Used to frequent the Belfrey back in Uni days, so about 1986 through till about 1994, though we didn’t use it too often in the latter years as it all got abit mental there for a while. Jingles doesn’t ring a bell, only people I remember were Tony J and Zot. Ambrose. Who knows if we have met. Got a mate down your way, Jon Drury, who I went down Llygad Llwychwr with. Nice cave. I am Abergavenny area so grew up with all the caves of Llangattock and the Clydach Gorge on my doorstep.

Age. It is a terrible thing….. 🙂

Nostalgia. It’s not what it used to be….

I was a BEC member around 1994-1995 so a bit later than you, wf. It was a bit mental… Had some fun times though!

Jingles – John Williams – was a great guy. Tony J, also deceased, ran BAT Products and was a very hard caver. Good guy. Zot rings a bell but I wouldn’t recognise most people from those days now.

Part of me would like to revisit some of those places but it was a bad, single, unhappy, vodka guzzling time of my life I don’t want to go back to.

A mate of used to go diving OR caving (or bungee jumping & parachuting) said he’d never combine the two.

If you saw Zot, you would think “that face rings a bell. Why doesn’t he use the clanger like everyone else?” Easily the most recognisable face in the Hunters Moon. I hear what you are saying about the excess of it all. But lots of great memories. If I had the chance I would do it all again. Well maybe not all of it 🙂

Potholes up north tent to be be vertical on Mendip we cave !!

Vertical stuff in S Wales isn’t that common but Pwll Swnd was always a bit of a giggle if you could find it. I loved the Dales pots and bore mates to death on the few and far-between biking trips I take up there. Pant Mawr is a marvel especially when you find the helictites. Bizarrely, I regularly cycle over the area nowadays. My gear is to old to be trusted for another trip- a real shame.

Sherp’d for Martyn Farr. I’m friends with Steve Thomas.

There are a few paperbacks wrapped in polythene bags besides various OFD and DyO sumps and chokes from when I sat and waited. As for Darren Cilau- what a hell hole. We used to push it after work. I can remember getting back into fresh air at 3:00AM and then driving home to Brynamman to be in work early the next day. Nig Rogers, where are you now?!

This is the best, most palm-moistening thread ever! I’ve just been on an hour long Youtube caving bender.
This was a good one.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwkTsGo2Lx4[/video]

Not caving but I spent a fair bit of time exploring the old slate mines in the Blaenau Ffestiniog area in my youth. Uncle John (yes him!) had an interest and there was a through trip you could do which involved entering a long tunnel then through some caverns and up a big incline before popping out of a massive hole on the mountain above (a twll I think it was called). Googling suggests ithe incline bit has all collapsed now which is a bit scary, but there’s still a through trip folks do to the village of Croesor. Fascinating stuff.

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/rhosydd-slate-mine-and-ghost-village-wales-sept-2012.t74091

Loved the Welsh slate mine link.

There used to be some fascinating remains near Corris – several levels you could get into and a whacking great hole in the hillside above them. Also a slate works with tramway remains outside. Aberllefenni I think?

Went on a tour of a working gold mine years ago. It was Wales’ only one at the time. Don’t know if it’s still there.

STW meet in Priddy for a bimble around Swildons anyone’s? And maybe a pint in the New Inn or the Queen Vic? Didn’t like the Hunters.

Oh, and had some GREAT trips down Singing River. Not a beginner’s trip though!

JulianA I would be well up for a Swildens return. I did all my caving with Tim Stratford and the Swindon club in the 1990s. Lots of OFD trips and other stuff in the area. A few short Mendips trips as well. But been meaning to get back into it. And I won’t have to hulk a lead acid battery pack now!

@DavidB Bear it in mind for sometime in the summer maybe? Pretty hectic few weeks coming up but might be free weekdays in June if my contract doesn’t get renewed.

Welshfarmer

The rock is pressing down on you and small pebbles are rolling under you chest making it even tighter. Worst part is you have NO idea how far it continues or even if it gets tighter before enlarging.

The idea of not knowing how long it would continue for DO NOT WANT 😯

I would definitely be up for some cave/MTB action at some point. You could do a whole series since there are underground opportunities in all the best MTB areas, and invariably also a great caving hut to stay in. Pick the caving day according to weather. Could combine

Swildons/Mendip ride/Belfrey
OFD/Brecon Beacons/SWCC hut
P8 or Giants/Peaks ride/Orpheus
Slate mines/Snowdon/Any one of the club huts up there
Swinstos pull through/Dales Ride/One of the caving huts
Coniston mines/Lakes/One of the mountaineering huts

Possibilities and permeations are endless.

So let’s plan one for later in the year . Pretty quiet here at end of May and most of August.

Used to do a fair bit of caving and didn’t mind the squeezes, only times I felt ‘NOPE’ were losing the group I was with for about 20 seconds and smashing my knee hard in a cave where you had to SRT out. That was a tad painful.

Zot from the planet Tharg. 😯 He was a feature of the Belfry back in the 1960s, I well remember thrutching my way out of Cuthberts entrance after he’d released the water onto me! 😀 What fun

(Not that I was caving the 60s, he was still there in the 80s and is probably there even now….)

A good mate of mine and climbing partner was also a pretty useful caver. He quit climbing and took up scuba diving. I quipped he would soon be cave diving but he reckoned that was just insane. Shortly afterwards he booked on a course with Martyn Farr.

