Agen Allwedd - Priory Road Exploration
- Thread starter marsrat
- Start date
marsrat
Active member
06/12/24 - 08/12/24: Avalanche Aven & Arrakis->Broadside Breakthrough
Broadside to Arrakis has now been connected, and a closed loop formed which will be used to further validate the survey.
The connection was completed by Dave Kinzett and Paul Stacey on 06/12/24 with further help from David Sutton on previous trips.
The connection was first passed by David Kinzett via the Arrakis side via a very tight squeeze dubbed the, "The Spice Grinder".
The connection is passable, but very tight - so bear this in mind. I am quite small if you know me, and I struggled with it when trying to haul a scaffolding bar through. Only really useful if you need to haul scaffolding into broadside.
Above: The dig from the broadside side.
Above: Paul 'Atreides' in the Spice Grinder.
Above: Dinner for Paul Stacey and Dave Kinzett
Above: The dig from the arrakis side
Above: No idea, I'm just reposting lol.
Avalanche Aven continues to be dug, with 2m progress being made. Digging was done by Alex Stacey, Paul Stacey, David Kinzett, Alex Randall, Mike Green and Gary Jones.
Alex Randall is now part of the merry monks
Broadside to Arrakis has now been connected, and a closed loop formed which will be used to further validate the survey.
The connection was completed by Dave Kinzett and Paul Stacey on 06/12/24 with further help from David Sutton on previous trips.
The connection was first passed by David Kinzett via the Arrakis side via a very tight squeeze dubbed the, "The Spice Grinder".
The connection is passable, but very tight - so bear this in mind. I am quite small if you know me, and I struggled with it when trying to haul a scaffolding bar through. Only really useful if you need to haul scaffolding into broadside.
Above: The dig from the broadside side.
Above: Paul 'Atreides' in the Spice Grinder.
Above: Dinner for Paul Stacey and Dave Kinzett
Above: No idea, I'm just reposting lol.
Avalanche Aven continues to be dug, with 2m progress being made. Digging was done by Alex Stacey, Paul Stacey, David Kinzett, Alex Randall, Mike Green and Gary Jones.
Alex Randall is now part of the merry monks
Jedexertus
New member
If anyone does go down they are going to be very disappointed lol but if anyone does feel free to take some water bottles from the streamway to camp for us please 👍
Jedexertus
New member
I didn't do the survey but it most definitely is yes 👍
Moonrat
New member
Yes, it’s the bellows, I was thinking also of adding the impressive pipe works as well. The problem as always is adding detail can sometimes obscure the cave itself. Less is sometimes more…
> Odd that Willerup just stopped.
Hi guys,
One of the Willerups here. So excited to read about your activities.
We had our own forum running back then on our website. It was indeed pretty active and provided a good platform for our explorations. I have tried a few years to resurrect the information from the outdated forum but unfortunately with no luck. I will try again and try harder. The trip report part of our documentation still lives at: https://willerup.com/oydc/
And indeed in our team we got into digging alongside our main climbing and fell running passions. It was primarily the initial sporty challenge of Daren that got us hooked and then the meeting of John Stevens, Arthur and all the other amazing people from White Walls and the caving community.
I hope live the day the breakthrough happens.
Yoor!
Mathias
Is archive.org any help? https://web.archive.org/web/20060201231331/http://willerup.com/caving/
Yeah I wish it was. But it didn't/doesn't scrape a forum which is in the php-format that we used back then. Mind you all our trip reports are intact (as per the link above), but all the forum talk is lost - which is a shame because there was a lot of good reporting there and more people chipping in (some still active on this forum obviously). But thanks for the tip/attempt.
I will dream of Daren tonight.
Jedexertus
New member
Really cool to look through your photos and see the digs and different areas the way they were, i will read through the trip reports aswell, mega work and achievements you guys did down there hopefully we continue to make progress and make the connection 🙏 aswell as discovering more cave, using some of your original tools / trays that are still down there 😎
Moonrat
New member
Yep, I keep telling everyone... remember we're all standing on the shoulders of Giants!!
Without your incredible efforts much of what we're now doing just wouldn't have been possible. Reading your logs over the years had got me constantly thinking "all we need is the right team" there's stuff there to be done .... shame I had to wait for my son to be born and grow up to be a young man before we could begin! Needless to say, sometimes as I haul my weary body up and down Southern Stream with a heavy tackle bag I think I might have waited too long. I still remember doing that trip with you, John & Arthur I think all those years ago.
In time (hopefully not too soon) we'll be handing the baton to the next group of cavers... and on it goes.
Hope you're all well
