Kent's Cavern, Devon. Photo by Linda Wilson
Many thanks to Bob Taylor for his contribution in this issue to our 100 Memories project! Please keep your memories coming in!
For the first time in the Society's history, UBSS has an all female presidential team, with Elaine Oliver and Mia Jacobs at the helm. Say hello to the new committee and do take the time to watch Mia's brilliant presidential campaign video. It's the first time we've had one of those, too!
You can find all the back issues of the monthly newsletter online.
At the AGM in March, a new committee was voted in and at the committee meeting a week later, various jobs were dished out to willing (and semi-willing) victims, so say hello to your new committee and their appointees! Some of them might even say hello back and tell you a bit about themselves.
Honorary President : Elaine Oliver
Honorary Vice Presidents: Andrew Atkinson, Cat Henry, Clive Owen, Linda Wilson (favourite cave: Grotte Chauvet, favourite animal: raccoon)
Student President : Mia Jacobs (favourite cave: Marble Arch, favourite animal (all the rays)
Student Secretary : Elliott McCall (favourite cave: GB, favourite animal : tortoises)
Student Treasurer : Sam Bowers (favourite cave: Poulnagollum, favourite animal ; orangutan}
Honorary Treasurer : Graham Mullan (favourite cave : Tuc d'Audubert, favourite animal : lurcher/greyhound)
Equality Officer : Megan Malpas
Other Committee members : Ben Alterman, Michael Farmer, Connor Fitzgerald (favourite cave : OFD Top, favourite animal : blue whale), Zac Woodford (favourite cave : Dan yr Ogof, favourite animal : llama), Haydon Saunders, Simon Hadfield (favourite cave : Swildon's Hole, favourite animal : shark).
Other roles:
Social secretaries : Ben Alterman & Michael Farmer
Newsletter editor : Linda Wilson
Student Newsletter Editor : Zac Woodford
Museum Curator : Linda Wilson
Deputy Museum Curators : Nathan Cubitt & Alan Summerfield
Tackle Warden : Henry Morgan (favourite cave : Swildon's Hole, favourite animal : marmot)
Assistant/trainee Tackle Warden : Sam Kelly
Safety Officer : Ash Gregg
Hut Wardens : Liz Green & Haydon Saunders
Librarian : Nathan Cubitt
Proceedings Editor : Graham Mullan
Sales Librarian : Jan Walker
Honorary Gossip Warden : Imogen Clement (favourite cave : none [Imo says she hates caving], favourite animal : rabbit [but rabbits love holes in the ground!]
Honorary Worm Secretary Merryn Matthews
CCC caving committee rep : Clive Owen
Ogof Draenen PDCMG rep : Clive Owen
Charterhouse Caving Company Ltd rep : Graham Mullan
CSCC rep : Henry Morgan
CHECC delegate : Merryn Matthews
Social Media Officer : Connor Fitzgerald
Meet Mia Jacobs (she likes caving) who was elected Student Prezz at the AGM after wowing the audience with her campaign video, shot entirely on location abroad.
Hi, I’m Mia and I’m really excited to be your new president. I’m studying abroad for the rest of the academic year but I’m looking forward to being back in Bristol in September and getting stuck in. Yay caving!
Sam wasn't bored by Elaine's talk, honest!
The AGM was held in the Geography Department, and many thanks to David Richards for sorting the room and the necessary weekend access when a clash with a university open day threatened to cause chaos with our original arrangements. The minutes have already been circulated.
This was followed by an excellent talk by Hon Prezz Elaine Oliver on the club trip to the Gouffre Berger last summer with some great photos and an example of some truly impressive wild swimming at over 1,000 metres down!
The afternoon was taken up with a mix of climbing, caving and festering followed by drinks at the Eldon and a meal at The Square in Clifton where, yet again, we failed to behave badly enough to get banned. Standards are clearly slipping!
All eyes on our very own Samogen for the no-expense-spared-the-best-the-pound-shop-has-to-offer awards of 2022.
