Episode 2 Extreme Wales with Richard Parks

I'm Richard Parks, former Welsh rugby international

turned professional endurance athlete.

And I push my body to the limit

in some of the world's most extreme and remote environments,

yet one thing I've learnt

is that some of the best adventures can be had right here in Wales,

on my doorstep.

Or should I say... underneath my doorstep.

Welcome to my big Welsh adventure.

2016 is the Welsh Year Of Adventure, and to celebrate it

I've set myself three very different adventure challenges.

Cycling south to north through the glorious Welsh mountains,

creating a new cycle route, the highest in Wales.

I'm following the River Teifi from source to sea,

running and kayaking on one of the longest rivers in the country.

This time I'm going underground,

caving in the Brecon Beacons on a mega mission that will

take me to the deepest point of the deepest cave system in the UK.

BLEEP

What lies underground is of huge significance to Wales

and its people.

This is Cwm Du, an open cast limestone quarry

in the Brecon Beacons National Park.

It was mined for hundreds of years.

At the industry's peak, 14.5 million tonnes of limestone per year

was extracted and exported from quarries like this one.

Vast scars on the landscape tell the story of how

Welsh people once depended on this, their country's mineral wealth.

Today the industry here is a thing of the past, but thanks to

its remarkable geology, these rocks are still very much in use.

Beneath me is an incredible system of limestone caves.

Their creation began 300 million years ago

when all this was a tropical seabed thousands of miles south of here.

As the tectonic plates collided,

these ancient seabeds were shunted north.

Huge pressures buckled the rock, thrusting it to the surface,

creating the Welsh landscape we see today.

All around me are telltale signs of the limestone world

I'm about to enter, home to caves

but also to rare and beautiful alkaline-loving plants

like this, Riddelsdell's hawkweed.

It may look like a common-or-garden dandelion,

but this species is one of the special ones.

According to Natural Resources Wales, who manage this reserve,

there are some species of hawkweed, like that little fella up there,

that are so rare, they are only found here in this quarry.

But the ground beneath this quarry

is where I'm heading for the next two days.

I'm not going to lie, I'm a little nervous about this challenge.

I'd much rather be climbing a mountain

than going deep underground.

There are over 1000 caving sites in Wales

and this is an exceptional example.

The Ogof Ffynnon Ddu cave system, or OFD for short, is the deepest cave,

not only in Wales but in the UK.

It runs through the mountains in the west of the Brecon Beacons.

This is a two-day adventure.

Day one - I'll explore the top section of the cave,

a maze of tunnels and passages with spectacular rock formations.

Day two - I'm on a 15-hour mission starting at the cave's top entrance

and dropping over 900ft to the lowest point in the system.

I'm meeting Gary Evans from the South Wales Caving Club

and Mid Wales Cave Rescue Team,

who's going to be with me as I explore underground.

Richard. Hi, Gary. How are you doing? Good to meet you.

Really good, thanks. How are you? Good, thank you.

Looking forward to this?

HE LAUGHS

I've got mixed feelings about it if I'm being honest! Yeah?

I'm a little apprehensive about it.

I'm not a massive fan of confined spaces. OK. I'd say I'm...

..60% excited, 40% nervous.

Well, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. It's real big in here.

It's a bit deceiving, isn't it? It is, it looks quite ominous.

Yeah, so it's got a gate on it

and that's really for a couple of reasons.

It conserves the caves and also, from a safety point of view,

it means you haven't got people wandering around in there, getting lost,

so it's a small entrance protecting over 60km of passage.

'Gary's kitting me out with essential safety gear,

'a caving belt used as a harness and a helmet.'

I feel like it accentuates my hips as well!

'As I feared, it's not going to be a walk in the park.'

We've got our baggage as well. Yeah.

So we've got some safety gear and some other bits of equipment.

I guess we could make our way underground when you're ready.

OK, Richard.

'Within just a few seconds we are plunged from bright sunlight

'into total darkness.

