Welcome to the second of our new monthly newsletters! There's been a great reaction to the last one, with lots of encouragement to keep this going, so if you have any content for future ones, please let me know. There's no need to write reams. Short pieces (complete with photos if possible) are great. Longer articles can go in a full newsletter later in the year. And don't forget to send us some Memories for the 100 Memories project.
CENTENARY WEEKEND - TIMETABLE

The Centenary weekend is fast approaching. There's loads going on, and even if you're not coming to the dinner at Wookey Hole, you're still welcome at any of the other events listed here, so do come along and say hello and catch up with old friends and make new ones!

7pm Friday 8th February. Open Evening in the UBSS Museum. Come along to the museum and library, meet old friends, take a look at some of the treasures in the society's collections, drink wine and eat some cake! The Stables are located behind 21 Woodlands Road, BS8 1UQ, near Senate House. The car park there is available for use after 5pm. Do drop in! Afterwards, there's a party at Hellie and Rob's, 30 York Gardens, Clifton, Bristol,BS8 4LN. Take some booze with you! They also have some bed/floor space available (see post on the club Facebook page).

9.30am - 12 noon Saturday 9th March. AGM and Talk. This is being held in the
School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SS (almost opposite Elmdale Road). Parking is available at 21 Woodlands Road, BS8 1UQ, or on nearby meters (for up to four hours). Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available from 9.30am and the AGM will start at 10.30am. This will be followed by a talk by Prof. Rick Schulting who will be looking at some surprising developments on the human remains from Aveline's Hole, the cave where it all started for UBSS. Three-line whip on attendance!
 
1.30pm - 2.30pm Saturday 9th March. Field Trip to Aveline's Hole led by Rick Schulting and Linda Wilson. This will include an opportunity to see the possible Mesolithic engravings in the gated section of the cave. Please bring your own lights. All welcome!
 
2.30pm - 4.30pm Saturday 9th March. Afternoon tea at the Hut. See the results of the recent renovations and catch up with old friends. Tea and cake will be provided! Anyone who is on Cat's list for coach transport to Wookey must be in Burrington Combe at 5.15pm. The bus will not wait for latecomers!
 
6pm Saturday 9th March. Centenary Dinner at Wookey Hole. Meet in Captain Jack’s Bar for the start of the evening’s celebrations. At 6.30pm there will be a visit to the cave which will include a drinks reception. For anyone who doesn’t fancy the walk up to the cave, the bar will remain open. Those visiting the cave will be back by 7.30pm and the dinner will start at 8pm and will be followed by the usual awards ceremony, so if you have anyone you would like to nominate contact
Cat Henry or Ruth Briggs. who are organising this. At various points in the evening, Elaine Oliver will be singing accompanied by Dickon Morris playing the fiddle. Last orders at the bar are at 11.20pm, and the bus to take those who will be staying at the Hut will be leaving from Wookey at midnight. Those staying at Wookey can then head over to the hotel bar.

Dress code for the evening is on the smarter side of casual, but essentially wear something you are comfortable in. Jeans have been banned for the under 18s, on the express order of his mother. And if you want to attempt the infamous Squeeze Machine, bring something to change into in the bar! Or alternatively give it a go in your posh togs!

If you need transport from Bristol to Mendip, please let me know and I will do what I can to put you in contact with people who might be able to help, and likewise offers to help with transport will be welcome, so contact me. Please help us out with the organisation by being prompt for all timings set out here! 
CENTENARY FUNDRAISING - 100 PLEDGES

Yes, you've guessed it, we're going to make a shameless attempt to part you from some of your hard-earned cash! Well, we'd be missing a trick if we didn't. Oliver Lloyd Fund Trustee Linda Wilson is going to take you on a trip down memory lane to 1985, and the sudden death of UBSS treasurer, Oliver Lloyd ...
Oversuits, helmets and lights purchased with funds received from the Oliver Lloyd Memorial Fund and the University of Bristol's Alumni Foundation.

I'd be very surprised if Oliver - or Lloyd, as he was almost universally known to members of the club - doesn't feature in quite a few memories this year. I've certainly got a few stories to tell, and if we're lucky, we can get Marco Paganuzzi to relate his experiences with Lloyd's haunted typewriter! For those who didn't know Lloyd, it's probably fair to say that he was one of the great characters in the caving world and his death left a huge hole in the club, one that needed several people to take on his various jobs.

