After getting repeatedly asked by a none member to take them on a trip to a mine, it was time to finally arrange it. The location was moel fferna slate mine, this was chosen as it is nice and easy to get about, mostly dry and fairly clean, the only obstacle to overcome is a rather short abseil into the place, I was confident that i could deal with this so the date and meeting place was arranged.

fast-forward to Sunday morning, the meeting place was a ley-by on the A5, with me arranging this i knew it was going to cause problems as i live 80 miles away from the place, and don’t know the area. I arrive at the location in plenty of time and I'm the only one there, i start to worry that i have given the wrong details or that i wasn’t clear enough with my information! sure enough, there was people at the wrong place, this was quickly rectified and we all re-grouped. We drove to the parking area, quickly kitted up before we got eaten alive of the million man eating flies, then walked the 20min walk to the entrance pitch.

As this was the first SRT trip i had been on with the club, and i had volunteered to supply the rope and do the rigging, i thought i better do a decent job, after rigging a back-up for the back-up of the rigging, along with a safty line and extra loop to clip into while getting on and off the rope, Ian decided to say he was using an electron anyway.

So Ian rigged his electron and was the first down, followed by Phil who did chance my rigging, but wouldn’t believe that it is probably the shortest pitch he will ever descend, he was quickly followed by Dylan who was down it in seconds, this then left me to get my guest down, this was quickly done and then i made my own way down.

once we were all down there, the trip was pretty uneventful, we did the usual tourist trail, Pump, Cog, BOD, then we had a spot of lunch before dropping down to the lower levels, this turned out to be wet, and as I had opted to go with the boots rather than wellies, i ended up with squelchy feet.

after a couple of hours of mooching and grabbing a few pictures, we headed back up the tips and over to the air shaft, i was first out, quickly followed by phil, Dylan and Ian, leaving me to get my guest out, a quick 2-1 pully system was rigged and out they came, i know a 5-1 would of been better, but as my guest is only 7 stone, it wasn’t really a problem.

then we headed back to the cars, stopping off to have a quick look at what remains of the surface buildings.

underground time was about 4 1/2 hours.

big thanks to Ian, Phil and Dylan for coming along.

some pics, unfortunatly most of them are of my guest, and a couple of panno's of outside

Excellent trip report.

It should be noted that you were the only one being eaten by 1 million man eating flies - probably as a result of the vast quantities of red bull you were sweating out of your pores