Wales I
Ben Richards, David Wilson, James Perry, Chris Hayes, Wojtek Sowinski, Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Lamya Adam, Soya Shinkura, Justrene Hartono, Xiaodie Liu, Moses Bejon, Nancy Lindsey, Aditya Amritkar, Thomas Pearson, Dylan Douglas-Dufresne, Lair Hanzen, Zheyi Sheng
Friday
Minibus keys? Nope. Check minibus exists/is not on fire? Nope. Complete chaos. We’d have to make our own way to Wales.
Given there are no drivers, it's going to be a car-only weekend. Perhaps a car only term. Pls send minibus drivers. Distributed between four cars, the plan was simple. Unfortunately, the plan did not account for the correct number of humans. And the bus tickets were booked for yesterday. Thursday. Not Friday. Not today. Fortunately, more were booked today. Unfortunately, the wrong number was booked. I'm glad to see the new committee is building up all this good luck for later in the year.
Fortunately the resultant number of bus tickets was only off by one, and one human ended up not seeming to exist. The mysterious Matthew O was not reachable by any form of communication, not by WhatsApp, not by email and not by phone, and so we deemed him to never have been. Apologies if you're reading this oh mysterious Matthew O - you missed a great weekend.
Thurston left first, the cactus having been rammed to Easter Tour levels of full, with each of the three freshers being forced to sit on multiple roll mats. Fortunately, the milk smell had finally gone after a month of the manky milk mobile.
Julien was next, taking his group of freshers to Victoria coach station, to later be picked up by Chris in some arbitrary part of the country. That left Lamya and me each with our groups. We attempted to make it to Hammersmith to get some food, picking up the "This Bus Stop is Closed" sign you may recognise from stores to this day, but just as we were doing so my Uber driver Davey updated his ETA meaning it was time for me to depart as well. Lamya got a ridiculously late coach, I think some time around 9 pm. She was picked up by Thurston on his second shuttle run.
Myself and three novices - Zheyi, Moses and Nancy - all made it to Hillingdon, which should have been a direct tube trip but for various reasons ended up requiring three trips. Davey whisked us away to Wales while traumatising enlightening the new members with the parodies section of his music playlist. Human Centipede never fails to amaze.
Somehow Moses and Zheyi managed to sleep through the rally driving along tiny Welsh country roads, with Down With the Sickness at max volume and even a sheep running into the car while at the legendary Whitewalls hairpin.
Thurston's first car load of humans had all apparently enjoyed a steak dinner at the hut, while Thurston himself had headed off to pick up his next shuttle run from Newport bus station and before long Chris arrived with his passengers.
And then we all went to bed. As if. If only.
After the last group arrived we headed upstairs to bed, only to spot some spare mattresses in plastic wrapping. Dylan and Lair were sharing the giant Hidden Earth tent in the garden and so decided to take these out to their collapsible sheep shelter outside, only to be struck with insight upon reaching the stairs.
After some confusing loud noises, I left the bunks to see that the two mattresses had been turned into a surprisingly effective slide, with one propped up as a crash mat against the far wall. Before long, everyone was crowding around the stairs, queuing for a go on the slide. Things evolved steadily: more mattresses, horizontal crash barrier cushions, a door mat sled, a super fast rain jacket sled, Lamya sitting on Chris as a sled, spectators at the top, spectators squatting in the window, spectators toe crrimping off of the wall to hang directly above the staircase, feet first runs, head first runs, sitting starts, standing starts, jumping starts, trust fall starts (Dylan?!), before finally the track reached its zenith with banking added around the outside wall allowing a full ninety degree curve into the common room below. Lamya managed to pull this off with some elbow steering, and Nancy managed to successfully rocket out of sight on this course as well.
We went to bed at 3 am. On a Friday! Madness.
Ben
I don’t think I’ve been more stressed on a Friday evening before a trip. While I wasn’t involved with planning transport to Wales, just watching those of us in London make an attempt at coordinating transport on the day was stressful. Transport issues were as follows:
- Coach tickets were booked for the wrong day
- Too few coach tickets were booked
- Matthew
- Royal Albert Hall bus stop was closed (this was not an issue, but felt like the cherry on top)
Thankfully, there were enough issues for some of them to cancel each other out. Which I think is a talent in its own right. Turns out we booked exactly the number of coach tickets needed because Matthew doesn’t exist(?). How lucky! Transport plans were eventually sorted and we were graciously rewarded with a ‘this bus stop is closed sign’ at our intended bus stop, which now hangs on the ceiling in Stores. The remainder of my journey was uneventful, which is exactly how I like my journeys to be. For our first trip without a minibus, I think we didn’t do too badly.
