Exclusive BCA newsletter preview: new entrance to Ogof Draenen

David Rose

Active member
New entrance to Ogof Draenen

No cave in the country has attracted quite so much controversy over access and management as Ogof Draenen, which at roughly 70km is the longest system in Wales, with potential for significant further enlargement. The Pwll Du Cave Management Group (PDCMG), an access control body run by cavers, was set up in 1994 to manage cave access with the consent of the then landowner, the Coal Authority. This included members of Oxford University Cave Club, an institution with which your editor has long been associated.

Some of the cave?s explorers, including the OUCC contingent, have tried for many years to maintain a ?single entrance? policy, in order to preserve the adventurous nature of trips far into Draenen. Others, equally vehemently, disagree. The Nunnery, a second Ogof Draenen entrance, was discovered in the late 1990s, and capped by the PDCMG.  Shortly afterwards, the land containing both the original entrance and the Nunnery was sold to Pwll Du Conservation Ltd.  PDCMG then contracted an access agreement to the original entrance only with this new landowner.

In 2009, the focus for what has become an ugly conflict among cavers shifted to another new entrance, Drws Cefn (Welsh for ?back door?). This small cave was first discovered during the Coal Authority era, but that year it was connected to the main system via a series of crawls. Using Drws can cut an hour or more travel from the original entrance, so reducing the time needed for pushing trips in the cave?s far reaches and making the eastern part of the system more amenable to shorter visits, such as local cavers might wish to conduct for midweek digging projects.

Unlike the original Draenen entrance, Drws Cefn happens to lie on CROW Act access land. It has been open and unlocked since 2010 ? so rendering the single entrance policy, for the time being, null and void.

In 2015, the landowning company submitted a bat conservation licence application to Natural Resources Wales to block Drws Cefn permanently with a large concrete and steel structure in the entrance shaft. This was supported by the PDCMG, but many Welsh cavers resented the idea, not least because of the principle of open CROW Act access. The ensuing row was bitter. Eventually, NRW 'withdrew' the licence application for the barrier on the grounds that the cave bats were not at risk from cavers. NRW indicated that a 'development' class of licence would be needed here instead, since there was no bat conservation issue to address.

Last year, PDCMG developed a second Drws Cefn closure plan. This would have involved a fixed round scaffold pole across the narrow entrance crawl. NRW objected to this on the grounds that vandalism by cavers opposed to closing Drws might have a negative impact on the bats. Drws stayed open.

Three very recent developments suggest this long saga may be nearing some kind of resolution. The first is that the PDCMG has come up with yet another proposal to block Drws Cefn, this time with an external grille over the entrance shaft that would stop cavers, but not bats.  Its design detail has yet to be submitted to NRW for comment or approval. However, the prospects of this being enacted may have been reduced by the second development - changes of personnel on the PDCMG committee. Some of its members have stood down and, in informal conversations with your correspondent, one or two of their replacements have suggested they may not be so strongly in favour of the single entrance policy as their predecessors were. Moreover, some of the Welsh cavers most strongly opposed to blocking Drws have indicated that if attempts were made to make the grille a reality, they would take legal action. They say they believe the law would be strongly on their side.

It is to be hoped that this will not be necessary: cavers fighting other cavers, the landowner or NRW in the courts would not be a pretty sight. Complicating matters still further, there is potential for even more entrances, because Ogof Draenen comes very close to the surface in a number of other places.

In any event, the third recent development may well render all this redundant. A little over a year ago, at least the fourth Draenen entrance was discovered by climbing avens inside the cave. Kept secret at the time, news of this has gradually filtered into the public domain.  Also on CROW Access Land, Twll Du ('black hole' in Welsh) joins the main cave some way further into the mountain than Drws Cefn does. I went down the new entrance recently and it seemed to me to be the best and safest Draenen entrance yet found. Unlike the original, it is not flood prone, and does not rely on extensive shoring through a potentially dangerous boulder choke. Unlike Drws Cefn, it does not involve an unpleasant, tight crawl. It consists of a series of short, spacious drops rigged with fixed ladders, followed by a roped traverse around the lip of a pitch and then a comfortable free-hanging descent on rope of about 12 metres. This does require visitors to be competent in SRT.

How the landowner and the reconstituted PDCMG decide to handle this situation remains to be seen. But it does look like a potential game-changer.

Here are three photos taken near Twll Du ? yours truly on the traverse, one of the fixed ladders, and the SRT pitch. They were taken by Ed Waters and Martyn Farr.

wl


wl


wl

 

David Rose

Active member
You can read about this and other sparkling stories in the new BCA newsletter - which will be out within a day or so. Please send me your info for future editions!
 
What a stupid, sorry situation. This highlights the very very worst of pseudo-caving nonsense.

