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