I was in the last group to arrive at the hut, arriving around 1AM. So I assumed people would be going to bed soon. Incorrect. For some reason, the freshers gained a sudden burst of energy and decided to invest it into developing some form of indoor extreme sport. I’m not entirely sure how this happened. I had gone up to sort some of my things and do my usual night routine shortly after arriving. In that time, a small crowd had formed at the door of the bunk room so I went to investigate. Turns out the spectators were watching Dylan sliding head first down the stairs, which were now lined with mattresses. I did not question this. I was pleased people were having a good time. Our sport quickly developed, with extensions being added to the track and different sledding devices/humans being used. We saw many impressive performances that evening. Eventually, we exhausted every possible method of hurtling down that staircase so it was time for bed. At 3AM. What an evening.
Lamya
Friday I arrived at Stores at 6pm after lecture, and things were already in a state of disarray. Apparently Thulien & Jurston had bought coach tickets for the wrong day, and even after rectifying that issue, we still had fewer available seats in cars and on coaches than people on the list. Fortunately one person didn’t show up, so that all worked out. Julien left with three others shortly after I arrived, and Thurston’s group had already gone. Ben, Moses, Zheyi and I were waiting for Davy to send a message giving us enough notice to get to the end of the Central line for him to pick us up. It was a little messy, but we did wind up making it at around 9pm. Already a one hour journey had been turned into a four hour one, and we still had three and a half (actually just three with Davy’s driving) to go to reach Wales.
But the subsequent shenanigans of Friday night alone made three hours of being squished in the middle seat of Davey’s car worth it— we set up some mattresses going down the staircase and came up with increasingly creative and fast ways of sliding down. Particularly notable moments include Lamya surfing down on Chris's back, Soya and Aditya each cramming themselves in the window socket, Dylan falling down (intentionally) backwards, and me finally making it all the way around the corner, sliding underneath Chris and Thomas, who had climbed up the wall. I do feel sort of sorry for anyone who was attempting to sleep during all of this. The last few of us wrapped up the antics and retired at the quite reasonable (by my standards) hour of 3:30am.
Nancy
Saturday
Aggy Group 1: Chris Hayes, Thurston Blount, Nancy Lindsey, Aditya Amritkar, Thomas Pearson, Zheyi Sheng
Saturday morning I was awoken by sheep. Who I proceeded to ignore until I woke again due to the much more aggressive sound of someone (Thurston?) banging pots and pans together at the ungodly hour of 9-something in the morning. We took the first few hours fairly slow, with a long drawn-out breakfast, and set off for the caves around midday. There were three groups, two in Aggy and one that took Davy’s car to a different system. Thurston, Thomas, Aditya, Zheyi, Chris and I went in the first Aggy group, and everything started off really well, with plenty of rock scrambling but nothing too difficult. We got lost only once en route to the first large chamber, and then again at 2nd choice, which somewhat delayed our progress. After a difficult climbing section with ropes, we were getting close to the turnaround time, and Thurston, Thomas and I decided to rush a little bit to try to make it to Straw Gallery. While taking what I will call a 'calculated risk', I jumped down into the water after Thurston. Unfortunately I had miscalculated the depth (consequences of basing your movements on someone nearly two feet taller), so I slipped and wound up soaking wet. We pressed on through the streamway, though, until slightly past our turnaround time. (Later that night, we discovered that we had made it past Straw Gallery, but we forgot to actually look up, so none of us saw it.) We backtracked and met up with the others (Chris kindly lent me his bivvy bag for the colder moments) and climbed back towards the first main chamber, where we met up with Ben’s group for a photo. Then we all made our way towards the exit, and accidentally split into two unplanned groups that exited about 45 minutes apart.
