Croesor exchange with Rhosydd Through Trip - 18th Apr 2009

Saturday April 18th 2009

Members present: Andrew Gilmartin,  Imogen Shepherd,  Kevin Francis,  Lauren Ellis,  Nicola Gover,  Richard Gover,  Steve Gilbert

This trip started early on the Friday night. We decided to save some time by travelling down and wild camping on a cliff by a Gwrych Castle. The walk up was fairly eventful, our chosen route had been blocked off and we hiked up a very steep incline that claimed several of Gover's cans of beer. Disaster was avoided however as most were retrieved despite them heading as fast as they could back down the hill! We got to our camping spot fairly late, but still had time for a decent fire! We agreed an early start and after a cold, broken night's sleep we packed up and admired the view of the coast over a cup of tea. We walked down the hill back to the cars quite quickly (stopping once to play in an old tower.)

We breakfasted in a small takeaway in Abergele. They claimed it was the busiest they'd ever been when four of us rolled in to join the other 3 random people queuing, so we pointed out that we were only the first half of the group! The food was good, cheap and well needed. After eating we headed to our next campsite, where we were to base ourselves for the remainder of the weekend. It was gloriously sunny as we pitched our tents next to a lake, but the lure of mine meant we had to be quick. Soon we were back in cars and heading to Croesor.

Bad luck struck again as the car park in the village was full (understandably, it was a gorgeous day so walkers were out in droves) so we headed to a tea shop where we asked to park. Despite buying a round of drinks we weren't allowed to. Boo! Gover and Lauren headed off in search of a parking spot whilst we supped tea in the sun. A little later the drivers had returned and we followed them to our changing spot. We put some gear on and packed the tackle sacks. We seemed to have rather a lot of stuff! I opted to wear only my neofleece and wellies (hehe spell check tried to change that to willies!) up the hill, carrying everything else - a move I did not regret in the baking heat.

We stopped several times on the walk up to rehydrate and to admire the views. It was a fantastic place. We posed for photos at the top before kitting up properly and heading in. The entrance adit threatened to be wet almost immediately, but thankfully the water only lapped around the toe of my boot. We stuck our head into a flooded old chamber with a zip line, but this wasn't the way on. Next we investigated an old office, fairly cool. We looked down a flooded incline and tried not to lead on the rusty railings preventing us from plummeting down. Looking back down the tunnel we had walked down we could just see shafts of light penetrating the small dark entrance. A traverse line led upwards, so I faffed putting on my SRT kit (I didn't realise I'd need it so quickly!) and round the corner was the first pitch. Easy going into a chamber that required absolute respect and silence. Every click of my gear as I cautiously walked across it felt like it was stupendously loud. We quickly reached the next pitch where unfortunately the rope protectors were in poor shape. They held up for the first couple of people, but Andy tried to patch them up. As I went down it was apparent the bodging clearly hadn't worked and I headed down as fast as I could.

Suddenly - zip wire. Cool! Andy and I were last, I headed over before him. Whoosh and then crash. I might have knocked in some of the bank as I landed. The lake we crossed was amazingly clear and blue, and you could see lots of debris at the bottom. Andy headed over faster than I had done. The pulley we had used looked interesting afterwards, and had made some fun grinding sounds. The next obstacle was defeated by using our megaboat. It was only a small lake and once across the boat had to be rammed into the biggest tacklesack as we didn't need it for a while, but it was not going to go back down to original size.

Stomping along tramlines was easy before we got to the next set of obstacles (which I will let the others describe in more detail), first a traverse over a bridge, secondly a zipwire, then finally a traverse leading onto a zipwire (the Bridge of Death) It was all ok but I tried not to think too much about what was below and what was above. I think I found it easier because I wasn't going first! Final obstacle was another lake (Chamber of Horrors) which required an abseil down an unknotted rope into our trusty boat. The trickiest part of this proved to be deflating the boat at the end! We prussicked up into the smaller passages that were Rhosydd. A quick bimble, a scramble up a slope and we could see daylight. Gover tried to find the number 9 adit, but the way on looked decidedly collapsed. We headed up to a chamber with 3 sources of light and we headed for the biggest! Another scramble and we were out basking in glorious sunlight again.

Unfortunately we were still in the quarry and had to improvise to get out. Gover scaled a steep slope, Nikki and I tried to follow. whilst we were still climbing Gover found a better place to hang a rope down so reluctantly we climbed down - in the process I dropped my tackle sack and sent it crashing and bounding to the very bottom of the quarry. Doh! Andy retrieved it for me and we all prussicked out of the quarry. Route finding in sunshine was easy, the scenery splendid and we soon found ourselves back at the Croesor entrance (best part of the walk was a slide down a grassy bank to Croesor, and also the bog negotiation). We posed for a few victory photos as the sun began to set and walked back down the hill to change in twilight (ok maybe streetlight!)

Once back at the campsite we had a big barbeque but no fire. Jacket potatoes in the embers for the win! I slept well that night. In the morning we woke and opened our tent doors to the glorious view of the glacial valley, the warm sun glittering on the surface of the still lake and a dishevelled Steve making us tea. Breakfast was munched in a nearby town, and we headed back to the lake where we paddled and played on the boat as well as on the previously unmentioned super secret Croesor weapon. Much sunbathing later we decided it was time for pancakes so we packed up and drove to the Dutch Pancake House. Sweet. Imogen still managed to eat twice as many as Lauren, but this time more of us had savoury pancakes to go with the sweet ones. After eating we tried to spot otters before our next stop.

The beach! Not really sure where we went to the beach, but there was ice cream, kites, sand castles and rock throwing jenga. All in fantastic amounts of sun. The result was that on the drive home I developed lobster red legs. Grr.

It was fantastic weekend, Croesor-Rhosydd is a cracking trip, but I don't think I have any great desire to go back and do the mine again any time soon, especially if the weather isn't as pleasant! With 7 of us we did the trip in about 4 hours, a smaller team would have been faster, but I doubt as fun! We had no real problems but it was easy to see why people could really struggle in there, or that the mine could throw up new obstacles. One of the reasons we took in 5(!) tacklesacks was that we had lots of backup gear in case we had a problem, but we generally didn't use much of what we brought at all.