into the cave, was fun! Shame we didn't actually get to the Lamb and Fox chamber in the end!

Faff factor = extreme!

Ogof Draenen – What a fantastic name! This was the trip that very nearly wasn’t. The greatest challenge lay above ground! We must pay credit to MFI and Carpet Right for their (little known) copying facilities, it was a mixture of ‘Treasure Hunt’ and ‘Challenge Anika’ but there was more to come... Finding the cave wasn’t easy but Gary’s SatNav came into its own and soon we arrived at what appeared to... read more

Definately going to spend a good amount of time in this cave in the future. Great fun!! Did I mention ducks are pleasant in a wetsuit?!

Altogether far too efficient for my liking, assuming we gloss over the fact that Andy had to return to the cottage, and I couldn't find my arse from my elbow (or Dragon from OFD, OFD from Dragon, and neither of the above from anywhere else in Wales). I feel I should apologise to Holly here, although I'm sure it was as much her shoddy navigation as my shabby memory.

Anyways, trip was as pleasant as you'd expect from a top-c.d. trip,... read more

Dave!!!!!!!
My navagation was fine I knew exactly where we were, only problem being that neither of us knew where OFD was!
Anyway twas a lovely tour of the brecon beacons nonetheless complete with dinosaurs!
OFD nice as always, not sufficient amounts of singing thou.

Next time remind me to bring a bucket and spade to dig out the exit.

Having to reverse due to the pile of gravel that builds up in front of your battery pack is not fun.

While everyone else says the exit was not that bad i was the largest person there by far.

i wonder if they'd let me take a pneumatic drill?

Yes, I know I cocked-up all our plans by getting lost. We set off to go down Centipede and ended up half way down Monastery before we realised that we were totaly in the wrong place! Never mind, we had to suffer the embarasment of meeting most of the others when we got back to the point we went wrong. I blame the blond! Despite that though, we still made it to the bottom ahead of everyone else to rigg... read more

I bought new shoes :o) !!!
Then I went caving - its hard to decide which was the most exciting - they were both good!

I went back up Monastery, as did Steve. Dom and James went up Dome derigging. Not sure Andy can claim to have almost got to the bottom as he didn't go down Valhalla :-) A very fun trip as always. I've now done all the routes so next time we need to do an exchange to Boxhead Pot.

Steve is a wuss if he thinks that was a grade 4 change.

It was snowing i think that counts as a level 4 by your definition if 5 is a blizzard by the gover scale. For instance ade graded a three when it was still light and it wasn't snowing therefore i feel perfectly justified in my rating (plus my battery pack got stuck under the duck and i got propperly soaked).

But yeah asside from that great fun trip. I was however followed by some kind of cave daemon that... read more

A great fun trip, especially as we (team Gary) didn't have to derig anything on the way back :-p though I suspect we shall pay for that on the next trip! Superb traverse just before the bottom, and some scary seems-terrifying-at-the-time-but-actually-good-fun unprotected traverses... good for boosting the confidence! The technical stuff was great, nice and varied, and as usual, I got strung up on the easiest pitch in the entire cave. Hrrmmpph. Really enjoyed the trip,... read more

Supurb trip. So nice to visit a relativly new cave. We actually met a team that were finishing off the bolting in the last pitch! Nice variation although, a bit of guess work on the rigging as no accurage rigging guide has been produced yet. Click on 'View Cave Details' above to see my description for this cave, good for future referance as there is no official rigging guide.

Twas a cold winters night when the five cavers mounted the moor the wind chilled them to them bones and they were feeling quite dejected. Then we found (with no searching around) aquamole pot. as gary rigged the entrance we were bullied by sheep who surrounded us and looked at us funny (i'm sure theyd've demanded our marsbars but sheep can't speak).

We were rescued from the sheep by three wondering cavers (Sheep never mess with grumpy... read more

I almost forgot about the demon sheep - they were soooo scary.
Yeah the cave was fun, except for the old (no fun) cavers who complained about my singing + then altered our rigging for us!

Above the bottom pitches there is a point where many a caver has obviously been left waiting a while. Clay can be found nearby, and there is a good rock on which to place models. I made a snail.

i found a cave in the dales my dad hasn't done! hurrah!!

Not really joking about the blizzard conditions either!

We Shall return (possibly with ropes) without the aid of ropes and srt kits this cave proved too much. started with a 10 m free climb down a vertical shaft (with scaffolding 1/3 of the way down) then a muddy crawl to a 4m free climb then a bit of a scramble then from the front i heard calls of "this is a bit extreme" and it was decided that it would be beter to attempt it with ropes.... read more

Really good fun cave :-) with a scary traverse pitch-trasverse-pitch one-rope wonder over an almost bottomless hole. Such a nice view from the bottom of the big pitch when we finally got there though. And completely exhausing to prussik up again. I am being a bit rubbish writing this report a month and a half after the trip, so can't remember anything else. Doh!!!

good cave tho would have been more fun if we hadn't had to wait at any point -very very wet and very very cold!

