Stretchy's Caving Trip with support from Thorpe and Chessington

[stretchy]

Tired doesn't really cut the cheese when it comes to describing my state on Sunday 6th October at 07:00. Let me guide you quickly through the reasons why I was so tired. Firstly there was Friday, a day that started for me around 3:30am with me leaving the house at 5:45am and then this happened http://live.thorpenerd.com
So after that I drifted off to sleep in a Travelodge at the end of a runway at Britains busiest airport back aching like a pitbull in a tutu.

Till I woke myself up at 5am snoring. Saturday was here and I was awake, listening to Rob gently snore to himself. I lay there, trying to mentally mend my back by sending my internal repair nanobots to that area (I assume humans have these). 7am drifted around and I came to the conclusion that my nanobots were defective, or busy too trying to mend my brain. So got out the iPad and sat playing civ till Morgan awoke. Ahh one min, I was briefly describing wasn't I, sorry. OK so we headed off to Chessington World of Not Working Effects In Zufari and did a few rides there. I was pleasantly impressed with the theming at Chessington (or CWONWEIZ <in German accent> as I think it should be known from now onwards). The nerds enjoyed the Dodgems though.

and the Nerds liked the start of Zufari

Midday came and it was time for us to meet the rest of the nerds at Thorpe. Saturday was fun. We did rather a lot of mazes, many many of them. I didn't loose my temper with any short fat men who were trying to abuse the poor defenseless zombie miners at all. No that was someone else with a goatie.

So we had an excellent day and lots of laughs, saw a man chunder and visited the control room for Cabin in the woods and even formed a rock band, though our lead vocalists version of Barbie girl was worrying.

So we left the park at 10:38 (10 minutes after a certain Golf GTI did) and headed up the motorway, stopping at least twice, dropping off at two locations and still got to Coasters house only a few moments after that certain Golf GTI got there. This proves, without a doubt, that Dacia Sandero's are better cars than Golf GTI's. ...And with that bombshell it was suddenly 02:23 and I was feeding my kitties, who both told me off for being away.

That is why I was a little on the tired as we sped into the beautiful Wales, and in the morning sunlight it was astounding.

I am told its always like this near Snowden.

By the way, welsh trains aren't quite as modern as their English counterparts.

So eventually we arrive at our destination - Go Below.

My two cohorts on this adventure and myself donned our safety gear and then posed for this photo. As you can see, my mate Ade was protecting the wrong head with his helmet. this was remedied by the instructor.

The rest of our partied also donned their protective gear.

and we headed off in a landrover, where we played corners all the way to the bottom of a hill. This was no ordinary hill. It was a top secret mine ladened hill with really cool bits like this.

This section, back in times even before I was born, used to have rails going up them and mine carts taking slate down from the mine.

We then went through an eerie Forrest, as we walked our guide (the lady at the front) told us tales about how miners got their faces smeared off when they rode mine cars down 'inclines' inside the mine and forgot about the height of the tunnels.

Actually some of the trees were even eerier than those. Just think how good Blair Witch would have been if it was here.

So after about a 30 minute hike we get to the entrance of the mine. That small hole is what you have to squeeze through to get in.

You head off down into the mine.

Deeper and deeper into the darkness, a glance back to the entrance makes you realise that you are now entering the underworld.

Yes that is reflections of water you see in that photo. Most of the mine was under a small amount of water, which is why we all were given wellies. And deeper into the underworld we went. That small dot in the centre is the same outside that you saw above. It was at this moment I thought that My Bloody Valentine, in this, would be sooooooo scary.

By the way, the brightness in these photos are the flash of my camera. My camera also has a problem where it doesn't flash a cone in the centre at the bottom of the picture.

And still we went further into the mine.

Eventually we came to our first activity event. Here, as with all of the activities, you had the choice of 2 paths. The easy path, in this case a small zip line, or the hard path, that ropes coarse on the right of the picture. Here youc an spot my mate Ade doing the wussy easy zip line. I would like to point out that the water you see there is about 400ft deep and clear.

I had the problem that a lot of the photos that I took inside the mine came out blurred or too dark. Following this we went to a room and did a virtical climb of about 30ft

followed by either an abseil (easy route) or a ropes course and a longer abseil. In this piccy you see me doing the ropes coarse just prior to the abseil.

We then stopped off for a bit of food and a well deserved rest in quite a large cavern. Following the rest we encountered this.

This is an indoor river. which we actually walked up.

I really enjoyed this, the sound in the place was brilliant. Constant rushing water with echoey voices. After about 20 minutes of walking up this river we came to a floor of the mine where we were told to go explore. This was quite cool as you could go off totally on your own, into the pitch blackness of the mine and discover things like this ancient ladder

or this space invader thing

or this water filled cavern

The final activity inside the mine was to escape. This involved an 80ft climb up one of the air shafts

80ft doesn't sound much but it was quite a climb for someone as unfit as me. Here you see Chris exiting through the small hole at the top of the air shaft, being helped out by one of our guides (Erica)

Finally we had a 40 minute walk back to the Landrovers past the uber cool derelict structures of the slate mine


So what did I think of the whole experience. It was totally fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a bit expensive, at 50 quid a head, but still it was one hell of a good day out. I would like to thank Miles and Erica for being excellent tour guides and keeping us safe, and an extra thanks to Erica for all the background info and gruesome stories and allowing us to play corners.

I'm going to leave you with a link to their website. Go have a go. its fun.
http://www.go-below.co.uk/

All images ©2013 Me and my mate Ade

[planenut]

Great report; particularly like the idea of the caving trek. I presume that mine was not close to Betws'?

Planenut

[stretchy]

The mine was about 15 or so minutes drive from Betws Y Coed, but the meeting point was much closer, a few minutes out of the village.

[Coaster]

That looks like great fun!

[JoshC.]

Thanks for this stretchy; really looks like an amazing experience and that you had a great time!

[planenut]

great stuff. North Wales is beautiful up top, and intriguing down below. (I shall refrain from adding further comment)

[pluk]

I can think of nothing worse than being in a small hole in a big cave. Screw that.

Looks like beautiful place on the right side of the topsoil though.