Ogof Ffynnon Ddu 2 (Cwm Dwr) - 22nd Mar 2010

Monday March 22nd 2010

Members present: Alastair Gott,  Catherine Moody,  Max Spicer,  Steven Spall

Words of wisdom from Gover the night before (paraphrased): "You won't make it through the boulder choke first time. I can guarantee it. I've spent an hour there before trying to find the way"

Yes. We got a little bit lost round the boulder choke. Thought we'd made it through first time (ha ha Rich - in a respectable 10 minutes too) as where we popped out had lots of footprints - clearly people had been here before so we must be right! Hooray!

Off we stomped, looking for the passages the survey said were off to the left and right. There were none. I said to Max "Hang on. I'm a bit concerned that we seem to be going upstream. A minute or so later, whilst discussing the fact that this all looked a bit wrong, we reached a crossroad. Yep, we'd been here before!! Turn round, back to the boulder choke. Take two. (See cave description of how to get through!!)

Out the other (correct) side of the boulder choke was some confusion too. We went down a side passage on the right which should have connected to where we wanted to be. However there were lots more passages in real life than on the survey and we ended up following it to a dead end. Back we went, try again. We went down the next passage instead, and somehow ended up in exactly the same place! We were about to try the next passage along (the correct one) when Chad's group appeared and pointed us in the right direction.

From here it was plain sailing to get to Picadilly. We were fast approaching turn around time but as we were so close to the Confluence we decided to go for a quick stomp to find it. Flood Bypass was well and truly flooded; knee deep in places. The arch at the confluence looked very scary and I would not have liked to be in the main streamway that day.

Curiosity satisfied, we headed out, reaching in the entrance again in an hour and a half - much more respectable that the 3 hours it took on the way in!