Our then president, Professor Bob Savage, mindful of how university grants were gradually being whittled away, was concerned about the long-term viability of our annual Proceedings, and he proposed setting up a trust fund in Oliver's name, with the intention of providing in-house funding for Proceedings as and when needed. A trust was duly set up, with the UBSS as its sole beneficiary. I was one of the original trustees, along with Bob, Desmond Donovan and Trevor Shaw. Bob led the initial fund-raising campaign, which raised in the region of £15,000.

As Bob predicted, the university grant that used to go towards publications did eventually disappear,  but new technology meant that the cost of printing had gone down, and so the OCL Fund, as we usually term it, was largely spent on things to enhance production values, such as colour photographs and technical drawings. As time went on, the aims of the fund were broadened by a deed of variation to enable the trustees to benefit the UBSS more broadly, and the student experience in particular. A telephone campaign led by Andrew Atkinson and Helen Hodge led to the fund almost doubling in value and in the good old days it even used to attract a decent rate of interest and so was easily able to keep pace with spending. Both the original fund raising campaign and the telephone campaign led to various valuable annual pledges from members, ranging from one for £10 a year, to another at £200 per year that comes with the proviso that it can (for can read should!) be spent on alcohol for students to have a good time!

The fund stands aside from the UBSS main account, which is visible to the university and the students' union. It can only be used to benefit the UBSS and its members. The current trustees are myself, Clive Owen, Andrew Atkinson and Cat Henry (who recently replaced Bob Churcher as Bob will shortly be standing down as president). The fund has recently been the recipient of an extremely generous donation from Peter Standing, who was one of the club's student members 50 years ago!

Our aim for the centenary year (and I'll be the first to admit it's an ambitious one), is to raise 100 pledges to the OCL Fund in the form of standing orders to the fund. We already have several ongoing pledges to start us off, and huge kudos to Dickon Morris for being the first of the 100 pledges in our centenary year!

The aim of the fundraising is to future proof the life of the UBSS for the future. The club now receives no ongoing grants at all from either the university or the students' union. Occasional grants have been received from the University's Alumni Foundation, but recent changes to that body mean there is likely to be less money available for our sort of activities going forward, and so the club now relies totally on members' subscriptions and the OCL Fund for all its tackle and equipment, as well as other items. Recent purchases have ranged from oversuits, helmets, lights and other gear for use by students just starting caving to electronic surveying kit for use on the student re-surveying projects in Co Clare as part of the preparations for the next Irish guidebook.

The fund still supports Proceedings, as Bob Savage originally intended, and has contributed towards the cost of radiocarbon dating, as well as the drawings of the Picken's Hole flints that appeared in the last issue. The fund has also contributed £2,000 to the Oral History project that aims to capture as much of the society's history as we can in the words of its own members, in a major collaboration with the Department of History.

The UBSS relies heavily on the generosity of members and friends of the society to add value over and above membership subscriptions, and it provides a very direct way way for our older members to support the activities of the new generations of the student club , taking forward the fun and sense of adventure that we've all gained from our connection with UBSS, so I hope you'll all forgive the shameless plug for the fund, and won't mind too much if I go round rattling the metaphorical collecting tin during the year! For my generation, Lloyd did a huge amount to help student caving and the wider society, and his name lives on in the fund set up in his memory! If anyone would like more information or would like to  set up an annual pledge, make a one-off donation or remember the OCL Fund in your will, please contact me for further details. There will also be pledge slips available for completion at the AGM and Dinner on 9th March. The fund benefits from the tax advantages of being viewed by the Inland Revenue as a charitable trust, so lifetime donations and pledges can be gift aided, and the fund is regarded as a charity for bequests in wills.
RESCUE TRAINING WEEKEND

Lauren Manton provides an account of the recent rescue training day held on a snowy day at the Hut with members of the Mendip Cave Rescue Organisation.



On the 3rd February 2019, ten UBSS cavers, including four members of the Wilderness Medicine Society, made their way through the snow to Goatchurch Cavern for a rescue training day, run for us by Mendip Cave Rescue (MCR). We began by making our way to the boulder chamber where the casualty, a manikin named Archibald, was in quite a bad way.

