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It is probably high time I got writing again before I fade into obscurity and folklore, and although work has been full on lately I would like to point out to the doubting masses that I have been doing plenty of trips and simply failing to write about them. So here is my latest remedy for the aforementioned malaise.
Wessex Cave Club South Wales Meet; Aka Caving secretary strikes back.
Day one;
A festival of caves in the Neath valley.
Little Neath River Cave;
I like water, it is safe to assume I am up for sumps, ducks and anything that has a high chance of H20 with a low probability of death. Therefore this was a trip to get excited about, a series of small yet interesting caves that were situated within a wonderful gorge complete with a fantastic streamway and picturesque surroundings, so it was with no small dismay that I stuck my head in the first cave entrance only to find myself gagging on diesel fumes. The smell was fairly overpowering and upon discussion we concluded that none of us fancied a trip into somewhere that smelled like the arse end of an artic.
Nevermind then, although it is a great shame to have to pass up the largest system in this valley (and I am told it is extremely large) we had plenty of other caves in need of exploring.
Bridge cave;
Cast of Thousands.
This one was much more fragrant and now we were spurred on by real oxygen we shot down the various grotty little crawls and thrutches, and just as various (nameless) elements began to start moaning about false descriptions and lack of space, we reached the streamway which was roaring on through the cave.
It eventually opened out and became quite spacious until we were stood up and in a large chamber that reminded me somewhat of GB (although much smaller of course), I thrutched my way down the streamway only to find myself in a foaming sump, while the others remained on the right side of common sense and waited much further back.
I was intrigued to find a phone cable going through the sump, those bloody telecoms people get everywhere.
On the way back I chose to follow the streamway by a more direct route, which involved thrutching my way along various parts of it and nearly getting washed back down it once or twice.
A fantastic little cave with a surprising good streamway.
Cwm Pwll-Y-Rhyd;
Ian Timney, Les, Big Stu, Peter "Jack" Jenkins, Cookie.
After following the gorge downstream for some distance we came across a drop off into a deep pool of water with great walls of limestone on either side of us, at some time it must have been a chamber that had collapsed and it was easy to see the remnants of the roof interjecting the blue sky above, and also littering the floor below. The most impressive sight however was the debris that had been deposited in every nook and cranny along the cave mouth, barrels and rubbish, whole trees, perhaps even an obligatory shopping trolley or two. All had been unceremoniously dumped here by the kind of force of nature I have no intention of meeting any time soon.
Whilst my peers tried to pressure me into wading into the cack filled pool I managed to decline (just say no) on the grounds of watching too many horror movies centred around suspicious barrels in aqueous environments. Therefore it remained for Cookie and Les to ride high on the Testosterone stakes by pushing a squalid little sandy crawl to nowhere in particular (although I am sure they will tell you it was immense and beautiful within).
Ian, Stu and myself decided to take some photos by the silent pool, it was very peaceful and serene, a reason perhaps why I will never be able to stomach city life.
After a while Les soon appeared and with the silence broken normality resumed.
White Lady Cave
Ian Timney, Les, Big Stu, Peter "Jack" Jenkins, Cookie.
People often tell me that caving is about trust, having faith in not only your team but also yourself and overcoming obstacles with faith in your fellow party members, I wonder why it is then, that the kind of cavers I often seem to cave with can't be trusted to even the most basic degree and neither will they trust me in anything I say either. Therefore when I entered a rather deep and nasty looking duck like some human litmus paper, with everyone waiting far behind to see if I sunk, died or got attacked by an unknown lifeform, I was surprised to see a great deal of pretties and some fantastic passageway. So imagine then, how surprised I was when upon telling the others about it, they flatly refused to believe me, clearly this was a case of people judging me by their own despicably poor standards. A case springs to mind where I was duped into leaving a dry neo fleece at the hut in favour or a wet fleece, on the *good* advice of a fellow caver. Another case would be one of the countless times I have been sent off down squalid crawls with the assurance that "it goes". Therefore I am used to being duped, and clearly everyone thought I was paying them back. This wasn't so and thus what ensued was desperate pleading and reasoning on my part in an effort to get them to see the pretties beyond.
