Last night I met up with Malcolm (who used to be on this forum) and we went up to have a look at the "caves" that I had previously asked about on the hill behind Cefn Onn park.
After a fairly energetic walk up the hill we headed to the gated entrance to see what the deal was. The gate did have a padlock on it, but not only was this padlock not attached to anything, the hole underneath the gate was more than large enough to get through. The shaft was straight and about 75-80meters long, with a number of drill holes, so obviously man made, ending when you arrive at a curved brick wall, obviously another ventilation shaft for the railway. We could hear a significant (small waterfall size!) amount of water through a hole in the shaft wall, but couldn't see down to where it came from.
The tunnel had some great little formations in it...a lot of little (1-2 inch) stalactites and the beginnings of draperies and very small rim stone like formations. It was all quite unexpected and exciting.
The little hole that I had crawled into as a lad was less interesting. We moved a boulder and dropped into it (tight and steep, much much harder to get out than to get in!) and there was probably about 7-8meters of standing room passage that abruptly ended. We wondered if the railway workers had started to dig here before stopping for some reason. There were a couple of poop's and a dead bird indicating it might have been used by foxes at some point, although it didn't smell of animal at all. I said to Malcolm last night, ?I've probably been thinking about the cave on and off for about 14 years and I've finally "explored" it...?
We wondered around the area looking to see if we could find anything else of interest but to no avail, so we headed back for a quick pint in the Ty Mawr Arms before heading our separate ways.
So we didn?t discover miles of passage, or anything that had the potential to reveal a few more meters of passage, but it was interesting and fun none the less.
After a fairly energetic walk up the hill we headed to the gated entrance to see what the deal was. The gate did have a padlock on it, but not only was this padlock not attached to anything, the hole underneath the gate was more than large enough to get through. The shaft was straight and about 75-80meters long, with a number of drill holes, so obviously man made, ending when you arrive at a curved brick wall, obviously another ventilation shaft for the railway. We could hear a significant (small waterfall size!) amount of water through a hole in the shaft wall, but couldn't see down to where it came from.
The tunnel had some great little formations in it...a lot of little (1-2 inch) stalactites and the beginnings of draperies and very small rim stone like formations. It was all quite unexpected and exciting.
The little hole that I had crawled into as a lad was less interesting. We moved a boulder and dropped into it (tight and steep, much much harder to get out than to get in!) and there was probably about 7-8meters of standing room passage that abruptly ended. We wondered if the railway workers had started to dig here before stopping for some reason. There were a couple of poop's and a dead bird indicating it might have been used by foxes at some point, although it didn't smell of animal at all. I said to Malcolm last night, ?I've probably been thinking about the cave on and off for about 14 years and I've finally "explored" it...?
We wondered around the area looking to see if we could find anything else of interest but to no avail, so we headed back for a quick pint in the Ty Mawr Arms before heading our separate ways.
So we didn?t discover miles of passage, or anything that had the potential to reveal a few more meters of passage, but it was interesting and fun none the less.
