Ogof Capel

This cave is at the bottom of the Clydach Gorge and until recently has only been accessible to divers (and more recently not at all due to the choke having collapsed), however it was reopened by Tony Donovan et al. I first went in the spring with Tony and Adrian Paniwnyk and was so impressed by the thousands of fantastic speleothems that I decided to organise a return trip with camera gear.

After changing near the Drum & Monkey pub we descended a scree path to the bottom of the gorge where the cave entrance could be seen at the top of an iron ladder. The large phreatic tube soon diminished to a Tony-sized dig passage with a few sharp bends which eventually bypassed the entrance sump. 50m after this was the choke which had obviously only been re-opened with difficulty followed by the gate. Unfortunately the key had got gritty on the way in and although it opened the lock the key would not come out. This was a known problem and I had been asked to bring the lock out if it happened; the lock has now been changed.

The passage immediately after the choke did little to encourage the others who had not been there before, however it eventually opened up to a reasonable sized passage crammed with helis and stal.  A short side passage off to the right was even more wonderful. The way on was through a low wet section and up a thrutch into even more decorated passage.  On and on this went until we reached the canal section which involved a minor head duck which led onto the petrified forest.