After a while Stu finally saw reason and waded through (the duck was chest deep), only to be just as amazed as I was and then equally (if not more so) annoyed when no-one believed him either.
It was a shameful state of affairs, with Les and Cookie as the main culprits and we were at a complete impasse, the more we tried to persuade them, the less they believed us, even when Stu took photos and waded back through to show them, he was met with scornful remarks such as "they are from another cave"... shocking.
So both of us made the unanimous decision to leave the suspicious bastards behind and explore further in, after a while it became clear that there were two ways into this cave and soon we were greeted with a rather sorry sight of Cookie and Les desperately trying not to get wet as they tip toed inch by painful inch along the streamway.
Seizing my chance I made a dive at Cookie and was sure to get him extremely wet (critical two no less), mission accomplished, Les was a bit quicker off the mark and scaled a wall before I could get to him.
This debacle had gone on for nearly 30 minutes before people finally grudgingly admitted we weren't having them on, Big Stu was incredulous of the whole thing, what a saga....
No-one died.
Town Drain
Ian Timney, Les, Big Stu, Peter "Jack" Jenkins, Cookie.
After the shameful episode in White Lady, we made out way to Town Drain which was a highly unique little cave that wound down narrow passageways and crawls for some distance, with a small streamway trickling on down, following Les and leaving the others to explore another route, we headed further in until the clean walls turned to a more mud coated variety until eventually we arrived at a great big bank of backed up mud that smelled pretty bad, a small crawl revealed an end, that could possibly be dug out and might even meet up with Little Neath.
We headed back a deviated the route slightly until we were out in the sun once again.
As Les and myself were far ahead of the others we decided to carry on down the gorge for some distance, Les stayed to the edges and kept his feet dry while I opted for dive bombing every available pool that I could.
Eventually we came to a rather deep and dark looking bit of the gorge and Les decided that he was going to climb up and over, after slipping my way all over the place I decided to swim for it (what's the worst that can happen), and ended up facing an even longer and even darker looking stretch of pool. I waited for Les to climb down further on with the assurance that if something went wrong he would do his damnedest to find someone to save me (someone who doesn't mind getting wet) and then made a mad swim for it.
You can probably guess it ended well by the fact that I am writing this, and so after continuing our walk to what seemed like the end of the gorge, we began to head back.
On the way back I decided to follow Les and climb up the side of the gorge and walk on the ridge over the top, after some distance we could hear the others in the gorge below and while Les stopped a while to yell things at them, I attempted to find a way down.
Using a kind of logic that is genetically inherent in lemmings, I reasoned that a prudent way to get down was to employ some saplings as a kind of fireman's pole. My plan was a little shortsighted as the saplings only covered about ten of the fifty vertical feet required to reach the gorge floor.
Therefore I genuinely found myself swinging like an ape from a tree branch with nothing below me but time (a very short time) and space (a lot of it), in this compromising position I noticed three things.
1: Big Stu whilst looking up at me hanging precariously over certain death felt it wise to point out that my light was still on, not once, not twice but three bloody times.
2: Les talks very loudly.
3: There was a sheep staring at me from a ledge about 20 feet away.
All things considered I took it pretty well and made a desperate swing to land cat like on a very steeply sloping slab of mossy rock, working my way down about thirty feet of adrenaline coated limestone, I reached the last five foot only to hear a deluge of advice about how to safely reach the floor. Better late than never I guess.
Thoughts of rescuing the sheep were quickly abandoned as it looked quite content as far as sheep go and also it stank of wild garlic.
As we headed back it transpired that Peter was nowhere to be seen and after some seconds of frantic searching, we realised he was no longer with us, employing a shocking level of distrust that I had picked up only earlier that day, I surmised that he had clearly abandoned us and gone back to the cars. No sooner had I stated this and I was lambasted with scorn, and comments such as "Peter wouldn't do such a thing", or "it's not like Peter to do that", Therefore half the party headed upstream to see if he had "accidentally" made his way back to the car, Whilst Stu and I grabbed some rope and raced back downstream, convinced we were going to find a bobbing corpse, slowly rolling around in a scenic Welsh streamway.