'All I can hear is the distant drips through an eerie silence.

'You'd expect it to be cold in here but it's not.

'In fact, this cave has a year-round ambient temperature

'of 12 degrees Celsius.'

We're just going to have a little sit down just here.

Have a seat there.

So we're in the cave, so we're just going to turn our lights off

for a few moments, let our eyes adjust,

and we'll sit here in the dark for a couple of minutes.

Wow. So that's pitch-black.

It's a very primal darkness, isn't it?

Yeah. It's darkness unlike...

you know, you'd experience in the normal world

cos there's always light pollution of some sort.

I'm looking at you but I have no idea if you're looking at me.

Are you looking at me? Are you still there? I am, yeah!

I can hear your voice. I feel I should look that way,

but you're right, it's pitch-black

and because there's no light, our eyes just can't adjust to it,

so what's happening is our pupils are dilating,

trying to find light so by turning our lights off,

it allows our pupils to dilate,

looking for whatever light they can find,

which means we're going to see much better

when we turn our lights on again in a moment. Sure.

So if you're ready... Yeah.

..we can pop our lights on and make some progress.

All set?

You still there?

THEY LAUGH

Come on, then.

'It's incredibly hazardous going,

'which I'm used to as an experienced mountaineer,

'but this is all new for me. I've never been caving before.

'Normally I can see where I'm stepping.'

Just take your time, watch where you're putting your feet.

Gary, I can hear the drips. Yeah.

Is it water that created these caves? Yeah, it was.

It's amazing to think, isn't it,

all these huge passageways formed just by water action?

It rains and that rain falls through the air, picks up carbon dioxide,

picks up more carbon dioxide in the soil,

which forms a weak acid called carbonic acid,

and when that comes into contact with the limestone, it dissolves it

and it's that that starts to form the passageways.

If you look at into the roof,

you can see right up there is where the passages first formed.

What surprises people is that the oldest part is the highest part

and we're in the newest part. That's fascinating, fascinating.

Shall we crack on? Yeah, great. Yeah.

'One of the first rules of caving is never enter a cave alone,

'and I'm just beginning to see why.'

It's like a labyrinth in here.

I can imagine it's pretty easy to get disorientated and even lost

so, just like above ground, I'd use a map to navigate,

I've got a map here, but cavers refer to them as surveys.

Gary wants to see how I'd cope if he were injured

or if I found myself alone.

In an exercise experienced cavers practise, he's asked me to navigate

through a maze of tunnels towards a chamber called Gnome Passage.

So where we're standing, there's seven ways on from here.

There's a couple of ways behind, there's a way up here... Yeah.

There's a way going that way...

Yeah. And then there's three more below us,

so you need to make a choice now and get us on track.

'Even with my survey,

'this is totally different from navigating above ground.

'This is an alien world and I'm not used to reading the rocks,

'so to me every option looks pretty much the same.'

I would say we go ahead and take the left passage over there.

OK. You confident?

Always. Come on, then. Let's have a look.

'As we head off, we find more passages with different route options.

'I soon realise how easily you can become disorientated in here.'

OK. I think...

..that we're there. Which means that...

..it's straight on and to the left.

You must have some stories of people getting lost down here.

A couple of years ago we had a, I think, 12-15-hour search.

We just didn't know where they were in the system,

so we had to put a number of search teams in.

Now's not the time for horror stories, I guess.

Well, you're doing really well so far, so let's just keep that going.

Cheers, mate. All right.

'We're only 200ft horizontally into the cave.

'I'm navigating in this pitch-black labyrinth with only

'our head torches to light the way.'

On the right is a little side passage we didn't take. Don't tell me, don't tell me.

GARY WHISTLES

Have I gone the wrong way? You have. Ah.

Ah, well. That's a really common junction for mistakes there.

People take the wrong turning.

'Gary takes control of the navigation again, but this exercise

'has certainly given me confidence if we were to be separated.

