Allt Nan Uamh Stream Cave (Anus)

After our trip down Rana Hole a few days before, we didn't want to leave Scotland without having experienced two of its other finer caves, so we set off to do ANUS and Uamh an Claonaite in one day.

After the long, but pleasant walk up the hill, we reached the valley fork, where right goes to Rana Hole and Claonaite, but straight on/left continues up the valley for a few hundred metres more, to the obvious entrance in the left hand side of the streambed, only 50m before the valley suddenly ends at a rock cliff.

We were quickly underground, and through the entrance thrutch into some pretty spacious passage, soon reaching the main junction chamber. We were armed with the Selected Caves description (what could possibly go wrong!) which proved more than sufficient to explore every nook and cranny of the cave. We started by following the round trip, which ends up in a very low, dry flat out crawl bringing you out onto a ledge a few metres above the streamway and only 20m from where we started. We then explored downstream routes further, to an impressive engineering project at the most downstream point where the diggers have build a small railway for hauling spoil and an impressive sump-pumping system, well worth a trip to admire!

I must admit that my memory of the precise navigation of this trip is vague, but it is all tightly contained, and at no point are you more than 25 minutes from the entrance. It was an interesting and unusual cave, great fun to explore (we were underground for about an hour and a bit), and a nice warm up for the creme-de-la-creme that is Uamh an Claonaite.