Lucky for Peter we never found him because out of all the party (and I speak only for myself here) he would have been subjected to the most botched and technically incapable rescue attempt ever to befall Wales or in fact the UK as a whole.
It wasn't long before Les bellowed out that Peter had been found alive and well at the cars, and so we trudged back expecting some sign or shame or remorse, no sign ever came!.
Peter redeemed himself by buying everyone a pint back in the pub however..... actually he didn't. Nevermind then!
Fantastic day!
Day Two
OFD, Waterfall series, Flood escape route
Group one; Les, Simon, Ian Timney and Dick (surname eludes me, sorry)
Group two; Cookie, Biff and myself
This is a trip I always look forward to although with perhaps a few reservations, it does have some teeth after all.
Finest cave in Britain and all that, so we entered OFD 1 and made our way over Loopways which is a fine little bit of jumping and were soon heading along the streamway and over the mantraps. I intentionally gauged the depth of the water using my body, only to find out that it was quite deep indeed, certain doubters surmised I fell but were most certainly wrong.
We pressed onwards up the stream and took a side passage towards the rocking boulder where we bumped into the other group and doubled back on ourselves to start the traverses into the Waterfall series, most of it was on wire and was quite enjoyable, fairly soon we were into another part of OFD I had never before seen and we began to explore every available side passage and aven.
An interesting little climb led further up into other passageways and a half arsed attempt to push a rifty looking passage was thwarted when Cookie revealed it was too small even for him, most of us weren't overly disappointed and reversed our way back to some jubilation.
Soon we headed back down the traverses and after meeting the fabled OFD resurvey team on the way and Les having a mandatory chin wag with them, we spent some time jumping on the rocking boulder whilst (unbeknownst to us until ten minutes later) an approaching party mistook the noise for a flood pulse and began running for their lives the other way (I kid you not).
This was quite funny and the amusement continued with Simon and Biff jumping over a rift some twenty foot above my head, like something out of a Nike advert. Staying on the side of caution I climbed up the rift (I am sure someone will remind me of the name) and we set off for the flood escape route, before it all ended in tears.
Some fun optional jumps were had and also a bit of rolling through crawls, eventually we arrived above the streamway on a wire traverse which I clipped in to, just to be sure. I confess to being a bit nervous about it, can't say I am used to this height thing just yet. It was soon over though and I actually found it to be quite fun.
There was a parting of ways as some of the group went along Airy Fairy in an attempt to find the Eagles nest, Cookie, Ian and myself opted for the dugout and soon found ourselves in familiar passageway. On the way out I stopped for a roll in the streamway which was refreshing and we found ourselves in the Ancient Briton in next to no time at all.
Fantastic trip, thanks Les and Cookie for leading.
Day Three
LLygad Llwchwr (Pronounced "locker"...apparently)
Attending; Carmen, Les, Cookie and a brief appearance from Biff and 1xSon.
Out of all the caves we were going to do, this one was bound to be the best, it was wet with free divable sumps, pools to dive bomb in and a great streamway.. I couldn't wait.
Whilst the entrance was a little bit annoying and there was quite a high amount of crawling, we were soon sat atop a streamway, no-one had brought a ladder and so a rope was used, Les opted to use a classic belay technique but failed to impart the wisdom of how he did it on me, Cookie opted to hitch it and Carmen opted to hand over hand it (she is well hard after all). Being clueless, beltless and generally useless I could employ neither of these tactics and so sat atop like a vegetable while the others stomped off into glorious streamway.
Soon they had returned via a different route and we made our way to chamber two, where an epic saga began.
Based on hearsay and gems such as "I've seen plenty of people do it before" it was surmised that I could in fact take a running jump off a high ledge and dive bomb a rather deep and dark looking sump pool.
Being nine tenths of stupid I climbed up the slippery mud ledge and like in the Colosseum of old times, everyone gathered round waiting for me to die, Biff promised me a pint if I jumped and made his son watch, clearly as a demonstration of what you should never do in a cave.