'I'm now able to focus on the raw beauty of the environment around me.'

Tell the story behind some of the colours that we can see.

It's quite interesting. It's complex, really.

We're seeing a lot of different things.

Some of it is the calcite on the walls,

that's that white you're seeing on the wall there, and also all

the mud colour, the sandy colour, that's caused by glaciation, really.

All of the material they dragged across the surface

has come in with the meltwater and flooded into the cave

and that's all the mud on the floor and on the walls that we're seeing.

'This cave was first discovered in 1946

'and there are still parts of this system

'where fewer people have stood than on the surface of the moon.

'In fact, caves are the only places

'left in the UK where genuine new exploration still occurs.

'The OFD is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and

'its contents are closely guarded.

'I've arranged to meet Alan Bowring,

'a geologist from the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority,

'and Claire Vivian, a cave warden with a special interest in conservation,

'who are going to tell me more about their work.'

I've learned from Gary that there are sections of this cave

that, you know, are like time capsules from millions of years ago.

Yes, definitely. That's very true.

There are a lot of very fragile formations here as well.

You know, one careless boot in the wrong place could

destroy something that has been busy growing for thousands of years.

'They are conserving calcite pools created by puddles of water

'which have filled and drained over hundreds of thousands of years.'

All of this rock is made of calcite

but we're seeing it in a crystalline form here,

all of which are slightly different.

There are some wonderful ones further down Gnome Passage.

'We're actually very close to the entrance of Gnome Passage.

'It's one of the cave's most impressive features

'and Alan tells me

'I need something more powerful than a few head torches to see it.'

Wow.

It's quite something, isn't it?

The famous Gnome Passage.

HE LAUGHS

That's massive!

I wasn't expecting it to be that big.

It's hard to articulate but you could easily fit the body of

a jumbo jet in there. Oh, you could use the whole plane. Yeah.

'This magnificent chamber is at points 30ft wide,

'30ft high and an incredible 260ft long.'

Alan, I can see why it's called Gnome Passage now!

'Before my eyes, hundreds of stalagmites.

'Huddled together, the cave version of lonely garden gnomes.'

That's...

That's an incredible feature.

It looks like wax, doesn't it?

Dripped over the rock. That's exactly what it looks like, yeah.

How does water actually create that?

The water picks up carbon dioxide.

It becomes a very weak acid and what that can do is dissolve limestone,

so it carries the limestone in solution and

when it gets to a place like this,

it releases a little bit of that calcium carbonate as calcite

but if you've got drip after drip after drip over a long, long period,

that's what you end up with.

How many years are we talking here? Like, roughly, I mean...

Well, if you can imagine a millimetre of this material

being added every ten years... OK.

It's a long, long time. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of years.

We could stand here for our whole lifetimes

and we wouldn't see much change.

'There's plenty to see on the floor of the cave,

'but when I look up there are equally stunning stalactites.'

It's so cool to be so close to them

and to be able to see the detail so clearly.

It looks like fabric flowing, doesn't it? Yeah, or streaky bacon.

RICHARD LAUGHS

I like... Can you see that? I can, I can.

And this tiny stalactite there,

it goes from sort of an amber into a dark brown

into a white and the tip is clear.

The clear tip is pretty much pure calcite and the darker colours,

those rich oranges, ambers, you say, or brown, that's iron.

'My eyes have been truly opened to this subterranean world.

'Natural beauty slowly forming here

'in the darkness for hundreds of thousands of years.

'I've been exploring underground for nine hours now.

'This cave is a conservation area, so no camping.

'We have no choice but to retrace our steps back to the entrance.

'It's day two and I'm still caving with Gary and Claire.

'Today I'm dropping over 900ft from the top entrance

'to the deepest point of the cave.

'Once in the system, there's no way to communicate with the surface,

'so we have to put a time limit on the trip.

'Experienced cavers take five hours

'to complete this demanding challenge.

'With a film crew and kit in tow, it will take us considerably longer.

