Paviland, Gower

Shelob pitch 1

Paviland is bigged up in the guidebook as "One of Gower's best cliffs". Unfortunately this is true. We had some difficulty in finding the crag and the topo is very poor. This page is intended to supplement the guidebook with a photo-topo. The cliff is VERY vegetated: you have to search for holds amongst the grass and juniper (the picture to the left is a good example, but things do improve slightly on the main wall). Something worth mentioning is the in-situ "protection". Every good thread has been stuffed with a piece of old shitty knotted rope or shoelace. You can't often fit your own sling in the same thread, so you either have to remove the old thread or clip it and hope for the best. Adrian 14/7/02

Approach

Firstly find the correct valley. Some of our team took several hours to find Paviland via a route including worms head! On a previous occasion we didn't find it at all. The approach valley has a dry stone wall and a distinctive rocky pinnacle.

The guidebook description is quite confusing. At the bottom of the valley, there is a gully that goes down to the sea. Don't go down there - use a path on the right (looking out to sea) to get onto rocks overlooking this gully. There are some blowholes here and you can get wet at high tide. Now begin the traverse of doom: Step across a narrow, deep gully (with sea in the bottom) and traverse leftwards (facing the rock) for a few metres to easier ground. Keep going left and you'll get to Paviland Cave (The big cave on the right in the picture above)

When you have completed the traverse of doom, follow the purple line for routes 4 to 8. For routes 1 to 3 either cross over the gully (exposed) or follow the pink line past some blowholes

Topo

1	Armageddon VS 4c * 42m The top is loose and vegetated. I would remove the star!
2	Gimli VS 4c * 42m
3	Middle Earth VS 4c * 45m
4	Liang Shan Po HVS 5a ** 45m
5	The Ring HS 4b ** 42m Climber at possible belay
6	Babylon HVS 5a ** 42m
7	East Gully Groove VS 4c * 36m
8	Shelob HS -,4b 36m Pitch 1 is a garden. Climber shown at belay. Should have a star for the top pitch

Descent There's a path from the top of the cliff, but you have to repeat the traverse of doom. Alternatively, when we visited (July 2002), there was a newish looking abseil ring at the top of East Gully Groove. This is arranged so your ropes will get stuck.

Shelob pitch 2 (Climbers Bill Burt and Ed Cornell)