After and extra hour in bed because the clocks went back last night, we were up at around 8:00am and had breakfast. Karen, Keith myself and Jess drove up to Penwyllt while Boyd, Dave, Robert, Phil and Holly also drove up. Our party planned on a quick trip to the Trident and the Judge via Salubrious Passage while the others also planned the same destination via Edwards Shortcut and Selenite Tunnel. I headed up to the entrance with the key and had trouble getting it into the lock but after a few minutes trying, managed to unlock the gate. It was only just after 10:30 am - unheard of earliness for OCC! It was cloudy with some light rain as we had arrived at Penwyllt but had stopped raining as we got changed.
We headed into the cave and all met at the top of Gnome Passage and Dave and Boyd took some photos with Keith as a subject as we waited. After this our group headed down past the Wedding Cake and Corkscrew Squeeze down to Salubrious Passage. Soon we were at the Trident and Judge and decided we might as well have a look at Maypole Inlet so head via The Cross Road to the 4 way junction (President's Downfall I think it has been nicknamed after a SWCC Committee Member had a bit of a mishap there). We turned around and headed back towards the surface and had a quick breather at the climb up from Salubrious Passage and then headed for the surface. We met a party of 3 including Ben Stevens of SUSS/SWCC who I had chatted to earlier in Penwyllt Common Room as Boyd was show the others where they had been, during yesterday's trip, on the survey. We were back at the surface just a few minutes after midday after just over an hour and a half underground! There were patches of blue sky and a weak sun trying to get through the remaining cloud. We got changed, I had a shower, and we returned to the bunkhouse to collect our stuff and after saying goodbye to Jenny, who had spent the time working on her laptop, we headed for home arriving some 4 hours later at 5:15pm.
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