Ogof Ffynnon Ddu 1 Making a caving horror film and then round trip

Wednesday March 21st 2012

Members present: Phillip Mcdermott,  Sophie Hentschel,  Thomas Chatterjee

Having hatched evil plans for a trashy caving horror film with Phil, Tom, Julia and Alyssa, we decided to put the plans into practice on Wednesday and chose to film in OFD1. Julia and Alyssa didn't feel like doing it in the end, but Phil, Tom and Echo were motivated. So we shot our scenes within a few minutes; my tripping over my own feet whilst trying to hold the camera and about three more torches made the scenes look more... authentic. Chasing up after Tom over the Toast Rack was quite tricky and I landed face first in one of the pools aka toast racks (seriously Welsh cavers, why TOAST RACKS?!). Brilliant shot! Echo then wanted to leave and go back to the hut, so we brought her to the exit and made sure that she was alright. Phil and Tom wanted to do the round trip, and we set off. Although being the leader I thought that delegating was a good idea and opportunity for the yound recruits to learn new skills, so that I kept asking them to find the way on for us. Which they did really well! They can now pick their way through any boulder choke reading signs of wear by cavers. Tom was a little bit sceptical about doing the bolt traverse, but then seemed to really like it. In any case, when he turned around the final corner of the traverse he was grinning from one ear to the other. Very enjoyable trip with two clever young cavers :D