Being worried of some horrible undertow that might suck me into a mile long sump I opted for a rope just in case then after a lot of dancing around and trying not to slip I dive bombed it like a pro, only to sink into the depths and emerge spluttering like a moron.
After this roaring success we carried on to the next chamber which had the optional sump, the route down looked slightly overhanging and there was some degree of faffinf involved with how best to rig it. In the end I borrowed Cookie's belt and hitched my way down. I managed to convince Cookie that we should freedive the sump and oddly enough he agreed. So Les and Carmen went back up the climb and agreed to meet us the other side of the sump, how foolish we were.
It soon became apparent that the approach to the sump was going to be unpleasant, and soon we were way over our heads in cold murky water, clutching on to the sides and pulling ourselves along on a flimsy piece of green rope that had been left there by persons unknown.
At one point the rope turned a corner and had become snagged under a rock which resulted in Cookie pulling himself underwater, slightly shaken by this he emerged coughing and spluttering to make a hasty retreat to a nearby outcrop of rocks, where we sat and thought things through.
This was becoming a little bit on an epic as the water was less than inviting and going back wasn't really an option as the rope had been derigged behind us.
A little bit of traversing and we found where the rope resumed once more and we were able to walk our way gingerly across the treacherous floor at which point we could see the end of the water filled passage and a mixture of debris and rubbish floating around in what must be the sump.
Pulling ourselves across to it, the water was far too deep to stand in and so we awkwardly perched on a small jutting outcrop while we formulated a plan, the plan became a lot easier when I felt Les pulling the dive rope from the other side, and so Cookie made the dive first, using his head to batter the wall of the cave in a technique I have yet learn and shortly after I dived on through also.
I was quite glad to be out of there as it was a little bit concerning to dive a sump you don't know and in fact have trouble even locating and getting to, awesome stuff.
After all this serious stuff we exited the cave and I pretended to sail down the weir outside like Superman.
After a quick stop at the castle we went our separate ways, all in all a fantastic weekend with the Wessex in Wales, many thanks to Les for organising it, it was a blast!.
Wessex Cave Club South Wales Meet; Aka Caving secretary strikes back.
Day one;
A festival of caves in the Neath valley.
Little Neath River Cave;
I like water, it is safe to assume I am up for sumps, ducks and anything that has a high chance of H20 with a low probability of death. Therefore this was a trip to get excited about, a series of small yet interesting caves that were situated within a wonderful gorge complete with a fantastic streamway and picturesque surroundings, so it was with no small dismay that I stuck my head in the first cave entrance only to find myself gagging on diesel fumes. The smell was fairly overpowering and upon discussion we concluded that none of us fancied a trip into somewhere that smelled like the arse end of an artic.
Nevermind then, although it is a great shame to have to pass up the largest system in this valley (and I am told it is extremely large) we had plenty of other caves in need of exploring.
Bridge cave;
Cast of Thousands.
This one was much more fragrant and now we were spurred on by real oxygen we shot down the various grotty little crawls and thrutches, and just as various (nameless) elements began to start moaning about false descriptions and lack of space, we reached the streamway which was roaring on through the cave.
It eventually opened out and became quite spacious until we were stood up and in a large chamber that reminded me somewhat of GB (although much smaller of course), I thrutched my way down the streamway only to find myself in a foaming sump, while the others remained on the right side of common sense and waited much further back.
I was intrigued to find a phone cable going through the sump, those bloody telecoms people get everywhere.
On the way back I chose to follow the streamway by a more direct route, which involved thrutching my way along various parts of it and nearly getting washed back down it once or twice.
A fantastic little cave with a surprising good streamway.
Cwm Pwll-Y-Rhyd;
Ian Timney, Les, Big Stu, Peter "Jack" Jenkins, Cookie.
