This was really a CCCC trip but out of the eight of us there were four either YSS members or cavers with both memberships so I think it is worth posting on here.
An email from Jane asking if Susan and Myself would like to join the CCCC on a trip to Llangollen to visit a really good North Wales cave was the start if it, I didn’t think that there were any accessible caves in North Wales that were worth visiting so I was intrigued to say the least. A follow up email asking if I could tow "The winch" added to the mystery.
Saturday morning we left the camp site in Llangollen and picked up the winch on route to the cave, Ogof Llyn Parc. Three members of the NWCC gave up most of their day to allow us to do the trip, two manned the winch and one accompanied us down the cave. When we got to the cave we had to move some large boulders that were blocking access to the site and use a couple of steel ramps to allow me to drive over a ditch and drag the winch to near the top of the mine shaft. We had to build a scaffold gantry to support a pulley for the winch cable.
Checks done, we each clipped our "D" rings to the bottom of a large weight and our cows-tails above it and were lowered down the first hundred or so metres of the shaft to land on a scaffolding platform above its flooded continuation. The trip down the shaft was interesting, especially below the point where the stone lining of the top part of the shaft could be seen sitting on the remains of an iron ring that had pretty much rusted away to nothing. From the platform a mined passage was followed for a few yards and then we went down a series fixed iron ladders and platforms, I felt like a character in a Mario game. More mined passage, knee deep in very cold water, was followed until a scramble through a boulder choke and we were in natural cave. We soon reached a surprisingly large stream passage which had miner’s names written on the walls in copper plate handwriting.
As we were shown around the cave we enjoyed the delights of a 50 meter mud slope with steps cut into it to allow progress, some large avens with fallen stals and large chambers with more miners graffiti. We found a reasonable sized frog which we think may have fed on worms that were in the mud that gets washed in. A lot of the cave is filled with sand and gravel and as we got further into the cave it got closer and closer to the roof of the cave until we were forced to turn back as there was only about a three inch gap.
The scale of the cave makes it feel like a small part of a very large system and it is believed that if some digging were done it may well connect with other caves in the area, the system has over 8 kilometres of passage but we only had time to explore a small portion of the whole system.
It is a cave that I think should be enjoyed by YSS members and if anybody is interested I can try and book it for next year. I will post some photos as soon as I copy them from Susan’s camera.
The following are links to other peoples words on T’interweb and give an idea of what the place is like.
www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.brcc.org.uk%2Freports%2Fpdf-wales%2FLlynParc.pdf&rct=j&q=ogof%20llyn%20parc&ei=l2klTrfaII-DhQepqYnxCQ&usg=AFQjCNF7bP9lqHyrw9JBAUkgXjHyLK1BUg&sig2=44eAlmEEaPFfI4TdwN5azw&cad=rja
www.yucpc.org.uk/caves/details.php?id=216
www.flickr.com/photos/dudley-bug/sets/72157606271718407/
YSS Alex and Susan. CCCC Jane, Rachael, Reynard, Gordon and Stuart
Thanks to NWCC Michael, Tim and Peter