The poor guy was lying with his back over a rock, complaining of pains to his back and leg. Preliminary checks of the casualty were made, under the watchful supervision of the MCR mentors and after discovering Archibald had potentially broken his leg, we proceeded to put the leg into a splint and then began to get the stretcher ready. After eventually manoeuvring Archibald onto the awaiting stretcher, we strapped him in as instructed and covered him with a survival blanket to keep him warm.

Then the fun began to try to successfully get Archibald out of the cave. We began by putting three people either side of the stretcher and one additional person was in charge of his head. The remaining cavers went up ahead of the stretcher forming a human conveyor belt, along which the stretcher could travel. We managed with the stretcher quite well. Some of the more challenging episodes occurred when we tried to move the stretcher round corners and over the top of narrow rifts as if the stretcher fallen down the rifts it would have been extremely awkward to try and manoeuvre it out again.

Eventually, we got to just before the exit of the cave and had to prepare a Z-Rig in order to hoist the stretcher up the more vertical section of cave and out into the open where the emergency services would have taken over had the rescue been real.

Many thanks to Wayne Starsmore, Claire Cohen and Roz Simmonds from Mendip Cave Rescue who gave us such a fun and informative day.

The rescue training was attended by Lauren Manton, Ashley Gregg, Dickon Morris, Si Hadfield , Dan Heins, Charlotte Lyon-Dean, Caitlin McConnell, Elaine Oliver, Kack Thomas, James Rowe,
TRIP REPORT - GB CAVERN

                                 Formations in GB Cavern, photo by Alan Gray

Lauren Manton gives an account of a recent wet trip to that old UBSS Mendip favourite, GB.

On a cold and slightly soggy Friday evening, four of us (Lauren Manton, Si Hadfield, Tabby Conole and Chris Hill) made our way to GB for a short evening trip. We set off at a reasonable time and made it into the cave around 8.30pm.

After passing some bats near the entrance, we made our way on past the entrance to Devils Elbow and soon arrived at the Gorge. Here the deafening sound of the river and waterfall reflected the amount of rain that had occurred a few days before. We continued downwards through Main Chamber and then across the Bridge, through the Loop and then on up to the sight point from where we looked back over Main Chamber and Simon pointed out some impressive stalactites and calcite formations.

After ogling Main Chamber for long enough, we proceeded on towards the Ladder Dig. Here we then ascended into the small wriggle passage towards the duck. Unfortunately upon arriving at the duck, time meant that we could not continue any further, so we made our way back down the ladder and started up the river towards the waterfall. When we got there, I was initially hopeful that we may still be able to make our way up, but before too long that idea was shattered by the sheer volume of water cascading down. This meant that the required step across the waterfall in order to continue up the other side was nearly impossible.

Now very wet, we backtracked and reversed our original route into the cave. We soon made our way through the Loop and back to the Bridge and from here we followed the top half of the river back to where the exit route lay to our left. Following this passage back through the cave, we made our way out and into the night.
100 MEMORIES - DIVING IN LITTLE NEATH RIVER CAVE


Little Neath Rver Cave. Photograph by Pete Glanvill

As part of the ongoing UBSS - 100 Memories project, Graham Mullan recounts a trip from the 1970s which formed an played an important part in the exploration of Little Neath Rive Cave.

In 1973, Sump 6 in Neath was finally passed by UBSS member Aldwyn Cooper and it was realised that Sump Passage had already bypassed Sump 6 and that the way on was a previously overlooked outlet passage in Sump 6A, really Sump 7.

The passage was pushed inconclusively by Adrian Wilkins who had a sizeable support team but also something of an epic, although I forget why as this was about the only diving trip that I didn’t take part in at that time, Not only did Adrian seem reluctant to have another crack at it but desire amongst the sherpas also seemed lacking.

By that time, I had left uni for the world of work and Bob Churcher was with the army. Neither of us had been on Adrian’s dive trip, but Bob was keen to take a look himself and I was happy to help carry the kit although a team of two seemed a touch on the small side. Bob, however, found that part of his duties, if stretched a bit, allowed him to take squaddies away on caving trips and that the army would even pay his expenses for undertaking this ‘training.’ So one weekend in May 1973 Bob turned up in Bristol with two squaddies in tow and we deemed this enough for a team.