Fortunately for us, Davy’s group had returned earlier, and they were already making dinner when we arrived. We all ate and chatted for a while, and then Thurston and Chris taught newcomers pot & sling. After a rather chaotic (and impressive!) game, Dylan, Thomas and I decided that the midnight to 3am window was the optimal time to learn SRT. We rigged some ropes along the stairwell (Thurston taught me to tie an alpine butterfly the 'bad way', apparently) and through the hatch in the floor to the basement, and I learned ascending, descending, rebelay, deviations, and changeovers, all from Chris with his glass of mulled wine in hand. It should be noted that Chris’s gear is different from the club’s, and descending was... fast.
I tried to sleep afterwards, but was impeded by several sheep who decided to scrape against the side of my tent at 4am. Overall an exhausting but rewarding day.
Nancy
Aggy Group 2: Ben Richards, James Perry, Wojtek Sowinski, Julien Jean, Justrene Hartono, Xiaodie Liu, Moses Bejon
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Ah yes, the fire alarm. I guess that means breakfast is ready.
Stumbling down the stairs, the fire alarm goes off again as I enter the kitchen to see the beautiful fried spread laid out across the countertops. Given that Chris had gone all out on the gluten-free shop, the eggy bread was also gluten-free, but this wasn't actually as bad as I was expecting.
Teams were decided, each of us in turn selling the dream of the day before us. Shockingly, the Craig trip run by Davey was booked out in seconds by some very keen freshers. I proposed my chill photo trip with cave model Julien, as seen on the (back) cover of Descent Magazine, with a couple of detours and some photo ops in the main passage. Chris proposed a wander down the streamway with Thurston. All were happy. Thurston filled a Daren to the brim with cheese sandwiches.
The usual faff of getting everyone set up with their kit for the first time ensued, headtorches were handed out, and before long we were off along the escarpment. Fine views as always, with Perry turning up in the morning and joining my chill trip along the high and dry stuff.
A quick detour to the shortest through trip in the world, with I think everyone going the wrong way despite strongly worded but uslessly vague hints from Perry and me to "not go the wrong way", shortly followed by "you have gone the wrong way", and the occasional extraction of someone from said wrong way. Good fun had by all.
Onto Aggy itself, and we made rapid progress on the entrance series, catching up on the team ahead by the boulder choke. We all congregated in Baron's chamber, with some lying down and the classic lights-off experience. Perry seemed to particularly enjoy the lie-down. After waking everyone up, we wandered over to a side passage I'd wanted to investigate - Erse Passage. Or the Erse hole, as it later became affectionately known.
I'd seen some cool photos of this from Mark Burkey and Brendan Marris, so I was curious to investigate its photographic potential. A vague part of my brain recognised it, so perhaps I'd been there ages ago, but it was a great detour and added a bit of adventure to an otherwise very simple trip. Climbing up a muddy slope from the main chamber, you reach the Erse Hole itself, as an easy squeeze/crawl into the first chamber. This is arguably the most beautiful, with a flat, patterned ceiling, blue-hued rock layers running around it in a perfect circle and delicate white formations scattered across the roof. Beyond this is a canyon of sparkling walls, followed by another up climb into a similar, larger chamber, but with a roof so low that you can't quite appreciate it as much as the first. The entrance to the third chamber is great, with a large curved wall of more beautiful green and blue rock strata behind the scree slope.
There are some terrible digs at the end of this chamber, and after poking in these, we set up a quick cave photo with my flashes, which after a great suggestion became "The Evolution of Caver" as I forced poor Justrene down the climb to knock rocks onto Perry below, Moses crawling in the middle and Xiaodie majestically posing in front.
Blasting back to the main passage we rapidly made it to the music room, pausing along the way to admire the bizarre spiky crystals in the floor and the mud crevasses. A quick pit stop in the music room saw Jullien and Perry invent the game of Sorren Split, where two players take it in turns to each eat half of the remaining soreen and pass it to the other person. The first to admit defeat is the loser, and the winner wins... the rest of the Soreen. After Perry forfeited after being unable to eat the smear of a crumb of the remainder of the Soreen, Julien was crowned the winner. The remainder was significantly smaller than the surrounding crumbs.
Despite this being the end of the regular tour, energy levels were high and so we decided to push on further. The white cliffs of Dover were as brown as I remembered them, and off to the side of this we found a fantastic squeezy rountrip challenge that Julien slithered through and Moses threw himself into soon after. This wasn't enough to burn out the energy supplies though, and so we decided to try and make it to the Aven Series and the large chamber hiding back behind the digs.