I was never very interested in caving but he did take me on a trip down Lancaster Hole which I quite enjoyed, though abbing down first and looking back up at the speck of light above I found myself wondering if I’d done anything to upset him.

welshfarmer. I’m in, let’s create a new genre bike-caving-packing.

JulianA I would be well up for a Swildens return. I did all my caving with Tim Stratford and the Swindon club in the 1990s. Lots of OFD trips and other stuff in the area. A few short Mendips trips as well. But been meaning to get back into it. And I won’t have to hulk a lead acid battery pack now!

Bloke I’ve worked with at three different companies over the last thirty years or so used to go potholing, he’s from Swindon, he told me about Swildens. Mike Wicks, anyone remember him? Red hair, beard.

*shudders*

Bloke I’ve worked with at three different companies over the last thirty years or so used to go potholing, he’s from Swindon, he told me about Swildens. Mike Wicks, anyone remember him? Red hair, beard.

🙂 a caver with a beard. That is just about all of them then. Cavers were the original hipsters

@ bearnecessities

I think thats the part where he doesn’t know how long it goes on for too, or if it even does open up 😯

Never seen the appeal of caving. Watching some of the videos has reinforced this view!

Respect to those who do this stuff – I know I couldn’t.

So there I was today in the cafe, feeling very STW because I’d just bought a Coframo stove-top fan. Lo and behold up walks Dudley Thorpe, the owner of Dragon Caving in Abercraf.

Anyway- there is an actual MTB caving trip possible through the Dinas silica mines. It’s a hoot. Wholly illegal, no rights of way that bikes are allowed on and probably contravenes the Mines and Quarries regulations. I managed to lose my bike in there once when we left them and went for a deeper explore.

This really sums it up.

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/upper-dinas-silica-mine-pontneddfechan-july-2012.t74419

Croydon caving club have a cottage we could book very close by, in Ystradfellte. Loads of MTB to be done in the area.

http://www.croydoncavingclub.org.uk/cottage

I’m pretty local, happy to guide but you will have to put up with a gentle pace!

Porth yr Ogof and all its delights are a whole five minutes distant! Can you swim? Can you swim well? Can you swim very well indeed?

The silica mines are a good place for a snorkel! Crystal clear water…

Dived in there too when the caver’s fair at SWCC was on one year. About 1995.

Age 14 we read a piece in English class that detailed a caver dying from lack of oxygen after wedging himself so tightly into what turned out to be a dead end hole that he couldn’t be freed. From what I remember they left his body down there.

Never really fancied caving much after that.

..and that completes my nightmare material.

If you see Dudley again, give him my regards. We became good friends when he used to bring his van out to the National German Caving conference just after I moved over there. It was nice to have someone English to chat to. We always used to stay at the Croydon hut when caving in South Wales, really liked that hut. More recently have stayed in the Westminster, but not for caving. The Silica mines trip sounds epic. Well up for that.

Porth yr Ogof, hmmm, had some fun swimming in there. The swim out to the resurgence is always scarey after all the fatalities there in the past.

The stuck caver you are thing of was Neil Moss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Moss_%28caver%29

He may well of been rescued if they had worked out a bit sooner that he was suffocating with a build up of CO2. By the time the rescuers worked it out he was too weak to help himself.

I was a BEC member in the early 80s my dad still is .Has been a member since the 1950s number 373 I think .So a club old boy these days .I used to stay in the Belfry weekends even though I lived less than 2 miles away ,it was nearer the Hunters !

Zot (Chris Harvey)is still around has not changed ,still bloody ugly and is now about 73 !!

🙂 Good old Zot. Him and Mike were always a feature of a Mendips trip. He really got on well with my German GF (he spoke quite a bit of German). One of the proper old Skool characters. Not a face you easily forget 🙂

It’s kinda weird that MTB riders who I would have thought are “in-it” for the freedom to fly along trails anywhere in the great wideopen, can also be happy spending hours crawling along dark tiny crawls where you often cannot even breathe using your ribcage (my most vivid memory – Urrgh).

Its like putting Football & MotoGP supporters in the same room, the universe shouldn’t allow it !!!

Caving is great fun .Welshfarmer ,The New Inn Priddy closed a couple of years ago ,but the Queen Vic is usually busy a few diggers meet on a Sunday night after digging near Wigmore

Used to do potholing in Devon as part of school activities, back in the days when they’d let a bunch of school kids do dangerous things. Carbide lamps and no safety gear, like roping together etc when going across crevasses, climbing etc.

I loved it, though was freaky when you get told that sign there down that way is a warning that’s it’s a literal dead end. No way you could turn around or back out and no exit. Were a few bits we did with really tight squeezes and just had to trust the guide that you’d come out somewhere and there’s a way out.

Was muddy, oddly warm, some impressive caves, lakes, weird insects that live in the dark.

I’d never do it now though. The thought of it scares me. Plus I’m not the skinny kid I was and just wouldn’t fit down those holes 😀

Caving is great fun

I’ll take your word for it. 😆

Very interesting but harrowing read here:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/what-lies-beneath-mossdale-caving-disaster-794268.html

Not for me.

Rule one in caving. Never, ever, read anything about the Mossdale tradgedy. Especially if going into a cave with even the slightest chance of flooding. That one puts the willies up me still.

Not a great idea to go into any wet part of a cave when the weather forecast is for rain or it has been raining for a few days!

I’ve seen the water going into Swildon’s though the caver’s entrance… Even if you could wait it out in a dry section I wouldn’t fancy it.

Is the phone line still extant between Bridge cave and LNRC?