Sterling Adventures

With the resent weather in South Wales ruling out a return to Tucks, Andy and I headed further West to a dig site near the South Wales caving club hut in a cave called Gents Dig. The cave is located in an otherwise blank area of the survey of the large OFD cave system that underlies the hill and therefore offers good potential for new passage.

After a slow start followed by an even slower potter over to the SWCC hut in the van we arrived in time to see a minibus load of students turn up and invade the changing rooms; we drank tea until they had finished and were standing around outside yorping. We changed and walked up to Gents to find it very dry throughout even down at the dig face. Steady work started with both of us mindful of CO2 build-up problems we normally have in the pit we are digging. This is the normal limiting factor on the amount of digging time we can do but a draft blowing through the cave kept the air acceptably fresh. The steady progress continued until we had a break when a planning error meant we ended up drinking Red Bull instead of orange juice. After the break we moved a lot of spoil very quickly (not sure why?) until water running into the dig stopped play for the day. We exited the cave to see the students walking down the hill from their caving trip. We rushed down to the hut and beat them to the limited supply of hot water in the showers before the slow potter back to England.