Moses and I took a few wrong turns, as we tried various holes in the wall, some digs involving more engineering than others, until eventually I spotted the crazy vertical ninety degree squeeze bend I remembered from last year with James. Justrene and Julien followed and soon we were all in the large chamber, which had the perfect mud for creating sculptures, letters, or inappropriate objects.
An ICCC badge was created, a photo taken with it, and the rest of the chamber was given a cursory glance before we headed out to the others who had been waiting for us. The start of this dig is a perfectly human-sized tube, for about 5 m, in which I led the way. Zooming along since the others were waiting for us, I froze. Mid crawl, unable to turn my head or look ahead of me, out of nowhere, something grabbed my hand. My heart stopped until Perry burst out laughing directly ahead of me, shocked that I'd not noticed him at all. Well played, sir. I thought the cave monsters had finally come for me, but thankfully I could put my ice axe back in my bag.
Back in the main chamber we only got slightly lost finding our way out of the music room, and before long we were back near the start of the boulder choke. There's a large boulder slope here I'd really liked the look of on the way in, so I stopped everyone for one last flash photo, and while setting up for this the other team joined us to make it a large group photo. Some of them seemed very wet and cold so my perfectionism took a back seat as I bashed out an OK shot so that everyone could leave.
The way out was a low-energy slog through the endless entrance series. Julien and I brought up the back of the supergroup, helping a few cavers who were less confident on their feet get across the various boulder climbs and slippery slopes. A few slips and bumps happened, but all were OK and smiling as we broke through to the surface just as the sun was setting - one last group photo, then we headed back, with thoughts turning to dinner.
Dinner turned out to be a curry-pasta-fusion-bake with a side of delicious mushrooms, cooked by the mud-coated Craig freshers gang of Lair, Dylan and Soya. Somehow, the entire day being dragged behind Davey through the muddiest hole in the land had only increased their energy levels. The cave fungus is strong with these ones. Chris ate nothing but the stalk of a broccoli, or something.
Lamya was dying to play pot and sling, and so a crack set of teams assembled, a cracked pan was chosen, and a bone-cracking sling selected from the bag. This got wildly competitive, eventually being won by the worryingly committed duo of Dylan and Thomas, who were delighted to find out they didn't need to go through an even tighter round after pushing themselves to the limit to defeat Soya and Lair. Julien and I gave a valiant effort, disclosing the advanced techniques to the others but being unable to pull them off ourselves. We even got the link to the OG pot and slink Spotify playlist from James. Cheers James.
The gluten-free weekend continued with a fantastic gluten-free cake from Chris to celebrate the fact that he'd bought a load of gluten-free flour and had a half day on Friday. The cake was instead re-dedicated to Yan Jin's recent birthday. It disappeared in seconds, and people were licking the crumbs off the plate. A sign of a good cake. Or of there not being enough dinner. Perhaps both. Either way Chris was responsible.
At the stroke of midnight, energy levels were through the roof and Chris decided he should be as well. He disappeared out the Velux window in the toilet and reappeared on the opposite side of the building, knocking on the closed Velux. The roof of the changing room was removed, and through it ropes were dangled from upstairs, ready for some srt training. An entire obstacle course was set up with the wall traverse bolts down the stairs, and with mugs of tea or wine in hand, the training began. Upstairs, opposite the hole in the floor, an impromptu poker table was set up - complete with chips and green felt - with various people dangling from the walls or the ceiling behind them, and occasionally a Chris scampering around the walls to tweak the rigging. This was complete chaos, a lot of fun, and once again it continued into the early hours of the morning, eventually wrapping up around 3 am.
Ben
Craig A Ffynnon: David Wilson, Lamya Adam, Soya Shinkura, Dylan Douglas-Dufresne, Lair Hanzen
Note to self: do not sleep in the top right bunk in the member’s room.
My soul left my body for a brief moment when I woke up. I apparently had my head next to the fire alarm, which went off about six inches from my ear. Half deaf and disoriented, I figured it was time for breakfast. There was even a second fire alarm to confirm my suspicion and wake up anyone that somehow managed to sleep through the first alarm. We all gathered for breakfast and trips were decided. Originally, I intended on returning to Aggy to see if it felt any easier than my first ever caving trip. However, I was easily convinced to join the Craig trip after hearing about how wet and muddy it is, and how everyone prefers Aggy. Delightful.
