Trip Report
England was wet, Wales was wetter.
The entire club (8 of us) gathered at Leigh Delamere for breakfast - 2 went off for a trip in Aggie leaving 6 of us for our planned trip to Draenen and (due to weather) an attempt at just finding the Round Trip connection.
The Entrance series was the wettest I have ever seen with a significant amount of water cascading down the main ‘scaffolded’ shaft. The bottom crawl also had a significant amount of water a few inches deep, made spotting the line for the ‘squeeze’ through the boulders a little awkward but OK and yes, wet.
We (I) stuck a ladder down the 4m climb and we arrived at Cairn Junction, wet. The eager cavers at the front then struck off ignoring the passage for Wonderbra and Carpet crawl. Eventually caught up with them and we backtracked to Carpet crawl – a new bit of passage to us as we had always used Wonderbra in the past.
White Arch passage was uneventful but the water levels in the bits of stream you can see were much higher than normal.
We made steady progress and find ourselves at the bottom of the fixed ladder down Balcony
Pitch into the Arms Park about two hours after our entry.
Managed to use the wrong exit from the Arms Park (not quite left enough) but eventually realized our mistake as the passage closed down and memories sprang back declaring this was the wrong passage. Went back and then down Players Tunnel and made our way to St David’s Hall – even we couldn’t get this bit wrong.
Exited SDH into Squirrel Rifts and followed the obvious muddy route till we reached the sort of 2nd traverse – here either senility or Alzheimer’s or something came into effect as none of us could remember what looked like an awkward traverse and we managed to convince ourselves we were in the wrong place. One excuse would be it was 8 months since last being there. Anyway we backtracked again trying all reasonable sized passages and eventually made our way back to St David’s Hall where we knew exactly where we were (again).
So now we were depressed, this was the Clubs third attempt at finding/doing the Round trip and we had not got as far as either of the previous trips! Time was running out and we would be pushing last orders (for food) at the pub we were booked in, handily close in the Forest of Dean, not.
Still we made the correct decision to have another go – this time the dodgy traverse was traversed even by a wuss like me. Still don’t remember it but the return was very easy just stand on one side and lean over to the other wall.
The chamber with Wooden Spoon (handily taped off and labeled – ‘round trip connection is behind you’) was reached – again, we knew exactly where we were!
The rift was entered and we made our way along to what seems to be its conclusion – either a traverse/climb up to what we thought was the ‘pitch’ – or beneath this traverse is a tight rift – is this the start of the climbs down?
Armed with some descriptions from Wooden Spoon – “down a hole in the floor after about 20m and along a tight passage to Haggis Basher No 1” and “This quickly leads to a double climb down on the right at the bottom of which is the narrow crawl which pops out into Haggis Basher Number One”
So we returned back to the chamber with Wooden Spoon – went back down the rift estimating 20m – there there was an obvious hole in the floor with a wedged wobbly boulder – it was tight looking and about 6 - 8 foot deep – three of our group thought this was worth a look and 2 of the descriptions were;
1) "Descended tight, six foot rectangular shaft in floor (carefully avoiding wedged boulder) and crawled off forward into ever-narrowing rift. Gave up, turned around and got nowhere that way either. Pulled back out of said shaft by the arms by caring colleagues..."
2) “Yurgh!!!”
The person with the latter wordy description when asked, mentioned a tight rift with crystals on the wall that looked intact – therefore not a normally used passage.
He did expand on it on his return to work as follows;
“We thought we had found the illusive (sic) round trip connection.
About 20/25m on, to the left of the entrance to Wooden Spoon, the passage forks. In the entrance to the left fork, in the floor, is a vertical passage, partially blocked by a large cube of stone, this is not totally secure. This passage is very tight and can be entered either feet or head first. I entered feet first with the boulder on my right hand side. When your feet are about 6ft down the passage opens up into a small chamber which you can turn into. There is only one way on. This passage is narrow and drops in the general direction of (Agent Blorenge?) Further on the passage narrows to the point where you need to climb higher and continue on your side, the sides walls of the passage are lined with small outcroppings of what look like selenite crystals and do not look as though they have been disturbed. It looked as though the passage opened up further on but getting there would take a long time and there was no obvious connection to larger passage. I turned back (with difficulty) at this point and returned to the small chamber which appeared to be made from deposited fine particles - the chamber did not appear to be stable when viewed from here. When returning back up to the main passage the easiest (only sensible) way is to be physically lifted.
Don't think I'll be volunteering for such an enticing hole in the ground in the near future -- someone else's turn !!! "
With all three guys hoisted out of the hole we looked around a bit further – there seemed to be a further hole to the right (looking from on the way in) but this was not pushed.
OK So where is the real Round Trip connection – if it can be described, graphically, in words of one syllable for obviously simple cavers it would be appreciated. Even better with photographs!
The exit was partly educational – how we managed to lose (temporarily) one of our group from the middle of the party was worrying. We had three guys at the front moving quickly and two at the back moving a bit slower, poor old Rich in the middle managed to get out of contact and took a wrong turn in Squirrel Rifts. It was almost amusing when the last of the group arrived at SDH to be asked where is Rich? – he’s with you lot - no he isn’t he’s meant to be with you! Stop mucking about!
Anyway he was fairly quickly found and a lesson learnt.
The exit was fairly uneventful, if slow – the ‘exit’ series not quite as wet as before but still refreshing if that is the right term. Nice and dark and windy when we exited, about 8 hours after entering, with a clear sky, until we got back to the cars when the heavens opened – wet again!!
So in closing, any further assistance in helping us to find this elusive connection would be gratefully appreciated