After following the gorge downstream for some distance we came across a drop off into a deep pool of water with great walls of limestone on either side of us, at some time it must have been a chamber that had collapsed and it was easy to see the remnants of the roof interjecting the blue sky above, and also littering the floor below. The most impressive sight however was the debris that had been deposited in every nook and cranny along the cave mouth, barrels and rubbish, whole trees, perhaps even an obligatory shopping trolley or two. All had been unceremoniously dumped here by the kind of force of nature I have no intention of meeting any time soon.
Whilst my peers tried to pressure me into wading into the cack filled pool I managed to decline (just say no) on the grounds of watching too many horror movies centred around suspicious barrels in aqueous environments. Therefore it remained for Cookie and Les to ride high on the Testosterone stakes by pushing a squalid little sandy crawl to nowhere in particular (although I am sure they will tell you it was immense and beautiful within).
Ian, Stu and myself decided to take some photos by the silent pool, it was very peaceful and serene, a reason perhaps why I will never be able to stomach city life.
After a while Les soon appeared and with the silence broken normality resumed.
White Lady Cave
Ian Timney, Les, Big Stu, Peter "Jack" Jenkins, Cookie.
People often tell me that caving is about trust, having faith in not only your team but also yourself and overcoming obstacles with faith in your fellow party members, I wonder why it is then, that the kind of cavers I often seem to cave with can't be trusted to even the most basic degree and neither will they trust me in anything I say either. Therefore when I entered a rather deep and nasty looking duck like some human litmus paper, with everyone waiting far behind to see if I sunk, died or got attacked by an unknown lifeform, I was surprised to see a great deal of pretties and some fantastic passageway. So imagine then, how surprised I was when upon telling the others about it, they flatly refused to believe me, clearly this was a case of people judging me by their own despicably poor standards. A case springs to mind where I was duped into leaving a dry neo fleece at the hut in favour or a wet fleece, on the *good* advice of a fellow caver. Another case would be one of the countless times I have been sent off down squalid crawls with the assurance that "it goes". Therefore I am used to being duped, and clearly everyone thought I was paying them back. This wasn't so and thus what ensued was desperate pleading and reasoning on my part in an effort to get them to see the pretties beyond.
After a while Stu finally saw reason and waded through (the duck was chest deep), only to be just as amazed as I was and then equally (if not more so) annoyed when no-one believed him either.
It was a shameful state of affairs, with Les and Cookie as the main culprits and we were at a complete impasse, the more we tried to persuade them, the less they believed us, even when Stu took photos and waded back through to show them, he was met with scornful remarks such as "they are from another cave"... shocking.
So both of us made the unanimous decision to leave the suspicious bastards behind and explore further in, after a while it became clear that there were two ways into this cave and soon we were greeted with a rather sorry sight of Cookie and Les desperately trying not to get wet as they tip toed inch by painful inch along the streamway.
Seizing my chance I made a dive at Cookie and was sure to get him extremely wet (critical two no less), mission accomplished, Les was a bit quicker off the mark and scaled a wall before I could get to him.
This debacle had gone on for nearly 30 minutes before people finally grudgingly admitted we weren't having them on, Big Stu was incredulous of the whole thing, what a saga....
No-one died.
Town Drain
Ian Timney, Les, Big Stu, Peter "Jack" Jenkins, Cookie.
After the shameful episode in White Lady, we made out way to Town Drain which was a highly unique little cave that wound down narrow passageways and crawls for some distance, with a small streamway trickling on down, following Les and leaving the others to explore another route, we headed further in until the clean walls turned to a more mud coated variety until eventually we arrived at a great big bank of backed up mud that smelled pretty bad, a small crawl revealed an end, that could possibly be dug out and might even meet up with Little Neath.
We headed back a deviated the route slightly until we were out in the sun once again.
As Les and myself were far ahead of the others we decided to carry on down the gorge for some distance, Les stayed to the edges and kept his feet dry while I opted for dive bombing every available pool that I could.
Eventually we came to a rather deep and dark looking bit of the gorge and Les decided that he was going to climb up and over, after slipping my way all over the place I decided to swim for it (what's the worst that can happen), and ended up facing an even longer and even darker looking stretch of pool. I waited for Les to climb down further on with the assurance that if something went wrong he would do his damnedest to find someone to save me (someone who doesn't mind getting wet) and then made a mad swim for it.