Craig was a short drive from the caving hut, followed by a short walk through some shrubbery. Our group stopped for some photos at the entrance and in we went. The cave starts with a short wet crawl that leads to a small streamway, followed by a boulder choke. Dylan, Lair and Soya seemed to already be having the time of their lives. Their whoops of joy could be heard echoing through the chambers for much of the outward journey. It was nice to be with an excitable group of freshers. They seem perfectly suited for caving. Passing the first boulder choke takes you to a chamber with lots of pretty straws. At this point, Davey said the straws are nothing compared to the formations in Hall of the Mountain King, so I was really excited to continue. That was until we got to the muddy climb. I have little faith in my climbing ability and always assume every free climb will be my last. In this case, I’m pleased to say I lived to see another climb in the future. There was a ladder and footholds in place so it wasn't bad at all. Clearly the fresher’s were not nearly as phased as I was because everyone got up swiftly and we carried on down the main path. The path between the climb and Hall of the Mountain King was perhaps the prettiest walk I’ve done in a cave. I have no idea why people prefer Aggy. Maybe all the mud has something to do with it. I did lose a wellie to the mud at some point. We eventually made it to Hall of the Mountain King, where we saw some breathtaking formations. Photos were taken and snacks were eaten, then it was time to turn around.
On the way back, we crawled into a small tube somewhere that seemed to branch and merge endlessly. Davey went in with Dylan while I’d gone in with Lair and Soya. I immediately lost them at the first or second junction. So I crawled a bit further and found myself over Dylan. Lair and Soya appeared shortly after, having taken a different route. Lair seemed to especially enjoy this bit. It’s good fun to crawl around and see where you end up. We carried on swiftly until the muddy climb. Davey and I decided that this climb presented a great opportunity to teach freshers some SRT. After all, Davey had carried some rope into the cave and it would be a shame not to use it. In retrospect, this was not the wisest idea. Firstly, only Davey had his SRT kit so we all shared a Petzl Stop. Secondly, none of the freshers had ever done any SRT before. But at the time, this sounded like a great idea. I think I did a good job of giving a 60 second tutorial on how to use a descender, before going halfway down the climb and standing on a ledge ready to receive freshers. Lair went down first and did a wonderful job. He’s a natural. Next was Dylan. He rigged his descender correctly, double checked with Davey and leaned over the ledge. Now I have no idea what happened in the second I looked away, but I looked up to see Dylan halfway down the rope. He was hanging upside down from his harness, wedged in a crack in the wall. I was very grateful we were using stop descenders at that moment. Davey and I both shouted to Dylan to see if he’s okay. He had a bruise but was otherwise alright. And even seemed to enjoy the experience?? He flipped himself right way up and descended the rest of the rope. By the time he got to me, he was beaming. Remarkable. I’m told chest harnesses prevent this sort of thing from happening. This opened a debate about chest harnesses that continued on and off for about five weeks, but I digress. Soya was the last of the three freshers to descend. By this point, Lair and Dylan were getting restless at the bottom and I could hear them running about below me. I believe they were running in circles, doing star jumps and push ups. Ah, so much energy. Soya came down quite gracefully, with Davey behind. Close to the entrance of the cave is a wet junction that leads to some old piece of equipment (I don’t remember what exactly). I was not keen on wading through chest deep water so went out of the cave ahead of the others. As I walked away, I could hear people shouting about how cold the water was in that wet tunnel, and was satisfied with my choice. I got changed and warmed up in the car until the others arrived. More pictures were taken. It was only at this point I realised quite how muddy we were. Luckily, we were the first group back at the hut so we got to take some well earned hot showers.
Once all the groups arrived, we had a lovely dinner and even some cake! Weekend cake will go on to become a trend. Thank you Chris, we appreciate it. A strong start from Chris with his gluten free cake. But you can’t have cake without a reason to celebrate of course! Luckily, Yan Jin’s birthday had just passed so we decided to celebrate. I’m not sure if she was ever made aware of this. With stomachs now full, it was time for some caving games. I’d really missed playing pot and sling so I suggested (begged) to play. Teams were made, a pot fetched and very fitting music played. The fresher teams did extremely well, coming in first and second place. Dylan and Thomas came out on top; picking up on Ben and Julien’s advanced techniques along the way. Soya and Lair came in second, rejecting the standard advanced techniques entirely and insteading choosing to simply tolerate the pain of shoving themselves through the sling. The remaining groups failed at around the same point, though I must praise Chris and Thurston for keeping up while playing blindfolded.
