Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 8

North Wales Holiday 2012

Day 8 – 23.06.12

A few people stayed over at the club last night.  Kevin and Charlotte were there and were planning a trip into Pierre's Pot - the lower section.  There is a tight squeeze that leads to this section and I've looked at it in the past and don't fancy it at all!!!  Tim has been desperate to do this for ages so he went caving with them and I decided I would go to Wookey Hole - not exactly caving but I have been wanting to go there since I started caving.

The giant - A Stalagmite Boss

St Michael's Mount!

The Wookey Hole Witch that was turned to stone!!

The River Axe

An Elephant!

Cave Aged Cheddar

Chamber 7

Chamber 8

Chamber 9

Just in case someone falls in!!

Cave aged wine

Wookey Hole Resurgence

The Cave Diving Museum

The Cave Diving Museum

Back at the caving club after some lunch and a drink we headed off home.  Shame for the holiday to end but we have had a great time away.  Looking forward to Doughnut Bunny coming home tomorrow.

Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 7

North Wales Holiday 2012

Day 7 – 22.06.12

Plenty of rain about today!  We left the caravan site around 10am and made our way to Llangollen and on to Shrewsbury.  We stopped in Shrewsbury for lunch and to get some information about places to stay when we are on our ringing holiday in September.

We then continued down to Chepstow and over the old bridge and on to Bristol for a Toby Carvery at Almondsbury.  We had checked out local Friday ringing practices and had decided that we would go to Compton Martin.

Compton Martin Church

After the practice we made our way to the Wessex Cave Club to stay the night.

Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 6

North Wales Holiday 2012

Day 6 – 21.06.12

Well rain was forecast for today so we hadn’t made any plans.  We had a lazy morning and then decided to look for a bakery to have a pasty for lunch and have a look around Prestatyn, while it was still dry.  We had a look round the town and managed to find bakery and somewhere to sit for lunch.  We then walked down towards the sea, the tide was on so there was no sign of any sand!!  We also found a crazy golf course so had a game.  We got back to Rhyl just in time as the rain started!

Crazy Golf

Tim's Go

My Go

We had a look at what ringing practices were on and decided that we would go to Halkyn.  After getting rather lost we finally arrived at the church at 20:00 to find no other cars, no lights on and no sound of bells!!! We had also seen that Pulford also had a practice on a Thursday, so we made our way there.  We arrived at about 20:20 to hear the sound of the bells being rung.  There were a lot of other visiting ringers there, including a few learners – we rang some Pain Hunt, Grandsire and Plain Bob.

Halkyn Church

Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 5

North Wales Holiday 2012

Day 5 – 20.06.12

Today we had planned a caving trip with a local caving club the plan was to go into Poachers Cave near Cilcain with a local leader.

Trip Report

Date: 20.06.12

Cave: Poachers Cave

Location: North Wales

Group: Ian, Tim, Sas, Victoria, Richard, Dylan and Katie

We all met at Cilcain Bridge, the trip was led by Ian, the other cavers were Victoria who has been caving a year, Richard who was on his third trip with the club, Dylan who had mainly caved in Yorkshire, Katie who was on her first trip, Tim and Myself.

Poachers Cave is also known as Ogof Hen Ffynnonau (Cave of the Old Spring). Named as Poachers Cave by Northern Pennine Club (NPC). The cave was discovered in 1978 and is 900m long. The entrance was excavated by NPC along a boulder and clay-filled natural rift. A few metres from the entrance, a 3m pitch in the floor enters the old Dyer's Adit, a short blind mine passage. A small hole in the floor of this adit gave access to the cave which began as a hands-and-knees crawling passage. The passage soon became high enough to walk/stoop. About 200 metres from the entrance, we crossed a Rock Bridge in the floor. Below this is a pot which offered an alternative route down to the lower series. Past the Rock Bridge, the passage ascended, widened and then opened out in the wall of the main stream passage. The slope down to this main passage had a hole on the left amongst boulders which also leads to the lower series. We ignored that passage and carried on walking upstream, the roof lowered at a couple of points where it was necessary to crawl in the stream, but beyond was the passage was high enough to walk along the meandering streamway until we reached the Main Chamber. This contained a large stalagmite boss, Chandelier and other formations. The route continued at the far side of the chamber passing interesting formations and terminates where it became too low. This point was directly under the parking area at Cilcain bridge! We came back along the streamway to the main chamber and took a turning on the left to climb up next to the boss. This led to a low crawl and a slide in the mud bank back into the streamway. We carried on back up the streamway to the previously mentioned turning amongst some boulders. We descended into the lower series. We left the streamway and found ourselves in extremely wet muddy passages, after a crawl in the gloopy mud and a climb down an awkward rift we reached a waterfall which was another inlet from the river on the surface. Back up to the streamway of the lower series we had an opportunity to clean off a bit. It was a good job we had done most of the photos we wanted because Tim forgot about the camera being in his pocket and lay in the water!!! Consequently it’s not working – Think it will need quite a bit of time to dry out!! We made our way back to the main streamway and headed out of the cave. A good trip and Ian provided some detailed information on the way round about the cave and it’s formation.

