OFD I to OFD II

A through trip from Ogof Ffynnon Ddu I to OFD II was planned with Brendan (DCC), Richard and I. In the end a metallurgy professor from Oxford also joined the trip. A really fabulous trip it was. We started off at the bottom of the hill and went through various places, some of which I can remember the names of … including …Diver’s pitch, the confluence, the letterbox, the Marble Showers Series, Maypole Inlet, Gnome passage and the Brickyard (possibly not in this order). Some of these places were particularly spectacular and memorable. The first Streamway was rather cool. The limestone in OFD is very dark (hence it’s name meaning “The cave of the black spring”), however, in this section of the streamway, lay a white line of rock throughout the entire passage which was almost like a white line on the road. The pools in the streamway in this area were crossed via the use of a scafolding pole across the pool; which we were very grateful of taking into account that we were still dry at that point. Then we had the letter box … this was a location where the cave continued into a slot about 40 cm high and 1.5 m long, situated halfway up a cliff .. it was amusing to see Brendan’s legs sticking out! Possibly the most amusing section was in one of the latter streamways where there were many pools to cross, possibly deeper than standing depth. We attacked these in different ways. The first approach was just to jump, the second approach was to bridge with both legs apart, the third approach was to bridge with arms one side and legs the other side, the fourth approach was to jump in as far as possible to get near to the other side, the fifth approach was to swing cautiously around whatever hand holds one could find. Richard strolled up to one particularly awkward pool … we were all interested to see how he would do it, so the three of us stood there and watched. He was not completely wet through at this point, so there was some incentive to keep dry; which he did. However after making the tricky manouvre, he took a few steps forward to join us and missed another large pot hole in the floor and went up to his neck! A very funny moment! Maypole Inlet was another sight not to be missed, the black rock had a limey covering in some areas that was bright white; a real contrast to the rest of the cave. Finally, we saw the trident and the judge. The trident is a huge amber coloured stalagtite (the biggest I’ve seen – 5 m long) and the judge is a wide bottomed stalagmite; less impressive in itself, but in a beautiful setting.

A fab trip! Apologies for the lack of picture; Colin with his trusty camera wasn’t present!