You’d think that after such an eventful evening, people would be heading to bed. Incorrect. Again. Midnight is prime time for teaching SRT. We would never waste the opportunity. And so ropes were rigged and freshers fitted with SRT kits. Chris also got on the roof of the hut for some reason. Training actually went really well, with freshers learning almost all of the necessary SRT skills in one night. I am now a huge advocate for midnight SRT training. What a success! Sadly, the SRT fun couldn’t last forever. We headed off to bed around 3AM, but I trust the freshers all enjoyed dreams of doing SRT in a cave one day. I know I have the odd caving dream.
Lamya
Sunday
Siambr Ddu: Ben Richards, David Wilson, James Perry, Chris Hayes, Wojtek Sowinski, Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Lamya Adam, Soya Shinkura, Justrene Hartono, Xiaodie Liu, Moses Bejon, Nancy Lindsey, Aditya Amritkar, Thomas Pearson, Dylan Douglas-Dufresne, Lair Hanzen, Zheyi Sheng
I don’t remember anything from this morning. I assume it was uneventful. I just know I didn’t want to wear my wet kit so thought Siambr Ddu was a good option. Many shared my wishes, and so it was decided that we would all go. I was assured I’d see some fossils, also a plus.
I was in one of the last groups to arrive in the area so we were left to figure out the route to the cave ourselves. Not a problem, as it was a relatively straightforward route. There were some helpful signs marking a walking trail, which leads down to a large quarry. We walked past some sheep and through some foliage, then down onto a narrow path which goes all the way to the cave. A very pleasant walk indeed. The area around the cave also offered some stunning views over the valley.
By the time I arrived, half the group had already gone into the cave. Due to a lack of dry kit, many of us were sharing oversuits and had to wait outside. This was a great opportunity for people to walk around and explore the surrounding area. I also spent much of my time talking with Justrene and Wojtek. What started with Justrene saying he was hungry and wanted McDonald’s quickly devolved into grand plans of starting a sea urchin farm on the moon.
Unfortunately, our vision wouldn’t be coming to fruition that day as our intense moon farm planning session came to an abrupt end. People started coming out of the cave and the next batch of people were set to go in. I wasn’t planning on wearing an oversuit as I was told it was a short crawl that led straight into the chamber. However, I was not aware it would be a flat-out crawl and wasn’t keen on muddying the clothes I was returning to London in. Luckily, Chris brought a bothy which was just begging to be used. Perfect. It's basically an oversuit if you wear it right. Fitted with my bothysuit, I got through the crawl and emerged in a surprisingly colourful chamber. The black ceiling was covered in glittering yellow patches. It was amazing to see. I’m told the ceiling sparkles due to hydrophobic bacterial colonies that cause water to form little beads that reflect light. To the far end of the chamber was also a bright yellow formation. The main attraction of this cave is, of course, the fossil. It sits somewhere in the middle of the chamber, blending in with the rest of the boulders. Though small, it is quite remarkable as the pattern of the tree bark is perfectly preserved. Right above this fossil, in the ceiling, is the remainder of the fossilised log. Naturally, everyone wanted a photo with a fossil that cool so much of our time was spent taking photos. I had the pleasure of being one of Ben’s slaves helpers, so spent a lot of my time in the cave cradling a flasher. We finished off with a group photo and headed out of the cave.
We had some extra time so decided to explore the quarry. The first thing we came across was a large, brick shaft. After shouting to the group below from the top of this shaft, we made our way down the hill to join them at the bottom. Some tobogganing attempts were made. Dylan, with his stroke of bad luck this weekend, sustained his second bruise after sliding over a large rock in the grass. But he carried on like the resilient caver he is. The bottom of the shaft housed a teeny tiny cave. Inside the walls of this cave(?) is a small shark fossil.
That concluded our short quarry adventure and it was time to go home. Back at the hut, people had prepared what I can only rank as the worst meal I’ve had on a caving trip. I’m told it was supposed to be curry and rice. However, what I was served had a texture that sat somewhere between soup and rice pudding. It tasted of nothing. Unfortunately, I never got to finish my slop as Thurston hurried me into his car. My group arrived in Newport with enough time to get a compensatory lunch and we were soon back in London.
