Llanelly Quarry Pot squeezes, scones + sponge

We’d planned a trip to Dan yr Ogof for Saturday, but the rain during the week forced a cancellation. I was a little surprised when Brendan suggested Llanelly Quarry Pot instead as it has a pitch with a waterfall, and a streamway at the bottom. It hardly seemed the best place to be after rain. However, after assurances that ‘the stream is unaffected by rain’, and Colin’s description of it as ‘a collector’s item’, Rachel talked me into going, and I’m very glad she did.

The cave is on the side of Clydach Gorge in South Wales, and has a particularly unprepossessing entrance—crawling under a bit of sheet iron into a loose pile of rocks that appear to have fallen from the cliff above. This was hardly improved by the recently wrecked car next to it, that appeared to have also fallen from the cliff. Once inside, the entrance proved tight and somewhat unstable, but we all made it safely to the upper ‘streamway’, which happily was barely more than a trickle. Our comments that the entrance was easier than we were expecting were met by Brendan saying ‘that’s what I said the first time… on the way in!’

The pitch (only about 15m) was rigged with no drama, and the waterfall turned out to be somewhat less than had been advertised, and we quickly found ourselves squeezing into the main streamway. We had a choice of upstream, leading to the Midsummer Night’s Dream Streamway, or downstream, the Midsummer Night’s Nightmare Streamway. Needless to say, we chose upstream first!

The streamway was lovely, with lots of interesting shapes, and a nice waterfall. The formations were very good too, including a few helictites, and lots of straws (although not as impressive as Ogof Capel). We quickly got to the end of the ‘dream streamway, which was a 30m duck. Brendan took Rachel off to model for his pictures while I braved the duck to try to reach the end of the cave. Unfortunately, nobody else fancied it, so after a few minutes exploring beyond the duck, and faced with a chamber full of loose boulders and no obvious way on, I returned without getting to the muddy wallow and the ‘blue sump’ promised by the survey.

After a break for photography, we headed downstream into the nightmare streamway, although time constraints meant that we couldn’t go all that far. The stream gets much tighter here, rather like the Crabwalk in Giants, but with much rougher edges. The trip was still fun, with some traversing over the stream, another nice waterfall, and some interesting squeezes. We turned back just before a bit called the Guilloteen, which Keith described as being very awkward.

The trip back up the pitch was uneventful, which just left the entrance rift. On the way in it had been tight but straightforward, but on the way out we discovered that there are no good footholds, the walls are too greasy to get much grip on, and unwary moves would send rocks crashing down onto the people behind. Rachel seemed to make it up without too much problem, but I got stuck trying to post myself, a tackle bag and my SRT bag through an awkward slot that wasn’t really big enough for any of us. After five minutes of struggling, I made it through, and then we waited another ten on the surface for the rest of the group to reappear.

All in all, a fun, sporting trip with a bit of everything: a pitch, some squeezes, a big duck, formations, and a lovely streamway. We’ll have to go back and get to the ends next time. We will also have to repeat the trip to Luigi’s cafe in Abergavenny, where we indulged in our favourite post-caving pastime; cake eating.