Sam Bowers and Imogen Clement made a valiant attempt to oust showbizz stars Ant and Dec with their slick hosting of the annual awards and, unlike the Oscars, no one got thumped! So, without further ado we bring you this year's Services to the Club Awards:
Sock wrestling: Gabriel
Buffest fresher: Guy
Most incompetent leaders: Imogen and Merryn
Treasurer award: Elaine ( for the length of time to produce the Berger accounts)
Lost phones: Omri, Lucy, Sam
Tardiest fresher: Theo
Least caving done: Megan
Most fire engines needed for a rescue: Jakob
Most visits to a KFC on the way to a caving weekends: Haydon
Most embarrassing exit from a hut weekend: Lucy
Golden compass: Si, Sioned, Kat
In honour of his election as Student Treasurer, Sam received a share certificate in one of the club's many offshore bank accounts.
And, by popular acclaim, the award for the Weirdest Looking Chocolate Dessert goes to .....
Yes, it really did look like this. In fact, they all did! Gordon Ramsey, eat your heart out! By comparison, the rest of the desserts were quite normal.
Entrance to Longwood Swallet showing the number of trees that have had to be taken down due to ash dieback. Photo courtesy of Chris Eyles, Somerset Wildlife Trust.
Longwood is one Mendip's classic trips, but be warned, the cave can be wet, as Elliott McCall discovered one day in late March.
A beautiful sunny day, no better weather for… caving? Myself, Jakob, and Elaine travelled in Van Rouge to Longwood Swallet where there are new access regulations in place in the Longwood Valley due to ash dieback so if visiting you are instructed to stick to the path, wear your helmet, and report the date of your date of visit and the number of people in the party to the Charterhouse Caving Company Ltd, who are required by the landowner to monitor the number of visits. (The same rules apply to visits to Rhino Rift.) It was nice getting changed in the refreshingly warm outdoors and as we were making our way to the cave we met a caver just leaving. He ominously advised us to put up our hoods if we had them because the cave was very wet. We knew that Longwood was a wet cave but perhaps had underestimated what we were in for.
The cave starts with a very drippy climb down that leads to what looks like a puddle. By lying in a puddle you can get around an awkward bend that leads to the first climb down/ladder. We realised that we didn't remember to bring a sling so instead we used one of the ropes we had brought – deciding that perhaps the cave was too wet for what we originally had in mind to go all the way to the end. We briefly looked at the way through August Hole and the waterfall flowing into it before agreeing we had made the correct choice by choosing the other route. This was still very wet and included a beautiful shaft that felt exactly like heavy rain while standing beneath it. By this point we had lost some of our stoke for this cave and were tempted by the sunny surface but no! We pressed on to at least see the main chamber.
Longwood Swallet. Photo copyright Peter Glanvill and used with his kind permission.
Having used the rope we had intended to use as a handline for this chamber we did the climb down to the main chamber with a much shorter one. I had a waterfall run down my back but Jakob expertly avoided the worst of it leaving Elaine and I jealous. The main chamber was quite impressive with a heavily slanted floor and much bigger than it first seems as it continues on around a corner. We then looked around and made our way to look at Hangar Pitch which is where the through trip from August Hole would meet our route.
By this point we were very wet but in good spirits, we decided enough was enough and it was time to enjoy the sun. We made our way back out with the tackle bag only getting stuck a few times to the lovely sunshine.
Changing back into dry clothes was the most pleasant change I had experienced and I was dry almost instantly. We then ran several errands for the club, dropping off some cardboard kindling at the Hut, picking up the UBSS chargers that had made their way to Wales?!?!?! (They had been caver posted to a very batty hut - does anyone know how this happened?!?).
We rewarded ourselves with some ice-cream in the sun.
WHO'LL COME A-CAVING, MATILDA, WITH ME?
Access details borrowed from the CNCC website.
Yorkshire has been a popular
destination for the club for the past couple of months. This report from
Hon Prezz, Elaine Oliver, arrived just after our February issue had
gone to press.
