Anyone else been there?

Cantankerous surveyors is a side series off "Luck of the draw", LOTD was found by someone i dig with, really the classic lucky find. Oxford Uni had just broken through into Dollimore series (finding second largest passage in britain in the process), so in goes my mate, sees a fault line in the roof and follows it up into an alcove, well the alcove turned into 1km of big and incredibly decorated passage, lucky bugger! Cantankerous was found by Chelsea SS surveyors some time later.

Went on Saturday, what a trip! The highlight being the "Geryon" formation, see a piccy here,

http://milos2.zoo.ox.ac.uk/~oucc/draenen/pictures/cdw14-2-98/Geryon1.jpg

On the way passing the almost as good Medusas children,

http://home.freeuk.net/smk/caving/draenen/pictures/MEDC2.JPG

Despite having possibly the best formations (best helictites anyway) hardly anyone is visiting the far reaches of Draenen. Other than a few Oxford Uni trips the extremities have barely been visitied. There is a 'Geryon Log Book', the number of parties visiting over the past several is in single figures!

Possibly the 8 hours minimum (thats if you know the way) to get there and back puts people off? Took us ten and a half hours, but we were hardly moving fast and one of the party was ill on the way out.

Good old Draenen!

Went up to the Luck Of The Draw last weekend as far as the 'Lightbulb'.

It is a cracking trip with evidence of very few cavers passing through it. Nice and new just how I like them.


Simon.

Went to CSS just after they found it on a survey trip. Incredibly delicate place. However as well as being a long trip (testing just how bored you can get of boulders.....), to be able to get there requires finding it. Draenen is a total maze and it'd take a good few trips to learn your way as far in as that. Or take a tame native.....

Simon said:

Went up to the Luck Of The Draw last weekend as far as the 'Lightbulb'.

It is a cracking trip with evidence of very few cavers passing through it. Nice and new just how I like them.


Simon.

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Was that on Saturday? I was in Draenen then and we talked to a group who said some of them had gone to check out Medusas children etc.

Yup, that was the other part of our group (if there were 4 of them) if it was only two cavers - nice to have met you Huw!

I hear on that day a group was finding the Cairn Junction/Tea Junction area challenging on the navigational front, and ended up going down the Wonderbra bypass three times! It can be disorientating round there though.

The written description found at:

http://home.freeuk.net/smk/caving/draenen/draenen.htm

has been really well written and it has guided us on the log round trip and also up to Medusas Children with out too much fuss. A few hours with a highlighter pen and the laminator, is well worth the effort to help keep track of the bits you want to read.

Simon.

Simon said:

I hear on that day a group was finding the Cairn Junction/Tea Junction area challenging on the navigational front, and ended up going down the Wonderbra bypass three times! It can be disorientating round there though.

Click to expand...

Yup, t'is true

We did the round trip 'backwards' which was quite interesting, lots of people in Draenen that day, good to see a bit of traffic there.