Superb trip! Just goes to show what a little forward planning can do! We managed to get all 10 tackle sacks packed the night before so managed to get away at a decent time. Team one (my team) doing the centre route set off half an hour early as we were rigging the common entrance, all the way to the common bottom. We met the second team on our way out of the bottom section then exited out of Adamsons... read more

All Hail Gary the god of organisation. Everything went well for a great trip easy trip up to the cave and asside from gary parking miles from where we did and forcing us to play on the large ammounts of ice which festoond the roadside for a bit we got changed in brilliant sunshine (warmest change yet). Found the cave with only a little searching and found it allready rigged and rearing to go. Decended and split... read more

Rigging Adamsons was a tad amusing, ran out of rope before I reached the top of the first climb. Then comes the 'amusing' ladder, three parts each about a metre long, held together by string (well, ok 5mm cord). How glad was I when I clipped into a bolt at the top of that. The rest was not bad, didn't like the look of the duck the group doing the BT route would have done.

we actually found the cave for once without 2 hours of wandering around in circles. it was a fun cave if a little short. would have been more hardcore if we had taken enough rope to do traverse at the end, but generally a fun trip

Enjoyable trip, but a lot shorter than the rigging guide makes it look! Everything went well up until the last traverse/pitch where either i didn't rigg it from the right place or the rope was shoter than it said cos it didn't reach the bottom! Never mind though, we could see it, close enough. We did go off down to the static sump instead though, so it wasn't all bad.

Once again the cavers of York graced the most wonderful place that is mud hall - a paradise of beauty and harmony in the middle of lots of rock. Slightly (ok very) upset that my Octopus had vanished but I made a landrover instead. It does look more like a splodge but a lot of love went into it all the same.
Dom's "rock of gibralter" (doorstop) survived the test of time though, obviously cavers appreciate his "art".
Nikki made an... read more

Always a supurb trip. Great cave with lots of variaty and challanging in many places for all. The whole group did really well. Bit of faff at the car with Steve managing to bring one size 13 wellie and one size 6 (how?) meant we had to go back to Bernies to hire him some. Took us a fair while to get to the bottom, not helped by two other groups in front of us. Coming out was super efficiant... read more

A supurb cave, and a really long trip (must have been underground for nearly 7 hours!) Thankfully the water level on the ducks wasn't too high and we managed to get through keeping upper body dry. Was fairly challenging, especially one of the early pitches where getting to the top of the rope meant hanging on the traverse line by cowstails (though no-one else had a problem with it... so perhaps it was just me) A little... read more

Great cave with loads of different pitches some of which are quite challenging (If you tried hard enough it would be possible to get strung up on four seperate ropes on the same pitch). The wellie was a simple mistake that anyone could have made... They were the same height ok.. well theres no excuse sorry guys. it would probably be a good idea next time to allow more time for callout as we were quite efficient... read more

Speed and efficiency saved the day and stopped us getting stuck behind the queues that must have inevitably formed. Seemed as though world & dog was down long churn. It appears that I need to put on more weight however, as I'm not fat enough to undo stuck crabs. Still, all out in time for soup at bernies. Then back to YSS for CHECC über drinking session. My head is still recovering... And do... read more

Lots of fun! Althought became very conscious of the fact all I had was a rope! BTW, I was lazy and only did Alum, and didn't exchange! Got very cold for my laziness!

Dom

And the moral of Dom's story is "thou wilt not be lazy on a caving trip or thou wilst feeleth the cold"
A nice trip, got to look at lots of pretty green scenery rather than just rock for a change! and although there were lots of people in longchurn they were all nice + let us push past them! Hurray for lovely cavers! The first exchange trip I have ever done which has actually worked - yay!
And Dave did... read more

Do not jam your Rack in a groove and then hang on it. It will break. Do not trust Gover to know the way. He is rubbish.

Unfortunately due to two lamp failures, we didn't get very far into these caves, and the majority of our time was exploratory up until then, which meant we had to wait in Ingleton Pub for over two hours til the Lancaster Hole people were done... over a nice pint :-) which ain't so bad! The first pitch down into the cave entrance hole (rigged from a tree) was good, and initailly quite scary, as being in broad daylight you... read more

Very very very very wet and cold!!! At the end of the tourist bit was a 20-30 metre 'swim' which was just about walkable if you are tall, but meant ice cold water up to the chin. Made swimming in the North Sea seem warm, and left me speechless, shivering, grumpy (sorry to everyone) and on the verge of turning back, for the first half of the downward journey. However, once I had warmed up and stopped... read more

This was a very fun trip!! It was quite awesome to see the nice pretty bits in the show cave (+ scare the tourists on the way back!) and after a southerscales weekend was nice to get clean again with a bit of a swim. + once past the swim I got warm again fairly quickly by stomping. And I led the way for quite a bit, all very exciting + adventurous. Very pretty cave, nice streamway + a random... read more

When wearing a wet suit it's warmer to stay in the water.

Don't wear wellies one size too big for you, you will NOT come out with both of them! And wear a wetsuit, its bloody cold!!!

High scummines levels as a result of the dead sheep...

Which was very recently dead and had obviously bounced when it hit the floor. Somewhat inefficient trip due to the presence of 6 Leeds cavers who were the reason for my scummyness vote of 5! SPOOOOOON GUARRRRRD!

The trip was cut a bit short cos we couldn't find it, but we did get a nice two hour tour of the local hills. Once there, it became obvious that it was going to be wet! Tatham Wife gave me my first test of a pitch where getting to the pitch edge meant wedging myself over a rather large drop (with cowstails in of course)... terrifying, and thank you to Beth for encouraging me onwards. However,... read more

Don't go caving with a hangover, and i mean REALLY BAD hangover, its not so fun! especially since gary lies and tells you the next hill is the top...for about 5 hills! then we had fun wandering in the mist for a while, good for clearing my head! fun once we found it, must go back and finish it sometime when feeling less ill :)

Fantastic trip, it was like one giant water slide. Slightly scary at first as thought we might get washed away, but it was so fast you could just lie there and let it carry you down the cave. It would be great if lonchurn was aways that exiting

For future reference. The cave is not JUST past the gate as the guidebook makes up but in fact about a mile past the gate (+ very obviously next to the path)
We OF COURSE found the cave no trouble, I just write this for future cavers....