The Sunday of our Yorkshire trip dawned neither bright nor clear, which was entirely expected given the dreadful forecasts. We had spent much of Saturday night trying to find a cave which was a) not liable to flood horrendously in the wet, b) not an hour’s march from the nearest road and c) new to all of us. FOUL Pot eventually revealed itself to be at the intersection of these criteria, and Henry in particular fancied a rematch after only getting partway up the lane due to heavy snow a few months previously. Apparently the name stands for a rude comment about a Northern university, not that cavers would know anything much about rivalry.
We don’t cave for fame and fortune...
A Grade Two change later (cold and VERY windy, but at that point no precipitation) and off we set to find the cave, linking arms to prevent ourselves being blown over. Some faff with Jacob’s GPS coords ensued, before we decided to look at the description instead and easily walked straight to the entrance. We made sure to take a bearing back towards the car, though, just in case.
If a man’s a caver he will find the hole, if not then he’ll roam the fell…
Four (and a bit) pitches and four team members presented the perfect opportunity for us all to share the load of rigging and derigging. Having won the prize of first bag, I set off down the entrance, where a quick clamber and wriggle into the immature streamway saw me nose to whisker with a mouse suffering from severe rigor mortis. I carefully set him out of the water so we wouldn’t crawl on him, and it was perhaps for the best that I didn’t look at the other side of him, judging by Henry’s protestations.
The pitches in Yorkshire all end in dead meese…
The way on was easy enough to find: follow the “puddles or small stream” (definitely a stream) down a low bedding crawl, through some wriggly bits and down a handline into a chamber called Octopus Hall. Due to a smudge on Jacob’s carefully written notes I thought this said Octopus Hell: it certainly guarded the secret to the way on well, with Henry and Jacob enduring a thorough and gritty soaking only to discover that their route did not go. Looking at a previous picture of this chamber, there appears to have been significant movement and one of the very large boulders shows evidence of capping. The way on is now through the back of the chamber passing to the right of the Octopus.
It’s a mud story, baby just say yes!
A pleasant if drippy pitch with some nice P bolts in the roof ensued – a good pendulum halfway down let me lasso a spike of rock with a bit of tat I had found for a deviation. (I am still learning to love pendulums as I find it hugely disconcerting to fling myself about on a bit of string, however fun people claim it might be.) Next up was an enveloping rift, followed by another of even snugger proportions, then it was time for Jacob to leapfrog me and lead the way to the next pitch. The vadose canyon in this part of the cave was well worth the effort, with beautiful straws in the ceiling over a metre long. Henry and I had a good singsong to make up for the fact that nobody had known the words on his trip the previous day, then ROPE FREE! I was slightly puzzled but pleased to find an extra rebelay on the pitch, which Jacob had added further back along the rift to keep us away from the very noisy volumes of water descending alongside us!
And he sang as he listened to the murmur of the waterfall...
Henry was up next and rigged his two pitches in quick succession, landing us in the final chamber bang on our pre-agreed turnaround time. We went off to take a quick look at the sump (and in one case add to it) “for completeness’ sake” as recommended by the guide before the journey home commenced.
The only way is up, baby, for you and me now...
To keep things speedy (read: warm), Ash and I headed up as a pair to wait in the group shelter in a slightly nicer chamber as the others derigged the bottom pitches, before Ash took over derigging and I became a pack mule. Back through the tight rift to the last big pitch and I was suddenly very pleased about my deviation from earlier: the drips had got somewhat more numerous. I had to get Jacob to wait wedged on his side in the rift (sorry Jacob) while I got my head down and wished my tackle sack was lighter. Back in Octopus Hell, the only thing we had to think about now was the crawl to the entrance (that, and remembering the car keys).
And he sang as the water flowed into the bedding plane…
But we needn’t have been concerned: although noticeably up from earlier in the day, most of the water sinks elsewhere so it was perfectly pleasant (although Jacob maintains that his wet ear made it officially a duck). Goodbye to our murine friend and out into the sleet on the surface – this time a Grade 4 change, and a three-hour wait to regain feeling in my toes!
Time underground: 5 hours, songs sung: too many to count.
Elaine Oliver
The UBSS, UBES and UBMC contingent in Yorkshire.