Lamya
Sunday we were all a bit tired (I can’t imagine why...) and we decided to go to a cave the club had never visited before. We drove about 20 minutes and walked across some fields to the first cave entrance. It was pretty short, only about 20 feet (or however many meters (metres?)), but it was a very low crawl. Chris was the only one so beyond caring to go in without an oversuit.
This cave was actually pretty spectacular. After the tight and muddy entrance, it opened up to a huge chamber with a few interesting formations. There were several different kinds of fossils, including an entire tree trunk in the ceiling and a very intricate fern. There were also mineral deposits in a wide variety of colors. It definitely made me think we had done a lot of work to not see much at all the previous day…
Back outside, a few of us decided to go on a little walk around the cliff, and Chris, Justrene, and I wound up sliding down the long grassy side to the lower quarry entrance. We weren’t wearing oversuits and had heard that this chamber was just a boring ceiling, so we didn’t go in, but we had a nice long climb back up and around. After waiting at the top for a while, we decided to head back first, since Chris would need to drive back and pick up more people anyway. We stopped at Lidl (my first time in one) to pick up some dinner supplies along the way and made it back only just before the others.
After an egregiously soggy meal of curry rice for which I am to blame (in addition to Chris perhaps), Thurston took the first group to a coach station while the rest of us cleaned up the house. Then I had a much more pleasant 3-hour ride in the back of Davy’s car (Ben was the unfortunate middle-seater this time); we got back to South Ken after only one issue with the Tube, one 20 minute wait, and only one (although Ben may claim it was more) incident of me nearly falling into the tracks. Ben and I had increasingly unhinged sleep-deprived conversations over the course of the four and a half hour journey, which led to Aditya declaring, upon leaving stores, that all bachelor's degree holders are, in fact, entirely insane.
Nancy
Everyone tired. Porridge appeared. Not smoky. Nice.
Silica mines are 45 mins away; sadness. Eggy requires everyone to wear their wet kit; sadness. An army of motorbikes drives by; confusion. I float crazy cave I'd read in car on Friday; much enthusiasm. Oh dear. I think I need to figure out an actual plan. Frantaic Googling. Plan is good. Caving time. Home for tea and medals. I love it when this happens.
On Friday, I'd been poking around some cave maps, wondering if there were any other good Sunday options nearby, and I'd noticed some cool photos from "The Black Chamber" Siamr/Siambre/Siambri Ddu, depending on the website. This appeared to be a collapse from Draenen that had propagated almost all the way to the surface, but had been stopped short of forming a shake hole by a thick band of very fossil-rich gritstone near the surface. The chamber looked quite big, maybe 30m in diameter, and was supposedly peppered with fossil trees. Intriguing, me thought. The only problem was that the entrance required a tight crawl, and it was unclear how bad this would be from the description.
The main reason this cave won the popular vote was that it was so short, meaning people could go in, poke around, come back out and then swap oversuits, since some oversuits were completely dry (my group) and others were sopping wet (everyone else). As some bonus attractions, it looked like there was a shark fossil and some quarrying infrastructure nearby as well. The silica mines would have been fine if we had the minibus, but since we had to shuttle people between one too few cars (Perry had not stayed the night before), then this was basically the only option other than Eggy/hiking for those without dry kit.
Chris did the first shuttle, dropping me and the first batch of humans off at a nearby lake to the East of the quarry, which happened to be full of wild swimmers and hikers. It looked lovely actually. Very busy though, don't park here in the future.
Instead there are some lay-bys on the big road behind the Pwll Du Adventure Centre. Park along here, and then take the footpath directly to the quarry, and the cave is on this footpath after a short cutting through the hill. The entrance to the cave is marked on Open Street Map (woop woop).
The small quarry I could see on the map turned out to be enormous, and the footpath to the cave ran along a tiny sheep trail along the face of a sheer cliff above it. The views over the valley were beautiful, and far prettier than I had been expecting. I poked in the cave to check it was still worth the others coming, and indeed it was. The squeeze wasn't that bad, but it was smaller than I was expecting. Before long, the others had arrived, and no one had an issue making it into the cave, although it is a little bit of a squeeze for the larger caver, of which we had a couple.
