Stuart France
Active member
Andy Farrant said:
I do believe PDCMG's Geology Officer has not attended any meeting or sent his apologies or provided any report since 2015. That is long before the Twll Du saga. And this forum is not an appropriate place for any Chelsea members to launch ad hominem attacks on other club members or to suggest that particular Chelsea members are the direct cause of any downturn. Let's have no more of that kind of thing here please.
Plenty of realistic compromises have been offered for Ogof Draenen, incuding the one put by the late Nig Rogers in 2009 who suggested Drws Cefn should be abandoned or closed in favour of the Nunnery being turned into an official entrance. That was voted down unanimously but for Nig's club vote. Most recently, Cambrian offered to pay for a gate and its installation at Twll Du and that idea was rejected as well.
As to controlling access, Drws Cefn was connected to Ogof Draenen in the summer of 2009 and has been gateless since the following summer, so the discovery of a connection is ten years old this summer. In the year April 2018-March 2019 there were just two visits through Drws Cefn, one inward and one outward on different dates, plus a couple of visits by me simply to read the counter. The Nunnery entrance has been open again since the spring of 2016, if not earlier, so that has clocked up 3 years too, and again the footfall is astonishingly low. At the original entrance the footfall is typically less than 200 persons per year or 50 trips per year. And all this fuss, just for that.
The most significant person to leave PDCMG recently is Charles Bailey who is (or was) a trustee and signatory to the contract providing for access to the original entrance. It seems that what to do if a trustee wants to exit was not adequately considered. I suppose that to get Charles off the contractual hook now they now have to determine the original contract somehow and sign a new one without him - with the remaining two people taking full responsibiity - or find a substitute for Charles to bring the numbers back up to three, or persuade Charles to change his mind, or structure it in a completely new way. But judging from the resignation letter he sent to the November PDCMG meeting he is advocating compromise solutions too, and there has been little sign of any such yet other than the idea of calling an access policy EGM which is yet to be realised.
Which brings me back to my original question: when is this June PDCMG meeting and where is the venue?