'Within 15 hours we must re-emerge and call in to avoid a rescue.

On my way, I'll have to twist through the Corkscrew,

belay down Maypole Inlet

and travel through the streamways.

I'll have to climb the Diver's Pitch

then crawl through the Letterbox,

finally arriving at the bottom of Gothic Passage,

the end of my journey.

Let's do this.

'This giant hole was formed by an ancient river

'that once filled this chamber.

'As the water cut through the rock, it left this huge crevasse.'

Hi, Claire. Hi, Richard.

'Very quickly, we reach the first of many narrow sections.

'This one is known as the Corkscrew.'

You might be laughing now, being so small... Oh, I know, I know.

But I'm sure my long legs are going to come in handy at some point.

I can see why this is called the Corkscrew now.

There's just not a bottle of wine at the end of it!

'I'm 6'2", so I'm having to twist and contort my body

'in order to push myself through these tiny gaps.'

This seemed like a good idea at the time.

CLAIRE LAUGHS

Famous last words.

'I've literally popped out of The Corkscrew and can stand up again.

'I soon realise that the nature of the cave has changed dramatically.

'We have transitioned from dry to wet caving.'

WATER FLOWS

You know, we've come into a really different part of the cave now,

haven't we? It feels really different. I can hear the water.

We've got something interesting to show you just here on the right.

This is a gastropod.

To think that that would have been

living on the seabed around 330 million years ago is incredible.

'In fact, these limestone caves are almost completely made of

'crushed sea creatures and corals.'

That's really cool. Yeah.

Fossils and all. Loads of fossils.

Is that why you love this place so much, why you love caving so much?

For me, it's a big adventure, but it's also incredibly pretty,

incredibly beautiful, and the sights you see here, few people will see.

It's a bit like, you know, when I'm on an expedition

or when I'm climbing, you forget to take it in

and just, there's so much going on in here, isn't there?

Oh, yes, it's absolutely amazing.

If you just stomp through quickly, you miss a lot of what's going on.

Oh, yeah. So just taking a moment to pause, have a look up,

have a look around you, get the whole experience, is well worth it.

'Wales is equally amazing underground as it is above ground.

'There's a myriad of changing landscapes and each one comes

'with different physical challenges. Caving is a total body workout.'

RICHARD LAUGHS

I'm laughing because...

I guess it's either laugh or, uh...

..or start to freak out because I actually can't turn my head around.

My... Yeah.

'This is Maypole Inlet.

'It's a narrow gully

'that spirals and drops 36ft to a small stream

'that eventually joins the main streamway.'

Now, this is what I imagined caving would be like.

'It's a technical beast and hard to climb down.

'I can't stop thinking that it would be even harder to climb back up.

'I have the feeling that from here there's no turning back.'

'Right now I'm glad that Gary's on the end of my belay.'

Can I get a small slack, please, Gary?

Thank you.

'We've now travelled nearly 300ft on the vertical range

'down from the entrance.'

Well, I've...

I've never been this far underground.

This is a really significant adventure.

I didn't know what to expect. I...

I'm not a massive fan of confined spaces but the challenge is...

..sort of controlling the inner dialogue in your mind.

When you really think that...

..you know, we're deep underground here and we're going deeper,

the boy in me is just thinking,

what monster's going to be round the next corner?

And that monster is called the lower streamway.

This starts with a climb down a waterfall

followed by a long traverse dropping ever deeper,

all along an underground river.

'I'm roped up on this climb. Being so far underground,

'if I was to fall, it would be almost impossible to get me out.'

OK!

'If the water is dangerously high when we get to the river

'at the bottom, we won't be able to pass through it,

'halting our mission to climb down to the deepest part of the cave.

'Gary will make the final decision.'

Feet down and step into here, mate. Yeah.

This is a really key part of our adventure as we've dropped

into the lowest waterway.

And as you can imagine, if water levels were high,

this would be a really dangerous part.