You can probably guess it ended well by the fact that I am writing this, and so after continuing our walk to what seemed like the end of the gorge, we began to head back.
On the way back I decided to follow Les and climb up the side of the gorge and walk on the ridge over the top, after some distance we could hear the others in the gorge below and while Les stopped a while to yell things at them, I attempted to find a way down.
Using a kind of logic that is genetically inherent in lemmings, I reasoned that a prudent way to get down was to employ some saplings as a kind of fireman's pole. My plan was a little shortsighted as the saplings only covered about ten of the fifty vertical feet required to reach the gorge floor.
Therefore I genuinely found myself swinging like an ape from a tree branch with nothing below me but time (a very short time) and space (a lot of it), in this compromising position I noticed three things.
1: Big Stu whilst looking up at me hanging precariously over certain death felt it wise to point out that my light was still on, not once, not twice but three bloody times.
2: Les talks very loudly.
3: There was a sheep staring at me from a ledge about 20 feet away.
All things considered I took it pretty well and made a desperate swing to land cat like on a very steeply sloping slab of mossy rock, working my way down about thirty feet of adrenaline coated limestone, I reached the last five foot only to hear a deluge of advice about how to safely reach the floor. Better late than never I guess.
Thoughts of rescuing the sheep were quickly abandoned as it looked quite content as far as sheep go and also it stank of wild garlic.
As we headed back it transpired that Peter was nowhere to be seen and after some seconds of frantic searching, we realised he was no longer with us, employing a shocking level of distrust that I had picked up only earlier that day, I surmised that he had clearly abandoned us and gone back to the cars. No sooner had I stated this and I was lambasted with scorn, and comments such as "Peter wouldn't do such a thing", or "it's not like Peter to do that", Therefore half the party headed upstream to see if he had "accidentally" made his way back to the car, Whilst Stu and I grabbed some rope and raced back downstream, convinced we were going to find a bobbing corpse, slowly rolling around in a scenic Welsh streamway.
Lucky for Peter we never found him because out of all the party (and I speak only for myself here) he would have been subjected to the most botched and technically incapable rescue attempt ever to befall Wales or in fact the UK as a whole.
It wasn't long before Les bellowed out that Peter had been found alive and well at the cars, and so we trudged back expecting some sign or shame or remorse, no sign ever came!.
Peter redeemed himself by buying everyone a pint back in the pub however..... actually he didn't. Nevermind then!
Fantastic day!
Day Two
OFD, Waterfall series, Flood escape route
Group one; Les, Simon, Ian Timney and Dick (surname eludes me, sorry)
Group two; Cookie, Biff and myself
This is a trip I always look forward to although with perhaps a few reservations, it does have some teeth after all.
Finest cave in Britain and all that, so we entered OFD 1 and made our way over Loopways which is a fine little bit of jumping and were soon heading along the streamway and over the mantraps. I intentionally gauged the depth of the water using my body, only to find out that it was quite deep indeed, certain doubters surmised I fell but were most certainly wrong.
We pressed onwards up the stream and took a side passage towards the rocking boulder where we bumped into the other group and doubled back on ourselves to start the traverses into the Waterfall series, most of it was on wire and was quite enjoyable, fairly soon we were into another part of OFD I had never before seen and we began to explore every available side passage and aven.
An interesting little climb led further up into other passageways and a half arsed attempt to push a rifty looking passage was thwarted when Cookie revealed it was too small even for him, most of us weren't overly disappointed and reversed our way back to some jubilation.
Soon we headed back down the traverses and after meeting the fabled OFD resurvey team on the way and Les having a mandatory chin wag with them, we spent some time jumping on the rocking boulder whilst (unbeknownst to us until ten minutes later) an approaching party mistook the noise for a flood pulse and began running for their lives the other way (I kid you not).
This was quite funny and the amusement continued with Simon and Biff jumping over a rift some twenty foot above my head, like something out of a Nike advert. Staying on the side of caution I climbed up the rift (I am sure someone will remind me of the name) and we set off for the flood escape route, before it all ended in tears.