The recent joint trip to Yorkshire was a great success, but nothing will quite wipe away the shame of the club's ignominious defeats at sock wrestling and table traversing! More practice is clearly needed at things other than caving, as Henry Morgan recounts ...
In late March, a contingent of 60 (yes sixty!) from UBSS, UBMC (mountaineering/climbing club) and UBES (expeditions society) headed up to the Yorkshire dales for the long awaited joint societies trip.
We were staying in Hornby Laithe bunk barn, the same place where the infamous CHECC 2021 weekend was held. Thankfully, the weather couldn’t have been more different this time around with blue skies and not a cloud in sight for the entire weekend.
There was remarkable efficiency upon arrival on Friday night (thanks Elliott for helping to solve the ‘who goes on which trip’ puzzle, my brain was not working at this stage!) after which a good amount of inter club socialising occurred.
Yes, some caving definitely happened.
Saturday was splendidly sunny, just as well we all went underground to hide from it! My group went to Sunset Hole (more on that from Zac), with other groups going to Notts 2 and Gaping Gill. We were so efficient that we even ended up getting some climbing in later on in the day at Castleberg Crag in Settle, what a top day out!
All societies reconvened in the evening for a mini-Olympics style competition involving table traversing, sock wrestling, pan and sling etc. The winning team had the honour of being crowned the ‘Best land based outdoor society of the year’ and donating a portion of the ticket funds to a charity of their choice. I’m ashamed to say that multiple poor performances from UBSS in table traversing and sock wrestling led to us coming home last, with UBMC smashing everyone else out of the park (but we did have fewer people there!). It seems that more practice is needed, so get ready for some more table traversing at the hut soon…
As ever, the aerial bondage workshop was well attended.
Anyway, congratulations to UBMC! A fantastic night was had by all who attended, with everyone wanting more joint society trips going forwards, a fantastic result where we can all share our knowledge with one another of our respective sports and grow new friendships. Sunday offered another glorious day for caving, hiking and climbing (although I heard that the group who went down Swinsto still got rather wet!). I managed to walk up Ingleborough, and I know other groups went down Notts 2 (not the same people!) or went bouldering or trad climbing. All in all, it was a brilliant weekend and I’m so thankful to everyone who came along and made it the success it was. Roll on next time, can’t wait to do it again!!
Header details nicked from the CNCC website.
The recent joint trip to Yorkshire provided a good opportunity for some northern caving and gave Zac Woodfird a chance to try out his relatively new SRT kit again.
One of my deepest frustrations is my lack of caving experience in the north. This is mainly due to the pandemic but also just being busy, busy, busy!
So I was thoroughly excited when the joint UBSS/UBES/UBMC weekend rolled around (thanks again to all those involved with organising the trip).
After much deliberation the night before it was decided that Henry, Emma, Haida, Michael and I would go to Sunset Hole. Due to the high level of organisation on the trip we were at the cave by ten o’clock having enjoyed a wonderfully sunny Yorkshire on the way.
The cave, for the uninitiated, is a (mostly) horizontal streamway that we stomped through quickly enough. There was even enough time for Emma (this being her first proper caving trip) to enthusiastically explore a very tight and muddy side passage.
After some creative scrambling down the three pots, we reached the chamber above the pitch. Without SRT kit to continue we turned around and speedily headed out, stopping for a little climbing explore on the way. We soon welcomed the warming sun, arriving out into a day far to beautiful for caving. What was more shocking though was the fact that it wasn’t even noon, forget being just underground by mid-day.
The second cave I did that weekend was Alum Pot with Jakob and Merryn. We were immediately concerned when we turned onto the lane for parking and found it crowded with cars and vans. Undeterred we changed and were soon consulted by one of the other trip leaders who explained that he was running a tourist trip for punters and that they may cause delays.
Alum Pot entrance. The copyright on this image is owned by Toby Speight and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
We struck out quickly and soon reached the entrance where Merryn began rigging. We entered quickly but had difficulty on the ledge because the third group there that day had already rigged the traverse. This meant that Merryn had to rig under their rigging. This problem was only compounded when the tourist trip arrived and rigged through the same traverse meaning there were three different ropes along the same traverse. Things only got worse when we arrived at the next pitch to find it already rigged meaning we had to wait at the bridge for the other group to ascend and de-rig. When we finally bottom the last pitch it was the first point at which we had to turn our lights on, the rest of the ‘cave’ so far having been open air.
