Wales I
Ben Richards, Chris Hayes, Julien Jean, Thurston Blount, Lamya Adam, Thomas Pearson, Dylan Douglas-Dufresne, Kai Vice, Claire Gordon, Gabrielle MacInnes, Dorian Turner, James Cavit, Cathy Song, Helen Antrobus, Kyle McMillan, Faris Ali Mahzan, Zubeyr Barre, Lew Feng Sing, Clarence Boruszewski, Hoang Ngoc Bao Minh, Yujia Zhang
Friday
First trip of the new academic year, most arrived promptly; no complaints here. We waited ten minutes for our gracious president, who showed up as work stopped. She’s learnt well. Quite evident.
Vast numbers of eggs from Reading Sainsbury’s, not one did we miss. Arrived about eleven; four intercepted from coach by Chris. Immediately the freshers found an SRT hole between floors, and climbed up it for hours, serenaded by snores.
Dylan and Thomas tried to set up a tent; they were quite unsuccessful, despite much effort spent. Said tent was found the next morning, alas, upside down in a pile of second-hand grass.
Ben
Saturday
Aggy, Music Room Soft: Ben Richards, Faris Ali Mahzan, Zubeyr Barre, Hoang Ngoc Bao Minh, Yujia Zhang
Breakfast was rather unusual. Various members of the contingent were out cold after a heavy Friday night of socialising.
I was up early so (begrudgingly) helped cook breakfast. Lamya insisted on cutting the tomatoes in a particularly fancy way, with little triangles on top. As if such outrageous deviations from tradition weren’t already frightful enough, she then flexed her presidential powers further still by suggesting that we do scrambled eggs rather than eggy bread. Incredulity spread throughout the room like wildfire. No eggy bread? How would the masses survive? The implications were dire but tyrannical power was quite convincing in swaying the argument towards scrambled eggs, and in the end they were actually quite tasty. The issue, though, was the large mountain of cold, moist, unappetising toast that now lay in the kitchen. Some made themselves fresh toast, but this took quite a while. I still think it could be made to work if the hut has sufficiently many toasters of sufficient rapidity. I digress.
Teams were split along two orthogonal axes: turkeyness and hardness. I failed both and was therefore banished to lead the Music Room Soft division. Our team was tasked with the hardest mission of them all; we were to take nice photos. Hard caving optional. Fine by me.
We left comfortably behind all other groups, and took a leisurely stroll into the Eggy main entrance as well, just to make sure we wouldn’t have to suffer the famous Aggy traffic jams. In retrospect I think we over-agged it and were miles behind everyone, but that didn’t matter, we had no traffic jams. Mission accomplished.
A gentle progression through the eternal entrance series, and finally we popped out into the giant phreatic main passageway. After an obligatory lights-off session that, as always, suitably amazed everyone (myself included), we stomped off down to the music room, bumping into Chris’s high-speed group heading back the other way. They had an earlier callout so we bid them farewell and made them promise not to mess up the shepherd’s pie that was planned for dinner.
We also bumped into a CSS member called Hugh, with whom we had a lovely chat as we wandered down to the music room. We then managed to completely miss it, by doing a 180 on ourselves by accident in the low boulder section at the end, but righted our wrongs and sure enough found the eponymous music stand.
From hereon out I got my camera setup in action, for the first time featuring an underground tripod, and fully prepared-in-Peli-case flashes. This definitely saved some time, but the sheer amount of stuff in the Peli case made it so hard to close that it cancelled out all time gains from not having to disassemble the flashes. Never mind. Onwards to iteration N+1. The tripod was fantastic though. Chris also brought one for his setup, and I can highly recommend it.
One photo at the music room, one photo of the group stomping down the main passage, one photo at the junction of the main streamway, and then some photos in the narrow parts of the entrance chamber as well. Some turned out better than others, but this also ended up being perhaps my most-ever person-themed photo session. Many firsts indeed.
In the entrance we were caught up by Turkey Extra Hard, followed by Turkey Hard. Music Room Hard had long since gone, and I brought up the rear with our Music Room Soft gang as we plodded out of the cave to an already cooked dinner.
Since we all tried to keep as dry as possible, everyone actually stayed very warm throughout. We’d brought an SRT bag stuffed with Laura’s donated belay jacket, but found we didn’t even need it in the end. Such were the heights of warmth achieved on this super-intense trip, which mostly consisted of standing around doing photos. Success achieved.
The shepherd’s pie turned out very well in the end, in no small part thanks to Kai suffering from illness and therefore being stuck in the hut all day, peeling potatoes. We thank you for your tuberous sacrifices, Kai.
After the last morsels of pie had left their plates, Dylan burst in with a pot in one hand, a sling in the other, and a grin from ear to ear. Pot and sling is, after all, his favourite caving game. After admitting that his chosen pot was ridiculous, a suitable pot was found, and Thurston and I reigned supreme as champions of an almighty tournament that almost everyone joined in on. Many advanced techniques were demonstrated. Many fell over. A few other teams in fact managed to complete the same tightness of sling that Thurston and I conquered, however they only did so on their second or third attempts while Thurston and I managed to not fall over on our first try. Given no one could bear the thought of an even smaller sling, we called this the end and moved on to a successful remembering of the broom traverse and some equally successful table traversing.
Dylan and Thomas successfully spent the night in their tent, after rescuing it from a neighbouring ditch.
Ben
Aggy, Music Room Hard: Chris Hayes, Dylan Douglas-Dufresne, Cathy Song, Lew Feng Sing
This trip went to the music room, also took photos along the way, but did so faster and while poking in more side passages. They also left sooner and cooked dinner. We are greatly indebted to you, team Music Room Hard.