Route through Poachers Cave

Streamway

Some of the few formations

The Chandelier

The Waterfall in the lower series

Me negotiating a slippery awkward rift climb.

After getting changed, saying out thanks to Ian we sat and had some lunch and decided what we were going to do next.  We made our way to Dyserth as there was a waterfall marked on the map.  It was a 70ft high waterfall with a bridge you could cross the river to get a better view of it.  We sat and had an ice cream and I wrote portcards to my family.

Dyserth Falls

Both feeling rather shattered we made our way back to the Holiday Park to get properly clean after our caving trip and then had a lazy rest of the afternoon.  This evening we had planned to go to Rhyl church for their ringing practice, so we sorted some dinner and got ourselves ready to go out.  The ringing practice was interesting!  They had a couple of learners which was nice to see but 15 mins into the practice one of them broke the stay on the Tenor!!!  We ended up ringing the middle (miserable sounding) 6 for the rest of the evening.  They mainly rang rounds, a little plain hunt and some jump call changes.  There were some of the Bodelwyddan ringers there so it was nice to see familiar faces.  They finished the practice early so they could remove what was left of the broken stay – Tim and I joined them to go and have a look at the bells.

Rhyl Church

Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 4

North Wales Holiday 2012

Day 4 – 19.06.12

Quite a slow morning today – think yesterday was quite tiring.  We looked at the weather forecast and decided our plans for climbing Snowdon Thursday were looking slightly iffy as rain was due!  We thought we had better get a move on as it was looking better for today.  We set off to Betws – Y – Goed for some lunch and post cards, we also wanted more information about going up Snowdon.  By now it was about 12:30 and we thought it was now pushing it a bit to go on foot if we were planning to go ringing tonight.  We decided that we would go to Llanberis and see if we could get the train up instead.  The next available one was at 17:00 so that was not going to be possible.  We went across the road to have a look at the electric mountain to see if we could join a visit in there – once again – the next available one was at 16:00!!

Electric Mountain

Feeling a bit fed up at our lack of success we decided to drive around the bottom of Snowdon instead taking photos of various views of the summit.  It was a nice scenic drive but just a shame we didn’t manage to get the views from the top!!  If the weather improves for Thursday we may see if we can have another try!

Snowdon - From the Rangers Path Side

Llyn Cwellyn

Snowdon - from Rhyd Ddu

Rhyd Ddu Train Station

Rhyd Ddu Train Station

Snowdon - from Watkin Path Route

Snowdon - From the view point

We next headed for Swallow Falls – Four waterfalls with a well maintained path and viewing platforms.

Swallow Falls

By now we were getting hungry so made our way to a pub in Bodelwyddan where that evening we were planning to join the local church’s ringing practice.

Bodelwyddan Church

The ringers were all very friendly and welcoming.  They were a band that mainly seemed to ring round and call changes and occasionally a bit of plain bob.

Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 3

North Wales Holiday 2012

Day 3 – 18.06.12

Well after thinking we were going to be lucky and have the place to ourselves – we were wrong – At 1am we were woken by someone showing some other visitors round and turning the lights on!!

We set off in good time this morning and made our way to Wales over the new bridge and up to Builth Wells.  We sat by the river Wye and had some lunch and then had a look round the town.  We found the most amazing antiques shop – well not really sure shop is the right word, it was more an antiques church!  Tim says it was a hoard!  We had a good look round to see what was on offer!!

We then set off through Mid Wales through the beautiful countryside making our way to lanfylin to visit Pistyll Rhaeadr (translated to Falls Waterfall!) that was near by.  It is 80m high and is the tallest single drop waterfall in the UK.

Pistyll Rhaeadr

Pistyll Rhaeadr

After a drink in view of the waterfall we did the last bit of the drive to the Robin Hood Holiday Park near Rhyll.  We arrived to the Park around 19:00.  It took us about 15 mins to find the reception and by then it was shut!!  We eventually found where to check in and we were finally able to relax.

Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 2

Holiday - North Wales 2012

First thing Tim checked my car over and found I needed my front two tyres replacing!! While Tim did a couple of other jobs I went to see Dad, braved Tesco and then dropped my car in to Kwik Fit to make it legal to drive to the Mendip Hills.