We had a leisurely stroll down to the sump where each of us relieved ourselves, a long way and a lot of effort just for a toilet break. We then ascended with Jakob de-rigging. I had a bit of trouble with my SRT kit as that was only the second cave it’d been used in, so I still need to attune to it. This meant it took me a little while longer to get out. But once out, we packed up for the day and headed to Malham Cove for cream teas.
Heeeeyyyy, I moved to Bristol From Cape Town, South Africa in September 2021 – most importantly to join UBSS and least importantly, to start a PhD in particle physics. My first real caving endeavour was Goatchurch during the freshers’ weekend, and I have since been regularly adding to my mental cave list (yes, I should write these down). In my spare time (when I’m not caving) - in an ideal world - I’d be playing guitar, trail/road running, hiking, skateboarding, going to sleep before 8pm, not crashing my two week old bike, chowing all the crisps in sight and twiddling my thumbs.
Ten words to summarise your caving career …
1. Worm
2. Mud
3. Squeeze
4. Painful
5. Bruises
6. Adventure
7. Megacool (redefined as one word)
8. Tired
9. ABBA
10. Cavid (cave covid)
Nine cavers (living or dead) you would like to go for a drink with ...
1. Michael – this dude is nutty
2. Merryn – sickest hair in ubss
3. Mahmoud – if he ever comes caving
4. Oliver – best/scariest army stories
5. Mr. Bowers – cutest Evan Peters lookalike
6. Ash – number one contact for caving advice (and zebra onesies)
7. Gabriel – we have history (overcrowded huts result in the need for a long term (non-snoring) head to toe sleeping partner)
8. Ben – Americans freak me out
9. Elaine – strong contender for top cave leader
10 (this is legal, 9 = 10). Malpas – cool surname, cooler fake tattoo sleeves
and definitely not Guy (he didn’t add me to his list. Shame.)
Eight things you never want/wanted to hear underground …
1. “My ballsack is bleeding” (me doing SRT without prior harness adjustment)
2. Loud splashing sounds as I fell into a deep body of water
3. The sound of helmet plastic scraping against cave rock
4. Ben complaining
5. Michael complaining
6. “We’re outta cave snacks” – I’ve heard this many times
7. “We’re past callout”
8. “We may not be back in time for a pint at Hunters”
Seven public figures you'd least like to go caving with …
1. John Mayer – yes, he’s still cool
2. Hugh Brady – through every Swildon sump
3. Geowizard – dude who travels across countries in straight lines
4. Super mario – “it’s a me”
5. Jack Black – “let’s rock let’s rock today”
6. My PhD supervisor – to lower his stress levels
7. The Linux penguin – to help me through OFD streamways
Six of the weirdest things you've done, seen or heard of in connection with caving …
1. Michael – this dude is nutty
2. ‘Walk’ in the spider formation (back facing the floor, walking on hands and feet)
3. A rock falling directly on my glasses lens (and leaving a large scratch)
4. The sheer amount of mud embedded between the fibres of Elliot’s yellow oversuit
5. Rolling through a cave, like a log rolling down a hill (surprisingly efficient)
6. That cursed “no, nay, never” song that Henry won’t stop singing
Five of your favourite caves …
In no particular order:
1. Eastwater,
2. OFD
3. Gaping Ghyll
4. GB
5. Swildon’s Hole
Four pieces of gear you've fallen in love with …
1. Snickers bars
2. Helmet (without it I’d have major brain damage – currently I have minor brain damage)
3. The vaseline I smother between my toes
4. Anything else that keeps me alive
I’m sure kneepads would make this list (if I stopped being such a sodding cheapskate)
Three of the best caving books you've read ...
I can’t read.
Two of your favourite caving regions …
1. Mendips (can’t beat the classics)
2. Yorkshire (this place is cold)
One thing you'd tell yourself as a fresher …
Just fucking get kneepads (I tell this to myself on a daily basis)
For their first social, Michael and Ben decided on a back to basics campaign, as Ben explains ....