Editor
Aggy, Turkey Junction Soft (a.k.a. extra hard): Thurston Blount, Lamya Adam, Claire Gordon, Gabrielle MacInnes, Dorian Turner, Helen Antrobus
This group went to Turkey Junction, was supposed to be easier than the Turkey Hard group, but ended up doing a longer trip and overtaking the hard group. Long live team Turkey Extra Hard. Claire's welly split in half and her toes were dangling free.
Editor
Aggy, Turkey Junction Hard: Julien Jean, Thomas Pearson, James Cavit, Kyle McMillan, Clarence Boruszewski
This team was the crackest of cracked. Setting out for Turkey Junction, they actually made it. Not Turkey was found, as in true Imperial fashion we hadn't made it to Turkey Chamber in so many years that we'd collectively forgotten that there isn't even a Turkey there to be seen. It hasn't existed for over 40 years.
Editor
Sunday
Eggy: Julien Jean, Lamya Adam, Kai Vice, Cathy Song, Kyle McMillan
A chill group stayed back at the hut for a variety of Eggy eggsploration, revision and general faffing. Good times were apparently had by all.
Editor
Waterfalls Hike: Ali, Zubeyr, Minh, Yujia, Dorian, Helen, Feng Sing
Team uttery cracked from too much caving the day before, but still yearning for the mountains. A good time was apparently had by all.
Editor
Porth Yr Ogof: Ben Richards, Thurston Blount, Thomas Pearson, Dylan Douglas-Dufresne, Claire Gordon, Gabrielle MacInnes, James Cavit, Clarence Boruszewski
A crack Sunday team who actually wanted to get wet in a non-egg-related cave.
Editor
I’d never been here before, so having read it was a good cave to take novices to, I was keen to scout it out, and to investigate whether it could become a freshers’ weekend classic. My conclusion is that it’s great (albeit a bit wet) and that it should absolutely become a classic. The only downside is how busy the parking gets, so if you’re reading this and planning on going yourself in the near future - book the parking ASAP! It had sold out for us so we had to park miles away in the village and walk to the cave from there. It was incredibly hard to find somewhere to park in the village though, so if the parking is booked up entirely, then perhaps it’s best just to go somewhere else (like the silica mines just down the valley). It is the same car park that the Four Waterfalls Walk uses, so on warm, dry weekends it’s going to be busy.
Since the cave is at the head of the Four Waterfalls Walk, it’s also an ideal day out for everyone. If you don’t want to cave, you can come and see the entrance and then go on the Four Waterfalls Walk across the road. The full Four Waterfalls Walk takes a few hours, but if we hadn’t faffed so much in the morning this would have been easy. Given the faff we only had about 3 hours before it was time to drive back to the hut.
The cave is stunning - few formations to be seen, but the jet-black rock peppered with lightning bolts of white mineral veins is really impressive. Not to mention the main attraction - a gaping entrance only seconds from the main car park. Even if people are not caving, they can quite easily wander into the main entrance along with the many other tourists who do the same.
The great bedding hall was actually very impressive. I’d love to return and get some proper photos here at some point, but given it was my first trip I was more interested in the Letterbox. This is a (quite easy) squeeze through two beds of beautifully polished black rock. They’re so polished you can see reflections in them, which make for some great photo opportunities.
While I was setting up the studio, a queue of cavers formed behind me who each waited their turn to squeeze their heads into the smallest part of the Letterbox that I could find.
After this Thurston went off to round people up. Dylan and Thomas had brought a rope and SRT kit to do one of the bolted entrances, and so I took Claire, Gabrielle and James around to a sneaky entrance I’d spotted some other cavers disappearing into when we first arrived, high up on the wall to the left of the main entrance as you leave it. I thought that this would be incredibly easy, just like the rest of the cave, but this actually turned out to be a very narrow slot that first took a ninety-degree turn to the left, followed by a ninety-degree turn upwards. The slot was also lens-shaped, meaning you had to keep yourself in the middle vertically or else you’d get trapped by being too high or too low.
I slithered through first, although more slowly than I’d expected, and called to the others that it was quite tight but that they could wait outside if they wanted since it was just a loop back to the main chamber. Naturally, given they’d all signed up to the most hardcore trip Sunday had to offer, none of them were put off by my scaremongering. James gave it a quick brute-force attempt but quickly retreated. I spotted that there seemed to be a way over the top, and Claire gave this a crack but it turned out to be too slippery. Gabrielle then slithered through the squeeze, joining me on the far side. It was at this point that I realised I didn’t know whether there were any more squeezes before the exit, so I headed off and saw a well-trodden route down through boulders. It looked fine, so I headed back to help the others through the squeeze. Claire was now tackling the main squeeze head on, and after much wiggling she made it through as well, leaving James, who then writhed his way through afterwards.
As we turned the corner after the downwards slope through the boulders, a surprise 2m downclimb presented itself. While at first this looks quite scary, it’s actually simple to downclimb, and easy for someone below to spot you. That being said, I’d not take anyone new to caving through this route who wasn’t already confident with some basic bouldering. It’s also very difficult to spot this route from below, as you have to climb up a random rift and then double back on yourself. Far easier to follow the polish from outside and head in through the squeeze.
After all of this squeezing and wiggling we ended up being quite late, and couldn’t find Thurston. We popped down to the resurgence to meet him, and admired the impressive view, before stomping back to the bus. A quick clean-up of the hut and one milk drinking competition later, and we were headed back to London.
Bring on OFD!!!
Ben