Eventually we got on our way. We are staying over night in the Wessex Cave Club that we are members of. When we arrived there were still a few members around from their weekends caving efforts so we chatted a while before Kermit arrived. We had to meet up with Kermit to collect the Fleece caving undersuit I got Tim for his Birthday.

Tim and his new undersuit

We decided not to go caving but to have dinner instead and then passed the evening playing cards!! We were the only ones staying by the looks of it so we should have a peaceful night!

Downstairs Dormitory

Holiday - North Wales 2012 - Day 1

Holiday - North Wales 2012

Day 1 - 16-06-12

Went down to Portland to take Doughnut Bunny on his holiday to Tim's Mums.  Doughnut was quite excited to meet is new friend Rodney and they seemed to get on well straight away.

Doughnuts run and hutch in the garden

(from Left to Right) Rodney and Doughnut

We then set off to meet some people we met during our Derbyshire caving holiday to take them into one of the Portland caves. 

Tim's Trip Report:

A first experience of Portland caves for Andrea and Daz, travelling down to Portland from Lincolnshire for the weekend and a first caving trip for John and Cheryl.  The trip ahead promised to be something very different to the Northern systems of Yorkshire and Derbyshire which Andrea and Daz were used to!

After some typical caver faffing (mostly caused by my phone battery dying) we all met in the lay-by behind the YOI were kitted up by 10:45.  The route to the cave entrance was fairly overgrown, however this had clearly helped to repair & stabilise the path since the heavy use by local outdoors education groups has stopped a few years ago.  The slightly daunting looking climb up into the entrance was soon overcome leaving daylight behind us. 

Quick progress was made to concrete corner, neglecting to take the first option of going to take a look out of skittle alley entrance.  It was also first mentioned at this point that this was a warm cave!  Four of us made the tight detour into Tibet to take a quick look at the moon milk and fine un-muddied walls whilst Sas and Daz (having tried to fit) waited.  Not a single rude word was uttered in either direction (how disappointing).

Back on the main route we progressed to the Letter box where all but Sas turned left and followed the route to the rather loose looking end of Letter box rift.  Dispite having done 50 + trips to the cave this was the first time I'd ever been here.  

Having completed the second detour, we dropped through the link into Guano rift appreciating the cool breeze and wider passage.  I quickly climbed up the link to Allotment dig to assess the underside of the recent blockage caused by drilling into the cliff noting a small section of cracked mud flooring.

Daylight was quickly found after a short walk along Guano rift.  The final climb up over the jammed boulder led to the exit slope which was rigged with a 'just in case' handline.  Myself, Andrea and Daz took a final detour, climbing up peer out of the window high up in the rift, noting the very rust spits.

          

All that was required was to descend the exit slope and take the obligatory group photo looking out across the sea, emerging approx 1½ hours after entering the cave.

      

A great time was had by all with John and Cheryl being new converts to the sport.  Despite trying to convince everyone to experience another of Portland’s underground delights (mentioning things like, having to cross masses of fly tipping, really muddy, very few formations to look at and horrific crawling on chert) we all decided to make the most of the sunshine for the second half of the day.

The group (from Left to Right) Cheryl, John, Sas, Amanda and Daz.

The Route through the cave

Crossways Village Handbell Ringers - RNA Dorchester Concert

Crossways Village Handbell Ringers

Dorchester RNA Concert

Crossways Village Handbell Ringers were asked to perform for the Royal Naval Association Dorchester Branch meet.  It was at the Trinity Club in Dorchester.  We were a few players down so we had to do a bit of a re-shuffle of where myself, Jane and Andrew.  Not the easiest of venues to play in as we were quite far from the audience and sound didn't carry well.  We played well given the circumstances and they seemed to enjoy it.  A few did come and join us to have a go for the last piece.

Caving - Wessex Cave Club Trip - Swilldon's Black Hole Series

Caving Trip with the Wessex Cave Club

Group of eight led by Simon.  We went to Swildon's Hole - in the cave at 11:00 out at 15:30 - Down the short dry way to Sump 1.  A nice amount of water flowing through the stream way, quite foamy in places - especially at Sump 1.  Through the sump and then turned right off the main stream way up a muddy climb to go to the Black Hole Series.  A series of crawling passages and boulder scrambles led to the Black Hole!!  The Black Hole is a 13m shaft that had to be 'stepped' over!!  Not so easy for those with short legs - rather a lot of faith required and trust in the rigging!  Great trip and really felt pleased with myself for my bravery!!!  Definitely worth another trip there to take photos of the formations.