As mine and Michael's first act as social secretaries, we decided to put on something that was rather lacking this year - a good old fashioned pub crawl.
Starting at The Apple on King Street (whose name I never understood until I realised they only served cider), our plan was to work our way down the street stopping at each of the 10+ pubs for a pint. At the end, we only made it to three pubs (surprise surprise), as we were all too infatuated by the live jazz being played at the Old Duke!
We stayed for a few hours getting down & funky to some classics, and the most alcohol-soaked of the caving lot decided to end the night in Crofter’s rRghts for some old school drum and bass. A great success under the new social secs' belt.
Injuries sustained: 1 bruised knee from falling over.
People Kicked out: Felix, for falling over (hence the bruised knee)
Vomit Counter: 1 (Go Megan!!)
From the left: Marianne Last, Bob Taylor, Ted Brown, Colin Thomas, Mike Roberts, Dick Marsh. Outside Poulnagollum pothole, Co Clare, carrying maypole sections.
As part of our ongoing centenary project to collect 100 Memories of past UBSS activities, Bob Taylor tells some stories from Mendip, South Wales, Yorkshire and County Clare in the late 1960s.
Looking back after more than 50 years, here are a few of my best memories of three great years with UBSS in Bristol 1967-1970, with some details added by my good friend Dick Marsh (1968-1971).
1968 was famous for student revolutions across Europe. In Bristol too, we demonstrated for more student participation in the affairs of the University, held sit-ins in the Senate Building, marched and made placards. We felt empowered.
On the caving front at UBSS it was a time of great change, with the opening of the first Severn bridge in September 1966 giving rapid access to South Wales, expanding UBSS’s horizons beyond the Mendips and Ireland; an important factor in the discovery and surveying of Little Neath River Cave.
New technology was starting to be applied to caving and cave surveying. Cave diving developed rapidly in the late 60s and would drive major discoveries in the next decade, while “normal” cavers began to free dive long sumps.
MENDIP MEMORIES
The hut in Burrington Combe and the Plume of Feathers in Rickford were the centre of UBSS’s Mendip life. In fact, looking at recent photos of the hut in the newsletter, nothing much has really changed there at all. I will never forget a long piercing scream in the middle of the night as someone slipped and fell into the deep latrine. I remember free climbing the Rock of Ages in the dark on the way back from the pub and windy walks across Blackdown to GB Cavern. Looking at the current surveys, it is staggering to me how Charterhouse has now outgrown and surrounded GB.
Mike Norton, then busy blasting away at Manor Farm, was a wonderful mentor to the freshers in my first year, before he left for Canada. In those days the “bang” was stored in a locked box under the hut. The beginning of the troubles in Northern Ireland would soon change that. Adrian Wilkins “inherited” his work at Manor Farm. I remember an exciting ride out to the Mendips on the pillion of Adrian’s Honda 250 motorcycle, with the Kango hammer drill in my rucksack, bang in the left pannier and detonators in the right.
Of many trips down Swildon’s Hole, one in 1970 is particularly memorable. We heard midweek that someone from another Mendip club had successfully free-dived some of Swildon’s sumps. Not to be outdone, Adrian Wilkins and I headed out to Priddy at the weekend and - to our amazement - managed to free dive sumps 2 to 6, and back again. It still gives me jitters to even think about it! The following weekend, a larger UBSS party returned, and all present repeated our feat, measuring the sumps on the way. There is a description of this trip (and the measurements) in the December 1970 UBSS Newsletter.
SOUTH WALES MEMORIES
Little Neath River Cave (LNRC) exploration and surveying was ongoing throughout my years at Bristol. Although never completing diver training myself, I was often a sherpa to the divers pushing on through the long LRNC sumps to the extensive passages beyond. I recall the establishment of an emergency store beyond the sumps, which was even rumoured to include suicide capsules, as back then the idea of extracting severely injured cavers through long sumps was considered far-fetched.
