This was my first visit to this cave but I didn't expect to see dinosaurs at the entrance. As the show cave was shut we walked in through the resurgence and climbed up into the higher level show cave part. Obviously it was easy going in the show cave but got interesting when we rejoined the river as it is quite deep and fast flowing. We was carrying a lot of diving kit as Joel planned to dive the un-dived sump in the washing machine. The only real major struggle with all the kit was the long crawl and this was mainly because of the length of it as it wasn't particularly tight. Once at the washing machine we laid all the diving kit out and as Joel was checking the kit immediately found a problem. The bottles were 300bar high pressure cylinders and were not compatible with Joel's normal regulators. We therefore had to abort the dive, so we packed all the kit, stashed it in a corner so all we had to carry out were the cylinders and headed back to the surface. On the surface after a disappointing trip Joel was immediately bought back to life by the invitation from Sarah to a 21st birthday party in Cardiff where he would be able to meet Bea. Needless to say we headed straight over to Sarah's house for a all night party and for Joel to drown his sorrows.
After a extremely late start as we had to get from Cardiff to Tim's House and sort out gear we headed off down Capel. I dived the first sump as I had Joel's powerful dive lights and as Mike came through took a few underwater pictures. The same happened in the second sump and we de-kitted in the first chamber. I like this sort of diving where there is not much caving to do before or between the sumps. We wrote our trip in the log book as 'Hangover Cure' and carefully negotiated the unstable boulder choke before we were in the streamway. The streamway had some absolutely outstandingly bizarre formations. There were floor to ceiling straws, strange helectites, lots of stalactites and stalagmites all in an easy going streamway. After taking our time to admire the rarity of these outstanding formations we came to the ducks which were as far as we had planned to go on this trip. On the way back to the diving kit we again took more pictures and looked at the formations from a different angle. After negotiating the death defying boulders we were back at the diving kit where a exit was made. A thoroughly excellent trip.
Best viz so far. Excellent formations beyond sumps.