Some fun optional jumps were had and also a bit of rolling through crawls, eventually we arrived above the streamway on a wire traverse which I clipped in to, just to be sure. I confess to being a bit nervous about it, can't say I am used to this height thing just yet. It was soon over though and I actually found it to be quite fun.
There was a parting of ways as some of the group went along Airy Fairy in an attempt to find the Eagles nest, Cookie, Ian and myself opted for the dugout and soon found ourselves in familiar passageway. On the way out I stopped for a roll in the streamway which was refreshing and we found ourselves in the Ancient Briton in next to no time at all.
Fantastic trip, thanks Les and Cookie for leading.
Day Three
LLygad Llwchwr (Pronounced "locker"...apparently)
Attending; Carmen, Les, Cookie and a brief appearance from Biff and 1xSon.
Out of all the caves we were going to do, this one was bound to be the best, it was wet with free divable sumps, pools to dive bomb in and a great streamway.. I couldn't wait.
Whilst the entrance was a little bit annoying and there was quite a high amount of crawling, we were soon sat atop a streamway, no-one had brought a ladder and so a rope was used, Les opted to use a classic belay technique but failed to impart the wisdom of how he did it on me, Cookie opted to hitch it and Carmen opted to hand over hand it (she is well hard after all). Being clueless, beltless and generally useless I could employ neither of these tactics and so sat atop like a vegetable while the others stomped off into glorious streamway.
Soon they had returned via a different route and we made our way to chamber two, where an epic saga began.
Based on hearsay and gems such as "I've seen plenty of people do it before" it was surmised that I could in fact take a running jump off a high ledge and dive bomb a rather deep and dark looking sump pool.
Being nine tenths of stupid I climbed up the slippery mud ledge and like in the Colosseum of old times, everyone gathered round waiting for me to die, Biff promised me a pint if I jumped and made his son watch, clearly as a demonstration of what you should never do in a cave.
Being worried of some horrible undertow that might suck me into a mile long sump I opted for a rope just in case then after a lot of dancing around and trying not to slip I dive bombed it like a pro, only to sink into the depths and emerge spluttering like a moron.
After this roaring success we carried on to the next chamber which had the optional sump, the route down looked slightly overhanging and there was some degree of faffinf involved with how best to rig it. In the end I borrowed Cookie's belt and hitched my way down. I managed to convince Cookie that we should freedive the sump and oddly enough he agreed. So Les and Carmen went back up the climb and agreed to meet us the other side of the sump, how foolish we were.
It soon became apparent that the approach to the sump was going to be unpleasant, and soon we were way over our heads in cold murky water, clutching on to the sides and pulling ourselves along on a flimsy piece of green rope that had been left there by persons unknown.
At one point the rope turned a corner and had become snagged under a rock which resulted in Cookie pulling himself underwater, slightly shaken by this he emerged coughing and spluttering to make a hasty retreat to a nearby outcrop of rocks, where we sat and thought things through.
This was becoming a little bit on an epic as the water was less than inviting and going back wasn't really an option as the rope had been derigged behind us.
A little bit of traversing and we found where the rope resumed once more and we were able to walk our way gingerly across the treacherous floor at which point we could see the end of the water filled passage and a mixture of debris and rubbish floating around in what must be the sump.
Pulling ourselves across to it, the water was far too deep to stand in and so we awkwardly perched on a small jutting outcrop while we formulated a plan, the plan became a lot easier when I felt Les pulling the dive rope from the other side, and so Cookie made the dive first, using his head to batter the wall of the cave in a technique I have yet learn and shortly after I dived on through also.
I was quite glad to be out of there as it was a little bit concerning to dive a sump you don't know and in fact have trouble even locating and getting to, awesome stuff.
After all this serious stuff we exited the cave and I pretended to sail down the weir outside like Superman.
After a quick stop at the castle we went our separate ways, all in all a fantastic weekend with the Wessex in Wales, many thanks to Les for organising it, it was a blast!.
