Ogof Daren Cilau - 15 Mar 2008
Saturday March 15th 2008
Members present: Gary Douthwaite, John Singleton, Matt Ewles, Matthijs Bouwman, Thomas Blakey
Report by John Singleton
It was grim weather, cold, with rain in the air. And having not caved for a few months launching straight into Daren was going to be a 'hit the ground running' sort of beginning to the week.
After getting changed Matt E started walking in one direction, but Gary, running on Ade's instuctions called him back for another direction. After a walk up the hill side and Gary incurring injury from a tree, we arrived at the cave entrance. Only after a sort way in we were met with a corkscrew upward climb and a large chamber. Daren? Er no! WRONG CAVE!! Everyone reverse!
Thus ensued a search for the right Daren. We went back to the car and refuelled ourselves, collected the gloves, chocolate etc some had forgotten and headed off, yes you've guessed it, in the Direction Matt started with. After some searching we found the entrance at the foot of the cliff just as described.
We proceeded to chamber 3 ( out of 8 ) through the entrance crawl but had to turn back because it was not looking like we'd have time to make it to the time machine, which was the main objective. I enjoyed the mix of sideways crawling and like all things caving, wasn't quite as difficult as general opinion made out. However we did only make it to chamber 3 (through the vice) and it might have been a different story after making it to the time machine and back then to be faced with the entrance crawl after a long tiring trip.
The change at the car was wet and breezy but to top it all I discovered that I was minus my PDA and after a search discovered it by a tree where I had taken a leak prior to getting into my caving gear some 5 hours earlier! Wet.. yes! Broken.... No! Just a bit soggy. It still works :)
I'm going to try again next year...
