Wales II
[photos to follow]
Ben Richards, David Wilson, James Wilson, Shiva Pingle, Ellie Pizey, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Sean Lim, Salwa Ahmad, Thurston Blount, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Lamya Adam, Nancy Lindsey, Aditya Amritkar, Nick Richards, Leo Hern, Ryan Stanley, Sereon Cui
Friday
Pretty sure this trip went incredible. Hats off to whoever planned this thing, all I had to do was take two people from London! Ignoring some random kit in the back of my poor car that is...
SWCC is great. I don't seem to remember much happening on the Friday, though the drive was pretty nice. Greeted by Davey and his pumpkins.
Thurston
Saturday
OFD ofc: Ellie Pizey, Salwa Ahmad, Lamya Adam, Ben Richards, Julien Jean, Nick Richards, Leo Hern, Ryan Stanley, David Wilson, James Wilson, Shiva Pingle, Aditya Amritkar, Sereon Cui, Chris Hayes, Sean Lim, Thurston Blount, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Nancy Lindsey
OFD 2, off to midnight passage: Ellie Pizey, Salwa Ahmad, Lamya Adam, Ben Richards, Julien Jean, Nick Richards, Leo Hern, Ryan Stanley, David Wilson, James Wilson, Shiva Pingle, Aditya Amritkar, Sereon Cui, Chris Hayes, Sean Lim, Thurston Blount, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Nancy Lindsey
How lovely to see Remi the night before! Sadly, I had agreed to cook breakfast, though something about my alarm not working seemed to mean that I actually only woke up whilst everyone else was cooking. What a shame. It was quite obvious which cave we were going to, considering we are right next to OFD. Sadly, someone hadn't booked the keys in time, but luckily for us, Nottingham University were sharing the hut at the same time, and let us steal a key off of them.
Heading off with Chris, we made it to the entrance pretty quickly. Remembering all of the last trip here the previous year, the way to Edward's Shortcut was a breeze, though I hadn't actually gone there through the main route before, meaning I realised for the first time, just how close it is to Gnome Passage. Interesting. Glad to see it is rigged now, as this made everything to do with it 1000x easier.
Heading from here, after Chris had rigged it, we made our way to the Frozen River, seeing water. Love it. Good slides down to there. I mean a lot of the way on was pretty easy, had a look at every way from Shattered Pillar (and running to shout at Ben's photography group), easy route-finding to midnight passage, then go and have a look at the main streamway to the South-East. It was an overall fun trip, and helped me remember that my routefinding is not all that bad. Love a good bit of water still.
Thurston
OFD 1: David Wilson, James Wilson, Ellie Pizey
All I remember about this night was going to the children's room very drunk and playing with a transformers toy, long after carving pumpkins and pretending to sort out the batteries.
Thurston
Sunday
Powell's cave: Julien Jean, Salwa Ahmad, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Lamya Adam, Nick Richards, Leo Hern, Ryan Stanley, Sereon Cui, James Wilson
Upper Dinas Silica Mine: Ben Richards, Shiva Pingle, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Sean Lim, Salwa Ahmad, Thurston Blount, Remi Soubes-Goldman, Lamya Adam, Nancy Lindsey, Aditya Amritkar, Nick Richards, Leo Hern, Ryan Stanley, Sereon Cui
Good to see. Not a bad mine, got some good room and pillaring. The gate is pretty nice too. Sadly the walk had slightly eroded, so we needed to jump over. Of course, before even entering the mine, Chris was up to his usual antics on the big rock next the car park, and we had to leave him behind. :(
After exiting the mine early, some of us decided to just climb some random waterfall and enter the mine on the other side of the river. Fun times had by all.
Thurston
Here, we headed back to the hut and half cleaned up (leaving the rest to Nottingham), before heading off back to London. Davey took so many pumpkins, it was quite impressive.