Neither of them had been caving before, of course, so on the Saturday we gave them a short trip on Mendip to familiarise them with the underground and on Sunday we set off for South Wales and Neath Sump 7.

After the usual stop at the village shop in Ystrafellte and the equally usual assurance to the lady there that we wouldn’t dream of doing anything dangerous, we drove down to Bridge Cave and got changed. Bob dived in through the Bridge Cave sump and I took the rest of the hot-shot Sherpa party in through Flood Entrance to meet him. I’m not sure they were awfully impressed, but they got through and between the four of us we carried all his kit down to Sump 2.

In no time at all, Bob had kitted up and vanished into the water and I now had two slightly unhappy and tired novices to look after for the next few hours. It seemed unlikely that they would have been keen on any of the usual waiting activities of digging in Gyrn Fawr or exploring in the Old World series so I dug myself a trench in the gravel, got in and promptly fell asleep.

Many hours later, I was woken from sleep by people moving around and looked up to see Bob crawling out of the sump. He was knackered and dumped his diving kit as soon as he hit airspace and so I crawled down to retrieve it. He and I packed it away while he recovered and the rest of team walked up and down a bit to get warm. As we finished and were about to set off out he turned to me and said, “Oh by the way, it went.” That was all I got out of him until we were out.

Despite being so knackered, Bob was still in better nick than his two squaddies and so a little re-organisation of duties was needed. In short, I carried out a full twin set of diving kit and Bob cajoled and harassed his two charges into keeping moving. Well, he probably wouldn’t have got his expenses if he hadn’t returned them in reasonable working order.

Two years later we returned with larger parties, the streamway beyond Sump 7 was explored and the inevitable Sump 8 dived. This ended in a choke of large gritstone boulders at a depth of something over 20m and has not been passed during the following 30 years to now.
 
CONGRATULATIONS!

Cat and Edward in Jug Holes, Derbyshire.
Congratulations are due to Cat and Adam Henry on the birth of Edward Geoffrey on 2nd March!

Cat's long-awaited kitten weighed in at 8 pounds 11 ounces and was promptly taken caving the following day by his mother who had gone stir-crazy after a day and a half in hospital.
TRAVELS BENEATH THE EARTH: 100 YEARS OF THE UBSS

History interns Nick Stromberg and Lena Ferriday

Thanks to generous grants from the Oliver Lloyd Memorial Fund and the British Cave Research Association, a major collaboration is underway between the Department of History and UBSS, which aims to collect memories from some of the UBSS’s longest-standing members in order for them to be preserved for posterity and to also collect memories of adapting to life in the darkness, in accordance with project leader Dr Andy Flack’s present research themes.

Andy received expressions of interest from several potential interns from the history department who will be employed to work on the project over summer of which four were selected for interview. Andy and Linda interviewed the candidates and are delighted to announce that 3rd year student Lena Ferriday and masters student Nick Stromberg have now been appointed.

Nick says: "
I’m currently doing a History MA at Bristol after graduating from Cambridge in 2017. My particular field of interest is Environmental History - I love exploring how histories of the human and natural worlds interact in interesting ways. I’m really excited to be part of the UBSS Centenary project. Collecting oral testimonies from members of the society will provide us with a unique and fascinating record of life underground, one that I hope we can share with a wide audience in the future. I also hope I can make it into a cave before the end of the year! "

Lena says: "I’m a Third Year History student, currently focusing on the relationship between people and landscapes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how places are made meaningful and evoke emotions as they are lived in. It is for this reason that I became interested in the project, and I am looking forward to speaking to people about their experiences of caving, to uncover more about the connection between caver and cave, particularly the sensory dimension of the caving experience, and the emotional attachment to the natural landscape that is evoked through an activity as corporeal and dynamic as caving. "
GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT - PLUG SOCKETS FINALLY INSTALLED IN THE TACKLE STORE!