OFD (and the SWCC cottages) became our second home in South Wales. As one of our club leaders, I made many trips to every corner of the system. I still have a hand-coloured wall map of the OFD system, which was sold (together with a set of colouring pens) back then by the SWCC to boost their finances.
I shall never forget the sight of Pete Standing, already an intern at a Bristol hospital, sewing up a huge gash on his own knee after an OFD streamway trip. Late in the evening we knocked on the door of a nearby doctor’s surgery. The doctor was away, but his wife, a nurse, was in. After some persuasion she provided antiseptic, needle and thread and off Pete went. We all watched, fascinated.
YORKSHIRE MEMORIES
The details of our many potholing trips during the regular UBSS Yorkshire weekends at that time are now a bit of a blur, but we did most of the standard ones. There are some good write-ups in the newsletters of those years.
What I do remember is the wonderful camaraderie in the CPC cottage in Horton in Ribblesdale, the pressure on us every morning to get out and avoid festering, the singing evenings at The Crown next door and large meals and mugs of tea at a transport cafe nearby on the A65.
We started renting Ford Transit minibuses in Bristol to get up to Yorkshire and felt very grown up. I am still amazed the rental company trusted us.
COUNTY CLARE MEMORIES
I joined the UBSS party in County Clare each year in summer. In 1968 we were still staying in McCarthy’s Cottage, a mile or two north of Lisdoonvarna, but we had some trouble with the neighbours there, and the following two years we “squatted” in a disused and derelict small hotel just across the road from Keane’s in the centre of town. Convenient and free, but rather smelly until we cleaned it up properly.
In “Farewell to Steve Trudgill” in the January 2022 newsletter, it is mentioned that he was involved in placing micro-erosion measurement studs in Cullaun I and II in 1967. There was much excitement one evening in McCarthy’s when just one year later new measurements were made. After some calculation, someone (it might have been Steve) shouted, “If this is correct, these caves are less than 10,000 years old”. The erosion rates were much, much higher than anyone had expected.
Another highlight of a different sort occurred in July 1969, when, during an evening in Keane’s bar, we watched rather grainy black and white pictures on a small TV. It was the moon landing, with Neil Armstrong stepping off the ladder from the Eagle lander. Later, when the Lisdoonvarna bars closed and everybody went outside, we all stared up at the moon riding high above the clouds and what we had just been watching really hit home. They were right up there, on the moon! Silence, and some tears.
Back on Earth, we experimented that year with portable, sectioned aven maypoles made out of aluminium tubing. Fastened together and with a wire ladder attached, they worked well, but unfortunately the scaling of some promising avens in Pollnagollum did not lead to any significant new passages. However I do have a photo of us looking intrepid holding the aven maypole sections outside Pollnagollum pot.
TECHNOLOGY AND SURVEYING MEMORIES
The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of rapid technological development, and caving and surveying benefitted.
Neoprene wetsuits became standard for wetter caves, and as the costs of neoprene came down and kits and patterns became available, we glued our own wetsuits.
Lightweight, pocket-sized and robust waterproof compasses and inclinometers machined from solid blocks of aluminium (Suunto from Finland, if I remember rightly) replaced the heavy and unwieldy ex-RAF compasses, greatly simplifying surveying in tight or wet passages. Lasers were still decades away.
Although jumars were already being used by some climbers, what is now known as SRT (Single Rope Technique) had not yet arrived in caving and potholing. We used lightweight rolled ladders of wire and aluminium tubing and made them ourselves in a press in the UBSS tackle room. We rather looked down on people using jumars, which we felt was a bit like cheating. This changed rapidly in the ‘70s.
Geolocation with GPS signals was still three decades away, but we did some interesting experiments with radio location, particularly for closing long survey transits. A large circular wire aerial, laid out horizontally in the cave and powered from batteries, together with a signal detector, were all that was needed. The detector was used to find the centre of the wire circle from the surface. This was used successfully to locate the end of passages far beyond the sumps in LNRC.
Finally, I was heavily involved during my time in Bristol in using computers to speed up the processing of cave survey data, often together with Adrian Wilkins. Initially on a Hewlett-Packard desktop machine, and later on the University’s ICL mainframes, programmed in ALGOL, the UBSS survey programs were some of the first world-wide.