It's not about caving, it's about power and control. This management bunch should all have their trousers pulled down and given the wooden spoon.
 

andrewmcleod

Well-known member
Easy solution: concrete up the original entrance from the inside, leaving the PDCMG in charge of a single entrance cave of say 50m length. Then set up the OPDCMG ('Other Pwll Du Cave Management Group') to explore the 'newly discovered' multiple-entrance 'Ogof Braenen'... :p
 

Pitlamp

Well-known member
David Rose said:
You can read about this and other sparkling stories in the new BCA newsletter - which will be out within a day or so. Please send me your info for future editions!

Could you perhaps give some guidance about what sort of content you want? This may be helpful to the wider caving community.

I'd try to support the BCA Newsletter with submissions but if the dominant theme is going to be the sort of topic above, I suspect I'd not be the only member who wouldn't get past reading the contents list.

Maybe we could have a bit more emphasis on caving?
 

David Rose

Active member
I don't want to compete with Descent, Darkness Below, and this forum - though I hope readers will use the forum to debate the issues in the newsletter.  The job of the newsletter is primarily to focus on BCA-related issues, of which access is an important element. So it's probably not the place for exciting articles about new exploration - much as I enjoy reading (and when I get the chance, writing) them.

This is of course my first effort. But the items I've covered (with contributions from others) besides Draenen are:

The recent BCA ballot
Upcoming events - the Kendal festival and the RGS weekend
CO2 in caves
CHECC
The CROW campaign in general
Andy Eavis to retire as chair; plus two articles by him
Ghar Parau grants
The two new books about Dales caves (the guidebook and the Caves and Karst volume)
The next BCA AGM

I hope that's not too boring for you, Pitlamp... But I would welcome your contributions on any subject.
 

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
Pitlamp said:
I'd try to support the BCA Newsletter with submissions but if the dominant theme is going to be the sort of topic above, I suspect I'd not be the only member who wouldn't get past reading the contents list.

Maybe we could have a bit more emphasis on caving?

I really don't understand this comment.  The [first] announcement of a new entrance to one of the countries longest caves isn't caving?  I accept that it is accompanied by a short balanced explanation of the background to the problems at this cave system but surely that is welcome too and puts the announcement in context.  Normally the BCA newsletter focuses on the administration of caving, matters arising, officer reports etc.  To me this is a welcome move towards the sort of broader content we expected to read in Caves & Caving magazine when that was being produced.
 

RobinGriffiths

Well-known member
Who is the landowner of the new entrance? Is it different from the Draenen owner, and what's the permission status from the new entrance owner?

If it's a different landowner, and access permission was granted then it's game, set and match.
 

Rhys

Moderator
RobinGriffiths said:
Who is the landowner of the new entrance? Is it different from the Draenen owner, and what's the permission status from the new entrance owner?

If it's a different landowner, and access permission was granted then it's game, set and match.

Precisely. Unfortunately, I fear it is the same landowner. In which case, little changes and we're back at square one.
 

rhychydwr1

Active member
Why no mention of he 4th entrance?  Also my dig might be a 5th entrance so long as its hits part of the known cave.
 

David Rose

Active member
Although it is true that the same landowner owns the land above Twll Du as Drws Cefn, the Nunnery and the original Draenen entrance, I don't think it is the case that we are back at square one.

First, as my article indicates, the changes at PDCMG mean that it may not support any move by the landowner to try to close it. The new chair, Les Williams, has told me and others that he agrees that the CROW Act applies to caving. This position, set out in the legal opinion by my sister, Dinah Rose QC, was formally endorsed by the BCA council at its October 2017 meeting. In the same edition of the newsletter, chair Andy Eavis points to a compromise between what have been conflicting views in British caving: that we should take very seriously the need for conservation as well as access and use s.26 of the CROW Act to this end. So with the large ballot majority in favour of the constitutional changes, I think the caving world can move to a unified, pro-CROW position. Twll Du is, of course, on CROW access land.

It is also of some significance that it was discovered from inside the cave. Unlike Drws Cefn, it's not a pre-existing small cave that had to be artificially enlarged to connect it to the Draenen system, and then enlarged again to make it passable by ordinary mortals. In a conversation with the landowner some months ago, he told me that one of his objections to Drws was that cavers had dug it from the outside without his permission. He likened this to people 'digging up your back garden without asking'. 

As my article states, it is very much to be hoped that any legal action can be avoided. But if it did come to it, it may be that cavers would be on stronger ground. As I also wrote, we will have to see how NRW and the landowner respond to this new development.
 

Rhys

Moderator
Thanks for expanding on why you think things may be different with this entrance. A refreshingly balanced article, by the way.
 
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