Monday, 20 May 2013

Little Neath and Pwll Pindar

Little Neath River Cave
This started with breakfast at Asda in Merthyr, before making our way to the cave for a leisurely 11am start. Water was low and Mark headed off into the unknown to be greeted by a bit of a surprise when he got to the duck finding it was a lot smaller than it looked in the photos! We headed to the Bridge Cave sump, then through the Canal to head down to Sump 2. We then returned via Canal Bypass to exit the cave after about 4 hours underground. A quick change of gear for Mark and Jess at the cars and then we headed to the bottom of Pant Mawr moor to located Pwll Pindar.

Pwll Pindar
Our second objective for the day was to have a look in the little visited Pwll Pindar. A 12m scaffolded shaft took us down to a bedding plane where we headed east through low muddy crawls to enter a passage with a number of rabbit skeletons on the floor. From here we headed via more crawls to find a chamber at the southernmost end of the cave.

Pwll Pindar
Jess in the southern chamber in Pwll Pindar.

Back at the rabbit skeletons we found the way into Bishopsgate Passage, a fine fossil passage where we took a number of photos and explored the chokes at the end and the dig at the bottom of the shaft in the centre of the chamber.

Bishopsgate Passage - Pwll Pindar
Jess at the start of Bishopsgate Passage.

Bishopsgate Passage - Pwll Pindar
Mark in Bishopsgate Passage.

Bishopsgate Passage - Pwll Pindar
Jess and Mark in Bishopsgate Passage.

Bishopsgate Passage - Pwll Pindar
Mark in Bishopsgate Passage.

We then returned to the bottom of the entrance shaft from where we explored the bedding cave to the west, Mark boldly leading the way through the tight bedding to take us into Singing Stal Chamber. We missed Ted Moult passage and returned to the bottom of the entrance shaft again where a 2m climb down took Mark to a lower series where a climb down reached a perched sump.

A fine cave that we will have to return to and explore the couple of sections missed on this trip.

Present: Mark Burkey, Jessica Harding and Brendan Marris

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