Helen, Alli and Andy left Preston at about 2.30pm and arrived at the infamous pizza place in Abergavenny just before 6pm. Unfortunately, Ed and Sophie had managed to get stuck in a post accident jam and arrived at the hut at about 11pm! Meanwhile, we’d already consumed 4 bottles of wine, but opened another just to be sociable!

Andy and I were on breakfasts but I could sense a master at work and so busied myself with enjoying the beautiful sunrise and a bit of washing up. (Do we have an Andy vs Andy breakfast challenge in the making!!) Julian arrived just after 9am and we were ready to depart by 9.40—ahead of schedule!! With Andy G’s cycling misfortunes, we had become a team of 6 (still the largest of our recent KCC weekend adventures—although Alli is not officially a member I suppose).

Cave descriptions were a little off-base—20 minutes walking does not get you to Agen Allwedd—20 minutes running perhaps—but we had the de rigeur team photo and started our ‘descent’. Left, left, left, left etc. saw us through the entrance series. Guidebook again of no avail through 1^st boulder choke (apparently a boulder has covered the described routes) and we foraged our way through, following the smoothest of rock options and taking the occasional compass bearing. We met Stephen from CSS in Baron Chamber—on his way back due to an injury sustained in the second choke—‘very slippy’ he said. Very slippy it was—pretty much like the remainder of our route—if it wasn’t slippy traverses on mud covered rock, we were in the streamway, sliding on some sort of nasty growth that led to many additional bruises among the team!

Anyway, after lunch at NW Junction, we slipped and slid our way down the Main Stream Passage (with a bit of swimming in the Narrows). Third boulder choke passed uneventfully and then we met our nemesis…the 4^th boulder choke. A series of vertical squeezes take you up to join the crawl through Biza passage. Andy made a successful ascent and Alli followed… Some 30 minutes later, with help from above and below (my face still bore the imprint of Alli’s flailing feet on exit from the cave!), Alli had ascended, with Helen close behind. Unfortunately, Julian attempted the initial squeeze and reported that his chest was too large to make it through. As a team we decided to return as one party.

Slippy streamways, swimming, muddy boulder chokes and roped sections—now ascents—were reversed. Only one injury was sustained, in a fall from a roped climb, and only one navigational error—when we crawled past the hole that led down from Barons Chamber and completed a little circuit through a section of boulder choke. Our entire underground trip took 8h 45—at least 1h of which being the time spent at the 4^th boulder choke. We were all exhausted, and glad to have been sociable the evening before as none of us managed to get far beyond the eating of Andy G’s veggie chilli and Julian’s pork curry—although a few of us were later persuaded to sample Ed’s apple crumble.

Sunday morning saw Julian depart for a previous engagement, Ed and Sophie decide that they were too tired to undertake another caving trip and Alli’s bruised foot say ‘no’. So Andy and I made use of our Craig y Fynnon permit, completing much the same circuit as the previous South Wales trip in about 2 and a half hours. I still hate that muddy climb—although the chain has been removed and 3 assorted ropes now occupy the anchors—one of which could be used for srt—if you can ascertain which is the unknotted rope, not in a continuous loop, from below.

Another good trip…and several expressions of interest in a North Wales mining extravaganza for spring next year…if interested please get in touch.