Andy Sparrow, Euan Goodland, Paul Stockall, Seán Tidey, Will Puddy, Yvette Mayo

We all met at 10am on a beautiful (almost too beautiful for caving) autumn morning in the car park next to the SWCC hut. We all went to the club hut to have a gander at whopping great survey that spans the whole width of hut. With the two teams already planned we looked at the survey to get an idea of the route and the scale of the cave. After finishing getting changed the Cwm Dwr team (Andy, Seán, Euan, Paul, Will & Yevette) took the short walk to the entrance, while the OFD1 team (Laurance, Steph, Rachel, Avril, Garry) to the 30minute ish walk to OFD1. The Cwm Dwr entrance has a bit of a reputation for being tight, long and more or less horrible and we were all thinking about this as we started but it turns out it was no where near as hard as any of us remembered or imagined. We crawled out of Cwm Dwr into massive passages where your torch light seemed to disappear, instantly on a different scale to anything we see regularly on Mendip. We were now on the hunt for a boulder choke that we had to find our way through. Once we got there, we followed the most worn / polished route and got through with little difficulty. This led to more massive passage with fantastic features, features that would have been the highlight of most caves but in the vastness of OFD were just another stall. Navigation in this part of the cave was really tricky. Andy took a back seat and let the rest of us find our way. We had the survey for most of our route on several A4 sheets. The key is to ALWAYS know where you are at all times, rather than only getting the survey out when either your lost or you get to a junction. With a cris cross of massive passages parts of the survey look like a map of an American city. We soon found our way to the diver’s pitch. A spectacular waterfall falling down flowstone with a thick hemp rope. I freeclimbed up and set up an anchor and belay and belayed the rest of the team up. This led to probably the smallest, squeezyest part of the cave so far. This led, if my memory serves me correctly to the fantastic on your back squeeze exiting over a massive drop that you need the chain above you to get out (see FB pics).

From here we were into OFD 1 territory and soon started seeing other cavers and groups, we had seen no one else so far. The others were not waiting for us on the rocking boulder as had been the very tentative / hopeful plan. We carried on through some water (the first real water we had been though), up the shiny new staples (see FB pics) until we reached the wire travers. We found out through chatting to a commercial group in front of us that the other ChCC team were somewhere ahead of them. After a bit of a wait on the travers and loosing Andy who shot off to try and catch the others we slid down a chain into the streamway for a short distance (some of us, Euan, getting wetter than others) then quickly bumped into the others at last at the junction of the streamway and the entrance / exit of the high level / wire travers route. Hellos, handshakes and stories of the journey so far were quickly shared. A couple of us went off to do another lap of short section of streamway and then both teams headed to the exit and emerged, tired, wet but utterly triumphant into beautiful Welsh afternoon sunshine! We all headed back to the car park at our own paces. Then, after some more stories, that were probably already becoming more and more dramatic we retired to the Ancient Britton for a debrief. A fantastically successful trip all round.

Apologies for any errors above regarding order of things / routs / descriptions etc. I was not taking notes.

— Seán Tidey 7/11/2024