We'd have had to turn around and climb all the way back up that

and out that way, but I'm in good hands,

Gary's happy with the water levels,

we've been blessed with a few good days of weather above ground.

We can keep going anyway, that's the good bit.

'There's a lot of water around me.

'If the level is above your boots, that means that further downstream

'the passage is flooded and too dangerous to navigate.

'This is a bigger and more visceral adventure than I ever imagined.

'The noise is deafening.

'We're all soaking wet and fatigue is taking hold.

'We now really are at the mercy of what's going on above ground.

'Welsh weather can change in an instant.'

That's water from an inlet being fed from the surface and

it's one of the few connections that we have with the world above us,

and the fact that that's flowing so heavily

means that it's almost definitely raining above ground now.

'As we move further into the streamway,

'I'm met by swirling pools of chest-deep, fast-flowing water.

'I have to do some serious clambering over the wet rock.

'But it's the water flowing over this rock that is responsible for

'the fantastic spectacle ahead.'

I feel like we're in another really distinctive part of the cave now.

You're right. This is called Marble Showers, all of this,

and here's the showers. Yeah!

And here's the marble effect. Yeah.

And this, the white striations we're seeing, that's the same calcite

as in the stalagmites and stalactites.

Formed in a slightly different way because all of the calcite

we're seeing is populating what were cracks. OK.

So what you had were cracks that had been formed

by some kind of stress fracture.

The calcite has crystallised into the cracks

and we're seeing the cracks now full of calcite. They're beautiful.

They really are, aren't they?

'I've been wet for the best part of five hours now.

'Luckily, I'm heading towards a drier part of the cave.'

We've just climbed out of the main streamway and now into

the dry section of the caves.

Having been wet for the last few hours, it's...

it's good to get in the dry part,

but the next section is called Diver's Pitch and...

..it's quite an infamous part of this route.

It's going to be a tight squeeze.

'However, the rainfall above means that it doesn't stay dry for long,

'and within minutes once again I'm drenched.'

Climbing!

'This is Diver's Pitch,

'a waterfall that cascades off a 40ft sheer cliff face.

'I'm used to climbing but I'm going to have to concentrate on this one.'

I thought this was supposed to be a dry part of the cave.

HE LAUGHS

'This is full-on.

'After my climb, I go straight into

'what cavers technically call a squeeze - and now I know why.'

Mate, do I get rid of this BLEEP bag?

Let me see if I can put it behind me.

Uh...

Oh, BLEEP!

'And as I've mentioned before,

'I'm not the biggest fan of tight spaces.'

BLEEP

'It's tough going. Really exhausting work.'

BLEEP

'And I'm constantly battling to control my growing anxiety.'

BLEEP I've got to get out of that BLEEP.

'Thankfully, I'm nearly at the end of this crawl.

'One final push and I'm through.'

Oh, my God, I can't believe I came through that.

Put your feet right... Wow.

This is actually pretty cool. Yeah.

You wouldn't want to come out here and have a fall, though, would you?

Oh, no. It's a long way down. It's definitely a tricky one.

OK. Thanks, mate.

Thank you. From the top they can get flaky.

They look a bit dodgy, don't they? Yeah.

'The journey from here continues to get tougher.'

Still ahead are a series of climbs, squeezes,

waterways and passages descending the final 200ft.

We have to push on.

We only have four hours to exit the cave and call in

before the rescue team are dispatched.

Yeah, I'm not giving up.

I'm going to fight it till the end.

Well, this is it, the deepest point in this cave system.

I've never spent this long underground and I never realised

that there's such a magical world down there.

It's been an awesome day and an awesome adventure.

'Nearly 15 hours underground, and a vertical descent of over 900ft...

'..past amazingly beautiful cave formations...

'..evidence of ancient creatures...

'..and through some seriously technical challenges.'

It was a lovely day when we went in there.

Hello, I'm Sima Kotecha with your 90 second update.

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