More fun things to look out for are a single rock, just a few metres before the wall by the cave, in the middle of the cutting, with a perfect tree fossil in it, facing upwards. In the entrance of the cave, there's also a beautiful and incredibly obvious tree fossil running horizontally along the wall. The moss is stunning as well, for the record. I guess it's for the best there's a twatty crawl or else it would all have been vandalised or whatever.
The fern-covered entrance splits in two, turn right through the crawl, which continues on for about 4-5 m, before a left turn (the roof of which is a fossil tree trunk if you look closely) immediately opens out into the chamber. That's it. The End. Thomas attempted to go right after the squeeze, but apparently crawled into some bats and apparently doesn't recommend that route. Some people did crawl through this in their regular clothes, but it's a slightly muddy gravel, completely flat out, and there's no way not to let your clothes touch the floor and the roof, so oversuits are definitely recommended. It is dry, though, and although the boulders in the main chamber are very slippery, you don't really need wellies.
The chamber itself was fantastic. I think this is what many people must imagine caving is - a terrible crawl into a pitch black underground lair. The walls are stained a black so dark that you can hardly see the back of the room, and the roof sparkled with gold and silver microbial colonies that look as bright as graffiti, shimmering with perfectly reflective beads of water. This alone would have been worth a visit in my mind, and almost everyone who popped out of the crawl went "oooo", "woooah", or "what?! No way!" which is always a good sign. Davey, on the other hand, popped out and said "oh, that's small", which somewhat popped the vibes bubble.
Everywhere you looked there were prints of fossil trees. These mainly looked like faces of rock with bark prints on them, or weird lines on an otherwise smooth piece of stone. The more you looked, the more you spotted, until eventually we noticed a huge log up in the ceiling, about 5m long. It was clearly the cast of an ancient tree, that had now fallen out of the ceiling and was scattered over the floor. This was awesome. The tree trunk had been very squashed and was now oval-shaped, with sections of the tree trunk looking like slices of a Swiss chocolate log.
As if this wasn't enough already, the walls and floor were peppered with bright orange and bright yellow formations - Thurston said the yellow ones were sulphur something something. At the back of the chamber there was a particularly large section of gours and stals, all bright sulphurous yellow. Other parts of the chamber had white powdery formations crumbling out of the walls, and the occasional boulder would be covered in a deep blue or green flowstone, patterned and shimmering. Wild.
I shouted across the room that our mission was to find "the most beautiful tree fossil in the chamber" which "looked like a pristine slab of tree firn", according to a great guide I'd been reading on this website:
https://www.cavinguk.co.uk/gallery/siambreddu07_10_23.html
This one is definitely worth a read if you've not been before, since it had photos of all the fun things to look out for - perfect to have loaded already on a cave phone. The most beautiful fossil took us ages to find, but eventually, excited cries of joy echoed around the room as it was spotted at long last. It was smaller than I was expecting, but indeed incredibly beautiful, and completely incomprehensibly old, given it looked like a brand new plaster cast.
Some people headed out to swap oversuits, and at this point, I got my flashes out for a paparazzi sesh. This went well. Everyone wanted a photo with the huge fossil tree in the ceiling, after which I marched the flashing gang around the main attractions one by one at breakneck speed. We got a quick group photo and then headed out to explore the quarry. The balance shaft was surprisingly impressive - you can peer into the top of it from the high path. At the bottom of the quarry, the bones of some vast animal lay scattered in the grass, which made for a good caveman group photo.
The bottom of the balance shaft had a cave-come-sheep-shelter that seemed mainly blasted into existence, but did have the elusive shark vertebrae fossil that the article above had said to look for. You can crawl through the back of this into the balance shaft itself, which has a fantastic echo. Apparently someplace else in this quarry is "large shelter" cave, but we didn't look for it, and didn't spot it either. Next time. Chris had seemingly given his shoes to Aditya, so did all of this in socks.
And before we knew it, it was time to head back home. Chris did another shuttle run, squeezing in a cheeky Lidl trip to pick up an emergency lunch option of rice and curry sauce while Aditya and I were waiting in a lay-by for an eternity. A quick tidy up of the hut and one bowl of sloppy curry sauce flavoured rice soup later, then we were all being whisked back to London in our various cars.
What an incredible start to the year, thanks to all for the chaos and the laughs - bring on W2!!!