Visited with AndyJ and Sean Taylor
Friday the 21st of December, my last day in work before Christmas, Andy phones me asking if I want to go out over the weekend, I explain that I have hurt my back in work plus I was just getting over a dose of that norovirus, I tell him I’ll go out but the trip has to be a nice easy one as I really don’t feel up to anything hard. He tells me he has a couple of chert mines in Derbyshire he wants a look at, they are just walk in and walk around mines, as I hadn't been out for what feels like months I agree.
Roll on 10pm that night, Andy phones me back, there is apparently issue with access to both the chert mines he had in mind, so that was that plan out of the window, he tells me to just pack everything and we'll sort out a destination when he gets to my house the following morning.
Fast forward to 8am the following morning, Andy and Sean both turn up at mine, on time, this has to be the first time ever...
I take my stuff out to his car, I have packed everything, caving under and over suit, boiler suit, wellies, walking boots, caving AND climbing harness, srt kit, I swear, they don't take this much gear on a big exploration trip.
I have to stuff my gear into Andy's car, it's not easy but I manage to fit it all in, Right I ask, where we going, Andy says he wants to have another look Hopton wood (middleton stone mine) I tell him not a chance am I walking 15+ miles today, Minera is that suggested, I just lol and say it's not happening, Sean says what about Pandora, this sounded like a plan, so off we headed to wales.
The drive over to wales was slow, it was hard driving rain the whole way, driving across the M56, around Stanlow there was nothing to see but flooded fields, I had never seen anything like it. We headed on a little further and the question was asked “anyone know how to get in to Pandora†Well thank AT+T for internet enabled phones eh..
the entrance to Pandora sounded wet, while normally a wet passage in pandora would sound quite inviting, we just looked at the weather and thought No! By this point we were at queensferry, so we were doing something in wales, what safer option then Cwm, usually nice and dry and I had been a few weeks before and Marty had showed me a nice little fun SRT trip, I asked andy if he had rope in the car, he had just over 500m with him, I expected this to be plenty.
Two and a half hours after leaving my house, we arrived at the cwmorthin parking, it was raining, this was the first time in over 3 years I had seen it rain here, I jumped out of the car, and got ready, I wasnt going to bother with wellies or overalls, but it was raining that hard, I decided in an attempt to keep dry on the walk up I would stick my caving suit on and wellies, which I did, I stuck my srt kit in a bag and I set off up the hill to the mine leaving the other 2 faffing about in the rain.
I arrived at the adit, crap.... whats the gate code, and it came to me in a flash, not sure how I remembered it, I just did, I unlocked the gate and went in, the water on the entrance adit was knee deep, something I had never see in here before, There was a wall of watter running out of the roof, a grabbed my camera trying to shelter it from the wet and ran through it, I continued on until I reached dry land. I got my SRT kit out and started to put it on, a short while later the others turned up, they kitted up and off we went.
The route is 3 simple pull through pitchs and 2 traverses, we set of in search of the first pitch, I have no idea how, but we arrived at the traverse out to the second pitch first, a little confused we decided to start here, this was actually a bit of a bonus, cos the first pitch is horrid anyway. We headed off down making ouy way to the bottom, the last time I was in here I spotted a crane from above, but never looked at it from the bottom as the route to it was wet, well as I was soaked from getting in, I decided this time I would look. We got a couple of pics and then it was time to decide what people wanted to do. We had all herd of a area further through the mine but none of us had ever been, Dylan had given me some rough directions to the place a couple of weeks ago, so we decided to go there.
Off we headed, following the passage on and on and on climbing over a claps, I had been over this once before a couple of years ago, I dont remember it been this bad, the roof had completely de-laminated, but on we headed, we came to what I thought looked like what was described to be, it was, a pretty hard going scree slope, off we headed to the top, I must say, it was good to finally see it, but it want worth the walk up. A little mooch about and that was it, we were outside in the fresh air, it was also still raining, we opted to get back in the mine so A- we wouldn't be spotted and B- we would do most of the trip back to the car in the dry.
We headed back the way we came, back over the claps, but then decided to go up through the compressor chamber as after the scree slope, no one wanted to tackle the back-vain incline lol..
All in all, even though this was a last minuet trip and Cwmorthin was the plan C runner up prize, it was a good day out, BUT if I had to list the top 20 most stupid things I had ever done in my life, spending 9 hours underground when your not well would be on it, infact i'm pretty sure it would make the top 10, today I mainly feel like i've spent the last 6 years in a basement been the sexual play thing of mike tyson and hulk hogan. Kill me now.
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The big tip up is cool, not huge fun on the way up it. 200+ft IIRC.
Great report and great photos (obviously) ....
FYI:
1) Pandora can be waist deep at the entrance for a 100-200 yards even when it is NOT raining :blink:
2) Had you exited Cwmorthin in the quarry on the otherside you would have have had a VERY long walk to the car ;)
... And, stop being miserable lol :whistle: :whistle: :whistle:
Ian
whoa... on the group shot, i'm giving it loads of teeth and a big thumbs up.