Great Orme with the PCG

I knew the Great Orme had a mine in it before I even moved to North Wales. And I knew it had a caving club associated with it. When I moved from Yorkshire to Wales, I had started emailing potential future clubs in advance so I would be able to hit the ground running. The Great Orme Exploration Society (GOES) did answer my email, but they were a bit snooty and suggested I wasn't good enough for them. That meant I then ignored them for years. In these years, though, several people told me that that was an atypical response; they seemed to normally be quite welcoming. I must've got the wrong person at the wrong time!

Through Cave Rescue I did meet some people from GOES, and they were indeed quite nice. I even ended up a few tens of meters inside their mind during a rescue training. I had missed a bigger training years ago because the date has been moved at the last minute. I was already registered for a race around the Great Orme on the new date, so even though I was quite nearby, I wasn't involved in the training.

On the eve of the North Wales trip of the Plymouth Caving Group, Lionel had contacted me about this mine. He hadn't been, and was curious! I sent him the link to the GOES website, and he took it from there. So on the Saturday of the visit of the PCG, that is where we would go! I was keen. We would only go with a small group as large groups are unwieldy and slow. Some of this group were PCG stalwarts, some I had occasionally gone underground with before, and two I had never met before. 

Lionel came to pick me up. He also had Tara, who I knew a bit, and Michael, who I had never met, in the car. We met the others by the entrance of mine; that included our guide for the day: Dave. He gave us a small briefing about the place, festooned with maps and surveys. But that never gives you a clear idea. He also explained how you get in; it is first 150 m through a concrete tube, and then 800m through an adit that goes from knickers-deep water to ankle deep water. Or maybe both add up to 800 m; I forgot that level of detail. And the recommended way of negotiating these is: the concrete tube on a little dolly, and the adit in a boat. But the group was so big we couldn't all use these. But I helped myself to a dolly; I thought the best time to use these was at the start rather than at the end. And I was the first one in! It was quite comfortable, but also a bit trippy, to lie on the bed of the dolly and seeing the sections of the tunnel roll by.

Given that I had done the tube in comfort, I did the adit in discomfort; I waded to the junction where we would all gather. And there I drank my coffee, and took a few pictures, until we were all there. And then it really started!

The entrance tunnel

Dave lead us into the complete the maze that this mine was. There would be absolutely no way we would have found our own way! But it was quite beautiful. And soon Craig, the other bloke I had never met before, took his camera out, and sent people around with slave flashes and such. I had done a lot of that with Big Dave back in the day! It was a trip down memory lane. And I also knew that this would result in very beautiful pictures. Quite unlike what I was quickly improvising with my headlight and automatic little camera!

Strange spiral staircase-like bit of the route, with a Laura for scale. Pic by Craig

It's a veritable maze! Pic by Craig

Stempeled shaft seen from below

Pristine artefacts

Dave took us everywhere and anywhere. Some of it was just civilised walking, but there were also strange scrambles, traverses with a hand line, squeezes and whatnot. And some small descents. I was wearing my harness with just cowstails and a figure of eight, and I was glad I did. The drops were big enough to be uncomfortable on only a belay belt! 

One of the descents. Pic by Craig

The only known wagon in there. Pic by Craig

Cave pearls

The place is a total maze, and without Dave we would have got hopelessly lost. But we were not without Dave, so he brought us safely back to the gathering point. And I set off towards the exit with Lionel. When we got to the boat I suggest we take it, but he pointed out that there were 3 people behind us, so in total there were more people than would fit in. He said we should leave it for the others, and I thought that was fair. We walked.

As I had had a dolly on the way in, I did without on the way out. It was a fair old crawl! I was glad when I reached daylight.

What it looks like when someone gets to the exit on a dolly

I suppose the pictures have done most of the work in conveying what it is like down there! It is difficult explaining in words what it’s like. But it’s a special place, and I hope to be back!