This was organised by Pete, attended by Pete, Ben, me, Mike & Louise, with local knowledge and expertise provided by Andy & Harry.
It was quite cold: Pete kept reminding me it wasn’t Africa – don’t know whether it was the absence of elephants, or just because I was freezing my nuts off, but I didn’t need reminding. I can recommend a 5-6mm wetsuit & hood (full kit £15/day from Cave & Canyon) rather than the 3mm I was wearing.
Saturday was the gorge (near Dinas Rock) – there were lots of organised parties. Water levels were quite high – jump 1 was a foaming white torrent – apparently it’s normally a calm pool where you can see the hole you’re jumping into. Andy jumped first, knowing the water, and then stood on the edge of the hole so we knew where to aim. Risk assessment mantra for the weekend: “don’t think, just jump!”. We descended the river, which varied from deep water to bumping over rocks, jumping various waterfalls (4-10m ish?) on the way. Pete practised forward flips, Andy and Harry did some bigger jumps. At the bottom, a 10 minute walk up brought us to another river, with a few more jumps, and a small cave.
Oops – nearly forgot Lady Falls – around 10-11m – Andy’s drone crashed and took a swim – he recovered it, but water damaged.
Dinner was in the pub: the Ancient Briton (where Andy & Harry were staying) had a 90 minute wait, so we went back to the Angel, who said they could serve us, but took about 90 minutes over it. Ho hum – how the Welsh love the English.
After dinner we returned to the WSG cottage to sleep – all quite tired.
Sunday was a 90 minute drive to the Blue Lagoon, Abereiddi (where Red Bull build their platform for lunatics wanting to jump 50-55m). We climbed/swam/traversed around the rocks (apart from a couple who walked/napped!), and jumped 5-6m into the Blue lagoon – Andy, Harry & Pete did the higher 10m jump.
Me, Mike & Louise headed home; Pete & Ben were staying on to mountain bike on Monday.
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