Ogof Gofan – trip 1

Team: Sophie, Darren, Gareth, Will

Some of you may remember back in January I did a solo recce trip to Ogof Gofan with a view to working it into the next meets list. I’m glad I did the recce trip, as beforehand I’d read through horror stories in other people’s trip reports saying how they’d scoured the cliffs for hours with no luck finding the entrance, or some had found the entrance and made it inside, but then could find the way in or were turned back by the squeezes on offer. On the recce, I took a selection of anchor supplies and rope protection, but none of which really sufficed and so I made a mental note of what I thought I needed to return with to make the pitch better suited. The cowboy in me wasn’t too bothered on the recce mission, I was more keen on getting in and seeing what was on offer! At times throughout both of our trip reports I’ll be pretty vague about locations and descriptions out of respect for the process of entry. Like many caves in Wales, you can’t just rock up whenever and enter Ogof Gofan, you must get in prior contact with the park ranger and conservation/access officer to arrange a permit. There’s pretty strict provisions in place to protect this little hidden beauty. Maximum of 4 cavers per trip, the highest standards of cave etiquette are expected, and lastly there’s a bit of an unwritten rule to not post or advertise the exact location of the entrance. Perhaps it’s to keep some air of mystery over the cave, more of an adventure come mini expedition style trip with some good old fashioned exploration. Or maybe it’s to again minimise the traffic this cave receives. There are some pretty good videos out there on YouTube and other places of Ogof Gofan, with researching these and looking on the Caves of South Wales website you can pretty quickly build a solid knowledge of the rough area to be in. I’m also more than happy for people to reach out to me for information, KCC members or not, and I’m happy to help you with planning your trip or joining you to show you the way!

After the long road trip down it was fair to say we were all raring to go, despite the wind and rain that had been hounding us all morning. It was that bad that on our walk in we’d decided to have a look and see the conditions cliff side, potentially having to abort should it look like we were going to be on for some horizontal abseiling! Luckily, the direction was ideal that the entrance was sheltered and only the odd gust now and then came our way. Whilst the others harnessed up at the top, I made my way down the cliff, walking at first, and then a small scramble before reaching the ledge. I guess there’s loads of ways you could rig the entrance pitch really, but I went with my mental list following the recce trip and thankfully it worked a treat and it wasn’t long before I’d rigged and swung into the entrance – the first time on my own I didn’t have the balls to try the swing, this time I was a bit more confident! Or maybe I was trying to prove my worth to the calibre of cavers following me! Once in, I quickly located ‘the spot’ to get the famous entrance pitch photos and snapped away whilst I watched Gareth, Darren and Soph work their way to join me. The clouds opened with a hail storm during this process, Darren being the first to join a dry Gareth and I quickly by an even more soaked and hail battered Sophie. After stripping our SRT kits, I lead the way through the first squeeze immediately in front of you – not the worst squeeze of the trip but clearly had turned people away in the past! It wasn’t long before the four of us had made it to ‘the window’ which is another none accessible opening to system that can be spotted from the sea cliff if you walk further around the bay to the ledge. This is where a lot of people go wrong, they spot the window from the other side of the bay and think it’s the entrance, and then struggle to access it and give up. It’s not actually possible to sea the entrance to Ogof Gofan until your on rope above the rebelay, or if you have a drone and feel brave enough to fly it over the sea. The window chamber is notoriously greasy and care must be taken when traversing from the entrance crawl to the upper ledge. The further into the system you go the more you begin to see formations appearing, in larger quantities and quality as you go also. Another squeeze through the back of a pool means an unavoidable wellie fill next before a very short flat out crawl to the next decorated chamber. A few more smaller decorated chambers and crawling sections and you find yourself slotting into a tight upwards climb. When you step up, the refreshing breeze hits your head and you instantly get the feeling something good is coming up. A little scrambled is required to get out of the tighter top section of the many 2-3m climb, and you emerge in the top of mini crater shaped room with 3 incredible formation in the middle below you, surrounded by a stunning deep blue pool. Everywhere you look the formations just leave you in awe as they display such a variety of colours, shapes, variations not seen elsewhere where, and they’re everywhere! A traverse around the room and you pass through a couple of mites that reminds me of passing through a gateway. To left, the crawling continues down a rocky shaft, which emerges in another chamber with a download climb in the floor, the way on is to the right although I did explore the down climb that goes for maybe 4-5 metres before choking up. A little more crawling over some puddles and you reach the last chamber, which again is very nicely decorated, perhaps a little less wow factor than the previous but still stunning in its own right! Again, a few more little off passages to explore with more formations to admire, but ultimately they choke up and this is the end of the cave. It’s around 120m in length, but the combination of the entrance requirements to get inside, plus the squeezes/crawls, and then the formations and variety of formations, in my opinion makes this well worth the slog down the country to visit. I’ll definitely be back again and I’ll happily lead some future club trips here in coming years.

Once back on the surface, we were lucky to make it back to the vehicles avoiding the rain before heading off to fill the afternoon with wet weather activities and later gathered again at the St Govan’s Inn for a fantastic evening of food, drinks and socialising. An excellent day by all accounts!

(write up by Will, photos by everyone)