Blog Posts in Category: Caving

This weekend was time for another weekend away with my university caving club.  We headed to the South Wales Caving Club at Penwyllt near Swansea where on the Saturday we went down Ogof Ffynnon Ddu which is the deepest cave in the UK and the second longest cave in Wales which also happens to have the deepest through trip which is where you go in one entrance and exit at another, we went in at the bottom entrance and came out the top entrance. As this was a long trip that we were trying to do quickly so we could get out in time for the rugby I didn’t take my camera so there are unfortunately no photos. However on Sunday we headed to Ogof Craig A Ffynnon which is a cave in the Clydach Gorge near Abergavenny which is the prettiest cave I have been to though however also one of the muddiest! As this was a shorter trip and so well decorated I took my camera with me and managed to produce these photos. It was a one of the best caving weekends I have had for caving in quite a. Read the full article…

This weekend I headed over to stay at the South Wales Caving Club‘s Hut at Penwyllt in the Brecon Beacons in south wales with a local caving club. The cave that we did on both days was Ogof Ffynnon Ddu (The Cave of the Black Spring in English) which is one of the longest caves in the UK which has three entrances, one at the top of the hill (OFD Top), one in a disused quarry (Cwm Dwr) and another at the bottom of the hill (OFD 1). On the first day we did a through trip from OFD Top to Cwm Dwr which was great fun and is a trip that I always look forward to as it involves so many different types of caving such as scrambling, walking in streamways, big chambers and crawling, but there are no photos as it was a long trip so chose not to take the camera. However we went for a shorter trip on Sunday which was a round trip around OFD 1 which is the lowest entrance in OFD. This was a shorter trip so I took my camera along and. Read the full article…

To end a great December I headed to the mendips to go caving for the new year and due to needing to recover only got underground on new years eve.  We headed to a cave called GB which is full of massive chambers and has a fun while fairly short trip around it.Thanks to all the extra water from the melting snow the waterfall actually had some water flowing down it which is a change to the last few times I was there.  GB is full of some amazing formations though they are usually hanging from the very high roof which makes photographing them very difficult and in an effort not to take too long I did not even try.

This weekend was the annual meet up of lots of university caving clubs, and this year it was up in Yorkshire at the Dalesbridge Center. It was a very cold weekend with snow forecast but we decided to go caving anyway and headed up to Gaping Gill. I went to Gaping Gill with a specific photo in mind, but overlooked the fact that it is winter up north and it gets dark early so when we got to main chamber it was dark outside which was fairly disappointing but I tried to make the best of the situation and came up with these photos. It was so cold outside that the waterfall that is normally the main waterfall was barely flowing due to the water at the top freezing and all the water coming down the waterfall that is normally the smaller of the two. This also meant that when we left the cave the hour long walk back to the car at -3 degrees was a fairly cold experience and our caving oversuits froze while they were on us!

Last week I had some free time and was looking through some of my old photos, and I found these from a trip to Swildons Hole in the Mendips during August 2009.  Swildons Hole is one of my favourite caves as there is so much to do there, it has a waterfall which you have to climb down on a ladder, an active streamway with places to jump into and sumps along with the usual climbing that you get in caves. Last year I did not get to do much caving photography, but this year I am hoping to rectify that due to the wonderful sights that you can see underground that very few people ever see, and showing people the photos is a far easier way of explaining why I enjoy caving!