Several years ago, when the UBSS tackle store finally moved back into the newly-refurbished Richmond Building, the home of the Students' Union, we were promised that some plug sockets would be installed so that lights could be charged. Well, it took a little while, and several generations of tackle warden, but thanks to the persistence of Ben Pilling and Christie Moore from the Union, we now have our long-waited plug sockets. Persistence pays!
T5 BARROW - THE LAST SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD

Section drawing of T5 round barrrow.

Work on the society's last unpublished excavation has started, only 50 years after the work ended. UBSS Museum Curator Linda Wilson talks about the project.

The UBSS has always had an excellent track record when it comes to recording and publishing its work. Occasionally, things take a little longer than the editor would like, as Picken's Hole proved, but that eventually started to come to fruition in the last issue of Proceedings, with more to come in the next issue. That success left a Bronze Age round barrow on Mendip, very close to the UBSS hut, as the society's only major unpublished excavation.

T5 (the T stands for tumulus) was excavated from 1949-57 with Herbert 'Porthos' Taylor as the lead excavator. The position of the barrow (just on the opposite side of the track that leads to the hut, to the left of the track that leads over Blackdown) was a convenient one for the diggers, and Taylor worked on the barrow with his wife and other members of the society for nearly 10 years, keeping an excellent photographic record of the work, as well a numerous notebooks relating to the dig. But an account of the work they did never reached Proceedings and it is clear from the numerous crossings out the the notebook that Taylor was never really happy with his interpretation of the site.

When Porthos, as he was always known, died in 1983, the prospects of publication receded even further. Although he had made numerous note and taken a large number of photographs, his legacy presented a problem for future researchers as his handwriting is virtually illegible. He was a GP, so no surprise there, as doctors' writing is notoriously hard to read!

Over the years, various attempts to get a grip on the site failed. But with the centenary fast approaching, we decided it was high time we made a concerted effort to get at least something about the site into the public domain. Allan Summerfield carried out an audit of the barrow material, checking each piece in the archive off against the catalogue and carrying out some conservation work on the material, as well as creating box lists, so the material was easier to work on. The plan was also to digitise the archive so that we would not be dependent on having to loan irreplaceable written material to future worked. To facilitate this, Allan has been working with the university's Print Services division on a project to get as much as possible scanned. This work is ongoing and is being funded out of the museum's budget.

The overall project received a huge boost from the involvement of caver and archaeologist Kostas Trimmis, who has recently joined both the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology and UBSS. Kostas has now photographed all the objects from the site and is currently working on a report on the lithic objects found at the site and - with a good luck and a following wind - this will appear in the forthcoming issue of Proceeding. Further work will then be carried out on an interpretation of the site with a view to full publication.
SRT TRAINING/PRACTICE
 

Cavers dangling on ropes down the central stairwell of the Students' Union Building has been familiar sight for over 40 years. Lisa Smith explains how you can learn the ropes...

Single-rope technique (SRT) is a set of methods used go up and down ropes in caves. It's great fun, the training sessions are a good way to find out a bit more about caving and allows you to access lots of impressive caves in areas like Yorkshire and the Ardeche, and to go on the Cambridge University Caving Club's annual Austria expedition this summer.

Our sessions are free and held in the SU, and open to novices and newcomers as well as those who have been before, message Lisa Smith or Ashley Gregg if you want to get involved this term.
2019 CALENDAR

8th March, 7pm, UBSS Social in The Stables, behind 21 Woodlands Road

9th March, 9.30am, Welcome, with tea and coffee, 10.30am - 12 noon AGM and talk by Rick Schulting on recent developments in Aveline's Hole. 1.30pm Caving & Aveline's Hole Field Trip; 2.30pm Afternoon Tea at the Hut; 6pm Annual Dinner starts at Captain Jack's Bar, Wookey Hole; midnight, party continues in hotel bar and at the Hut/

30th - 31st March, Southern CHECC (South Wales)

13th July, Old Timers' Reunion at the Hut

19th - 21st July, University of Bristol Reunion Weekend

27th September, University of Bristol Students' Union Welcome Fair

9th - 10th November, UBSS Centenary Symposium
We hope you've enjoyed the first of our new monthly newsletters! If you have any comments or suggestions for future issues, please get in contact. If you don't want to continue to receive the newsletter there's an unsubscribe button at the bottom, but we very much hope you'll stay on board!
 
Linda Wilson