After our little run over Malvern on Saturday, Sunday was a caving day, and Brendan had offered us the tempting chance of a cave in a completely new area for us, Tooth Cave, on the Gower. Tooth Cave is well known for flooding to the ceiling in parts, so it was a perfect destination to take advantage of the recent dry weather. Excited by the prospect, we met up with Brendan and Chris at the SWCC hut at 10am to pick up the key and then convoy to the parking area.
Unfortunately, the first hazard of caving in an unfamiliar area soon appeared: we couldn’t find the cave! After an hour or so of wandering up and down a hot, sunny and picturesque dry valley in full caving gear we found an entrance that looked rather like it, but the key didn’t fit and the location didn’t seem quite right either—neither Brendan nor Chris, who had both been before, remembered a lime kiln and a neolithic burial chamber near the entrance!
After some debate and another half hour of searching and sweating, we eventually found another entrance, surprisingly similar to the first, but this time with a padlock that the key did fit. At last we could escape the heat and cool off in the presumably damp and cool cave. However, the cave had different plans and we quickly found ourselves at the top of an unclimbable, but quite short, pitch. Back to the cars went Chris and I to collect SRT gear (and more liquids), and another half hour was spent before we were finally ready to descend.
Happily that was the last obstacle, and we were soon happily grovelling through a maze of low, gravel-filled passages trying to find the main streamway. One interesting thing about a cave that floods frequently is that there were very few traces of previous visitors to give us clues about which way to go, so we had several wrong turns before we finally located the streamway. Perhaps surprisingly given its reputation for flooding, the cave so far had been completely dry, and the stream wasn’t flowing either.
We began exploring ‘upstream’ through a very attractive scalloped tube, beautifully photographed by Brendan, and quickly reached a deep clear sump pool with a couple of dive lines in it.
After stops for photography we made our way back and headed ‘downstream’. Again we quickly arrived at a sump with a dive line in it, the only difference was that it was completely lacking in water! Another dry sump followed soon after, and then a surprisingly long section of large and attractive cave passage. Finally, just when we were beginning to wonder how much cave there cold be, the passage closed down into a couple of tight rifts and a narrow tube that closed down into an awkward muddy drop. Sadly we’d left the camera at the first ‘sump’, so there are no pictures of this bit.
By this time we were getting a bit late, so we retraced our steps and crawled back out. All in all, a very interesting trip, and a cave worth returning for another look at.
On the way home, we had another little excitement as Rachel’s car Michella passed 100,000 miles! Japanese reliability!
Aw, how cute, you name your car. :love:
How many more miles will Michella (not a very Japanese name though is it) do with you I wonder?
Nice passage-way in the pictures, as usual picked out by Brendan’s excellent photography. Hmm, these consistently good pictures of Brendan’s are impressive and annoying (‘cos I can’t ever get the same results) all at the same time! 😉
I don’t know how many more miles Michella will cope with. She seems ok, except for starting in cold weather; although that’s because she’s an LPG car, who starts on petrol and then swops to gas. Because she runs on gas for the majority of the time, she doesn’t have petrol in her engine and hence, when I turn her on in the morning, she is a bit grumpy.
Doesn’t everyone name their car?
Yes, I remember her having trouble in Chamonix! 🙁
Yeah, my car is called “Beast”! :sarcy:
That was Sammy, Richard’s car!
I know the Gower very well, but I didn’t know there was such a cave – where is it, please?
Paul, it’s just off the footpath that leads south from Llethrid Bridge, perhaps half a km from the road (it’s marked on the 1:50k OS map, but oddly not on the 1:25k). The entrance has a gate, however, so it can’t be visited without a key.
Hi Richard – thanks for the info. I know where you mean and have passed by many times over the years and never known about it. I’m not a caver myself, although I have been on a couple of YHA courses in the past. How does one get the key? Is it accessible to amateurs?
The only key I know about is held by the South Wales Caving Club, and you’d have to be a bona fide caver to borrow it, with insurance paid up, and so on. The sign by the cave entrance suggests that the SWCC are the only holders of a key.
To be honest, it’s not really a cave for amateurs. You need a ladder or ropes to get further than a couple of metres, there’s about 400m of flat out crawling before you get to any of the bits in the pictures, and route finding isn’t easy in there. It’s also very prone to flooding if the weather turns bad outside, and you could easily be trapped in the cave by water filling the passages behind you (I believe people have been in the past). I wouldn’t recommend it for people who weren’t experienced cavers.
If you live in that area, and are interested in trying caving, I suggest you contact the SWCC. There are fantastic caves to explore in the Black Mountains that are much more beginner-friendly than Tooth Cave.
Ah, Ok – it sounds like a non-starter for beginners. Actually, I live in SW London, but have family who live there & I was enquiring more on their behalf than mine (though I might have given it a go next time I’m there, if it had been easy). I’ll be interested to hear if they’ve heard of it, as they’re locals. Thanks again for the info!