Little Neath River Cave, Upper Nedd Valley, South Wales

This was a second caving trip for Dean and a chance to take some photos and video in one of the most sporting caves in South Wales. We took a standard route into the cave, through The Canal and down to Sump 2. Our return was through the canal Bypass and then to fight our way against the flow of the water through the entrance passages. Although the helmet camera experiment failed some stunning video was taken with the waterproof camcorder.

Dean in the Canal

Dean in the Little Neath Streamway

Jessica Harding in the Little Neath Streamway

The team: KeEd, JeHa, BrMa & ChWe + new member Dean

More photos of Little Neath River Cave can be viewed here

Big Sink, Symonds Yat, Ross-on-Wye

Another major engineering feat in the Forest area. Lots of scaffolded climbs through tons of loose rocks lead to a nice SRT pitch into a big chamber, but after this the streamway in tight and rifty throughout. One for the cavers of slimmer stature.

The team: KeEd & BrMa + others

Pwll Y Pasg, Llangattock Escarpment, South Wales

A trip to explore some of the lesser visited caves. The cave is located in a shakehole and is formed just below the gritstone cover. Most passages are wide and flat so most of the progress involved crawling. The passage runs below an adjacent shakehole where we had to dig our way around the run in to find the further passages. We aborted our visit to the lower passages due to the sharp nature of the rock and our desire to protect our ropes.

Keith in the bedding plane crawls

Keith in Lost Pasage

The team: KeEd & BrMa

More photos of Pwll Y Pasg can be viewed here

Brickworks Dig, Penwyllt, South Wales

A very successful weekend. The dig is now almost 3 metres longer and about a metre deeper.
More details on the dig page.

Heather - a sunstroke casualty

Del being rescued by Steve

The dig team: KeEd, BrMa, DeRo, HeSi, JoSm, GrSm & StWa (Sat. only) + Roger as tea-maker

Llanelly Quarry Pot, Clydach Gorge, South Wales

Well our first obstacle was to remove all the boulders from the entrance so that we could get in, even with the boulders removed I knew I was going to struggle to get in, but I rigged a hand line and eased my way down the rift followed by Mel. Then we came to a chamber with a large shaft which is where I was sure we had to go, but the guide book confused us a little and we decided the way on was around a tricky traverse on the left hand wall, which isn’t for the faint hearted and Mel was heard saying she needed longer arms and legs. Well we got it wrong, and the way on isn’t to follow the traverse, but to go down the large shaft as you enter the chamber, but it isn’t obvious, as you can't easily see the P hangers to rig from. Once at the bottom of the pitch we went upstream to Midsummer Nights Dream, which is well decorated before continuing on until we came to the Ryan's Duck where we turned back to go down stream as far as we could, before turning around to head out. Now getting out for me was a bit of a challenge to say the least, and take my advice – don’t try to climb up the rift wearing your SRT kit as you will only get stuck, and trying to remove it in the rift is somewhat awkward!!! 

See photos of Llanelly Quarry Pot here 

The Team: AnGr & MeWa

Ogof Capel, Clydach Gorge, South Wales

A return to Ogof Capel. Last time torrential rain was falling and sensibly the team turned back at the duck. This time we were able to get to the end of the system and take photos of the amazing formations near Tuppenny Ha'Penny choke.

Del crawls under a false calcite floor.

Keith views formations ion Slalom Passage.

Del views formations near the end of the cave

Del views formations near the end of the cave

See more Ogof Capel photos here 

The Team: KeEd & BrMa & DeRo

Dan Yr Ogof, Swansea Valley, South Wales

This was the Dan Yr Ogof trip that we had planned to do 4 weeks previously. This time the water levels were very low. The aim of the trip was to photograph Productus Passage above the Green Canal. Two members of the team took the lower route after the Long Crawl to the far end of the Green Canal while the other three followed the upper series and swum the Green Canal where unfortunately one member of the team found that a bag of SRT gear does not float!

Keith in one of the branches of Productus Passage.

Keith in one of the branches of Productus Passage.

Richard near the start of Productus Passage.

See more Dan Yr Ogof photos here 

The Team: KeEd, BrMa & ChWe + Rachel and Richard from WMCEG