Removing the back-breaking calculating work of converting polar measurements (length, bearing, inclination) to the cartesian coordinates (north, east, depth) needed for drawing maps was only the first step. Later we added routines to distribute survey traverse closing errors proportionally round the legs of a traverse (even more work if done by hand), then attached the University’s graphical plotters to plot aerial views and elevations of cave systems.
We developed mathematical techniques to plot slightly rotated image pairs, which, when hung on a wall and viewed cross-eyed, created 3D maps of cave systems. The same techniques could also be used to “rotate the matrix” in order to view the points of a cave survey from any position in space. In particular, viewing a system plotted along or across the bedding plane could indicate interesting passage connections and water flows.
Adrian and I even gave a talk on this at a cave surveying conference in 1970 at Leicester University.
On a personal note, all this programming triggered the computer bug in me, and after Bristol I went on to a life-long international career in software, mostly based in Munich, where I now live.
I hope you enjoyed these Memories. It gives me great pleasure to make contact with the UBSS again after all these years, so please do not hesitate to email me if you want to discuss anything, or correct something I got wrong. Memories can fade.
Bristol 1967 - 1970
Kent's Cavern, photo by Linda Wilson.
On a recent trip to south Devon, Linda Wilson and Graham Mullan visited Kent's Cavern to take some photos for an upcoming BCRA workshop weekend in Yorkshire on recording historic graffiti as Linda relates...
After an issue with the fuel injection on our campervan, Graham and I ended up on an unscheduled trip to Devon rather than our intended visit to Lancashire. On the off-chance of catching up with Kent's Cavern general manager James Hull, who we've not seen for a few years, I fired off a quick email, and we were warmly with a complimentary tour of the show cave so I could add to my collection of historic graffiti photos.
William Petre, 1571. Photo by Elliot Ling, used by his kind permission.
As the cave has always been open, Kent's has an impressive collection of historic inscriptions, with one dating back to 1571 left by William Petre. This is mentioned in the diaries of William Pengelly, who excavated in the cave in the late 1800s, and was recently rediscovered by the cave's Education Officer, Elliot Ling. Graffiti of this age is extremely rare and helps to build a picture of early visits to the cave.
Kent's Cavern. Photo by Linda Wilson.
The cave has a fascinating archaeological history. The first recorded excavation took place in 1824 by Thomas Northmore, and this was followed by William Buckland who hoped to find evidence of the worship of the Roman god Mithras underground. Sadly, he was disappointed, but got definite points for trying. Then local chaplain John MacEnery took up work there, followed by Pengelly, whose work in the caves helped to establish the antiquity of man.
The caves were opened as a tourist attraction in the early 1900s by the Powe family, who laid concrete paths and installed electric lighting. Our guide demonstrated how early man carried their own light into the cave by burning moss in scallop shells. The light tgiven by this was probably on a par with the early FX2s, for those who remember that sorry excuse for a dead glow-worm!
Now a major Devon tourist attraction, Kent's is open every day. Advance booking is recommended. A tour of the caves lasts approximately one hour, and there are other attractions on site, as well as a cafe.
Modern reindeer. Photo supplied by Emily Weisendanger.
In 2018, Emily Weisendanger worked on reindeer in the UBSS museum as part of her PhD thesis. Emily has kindly sent us a few words on how the museum collection contributed to her research.
Back in 2018 I was lucky enough to visit the UBSS museum to study the collections.
As a PhD student, a lot of my time over the last four years has been spent rummaging through the basements and attics of museums, in search of the bones, teeth and antlers of fossil reindeer. It’s hard to imagine now, but throughout the Late Pleistocene (126,000-11,700 years ago) reindeer roamed freely in large herds across most of Britain and western Europe. This means that reindeer are often a large part of the fossil animal remains found during cave excavations, making collections like those at the UBSS particularly important for researchers like me.
My research mainly compared the seasonal movements of reindeer from fossil sites in Britain and western Europe. In their current Arctic and Subarctic habitats, modern reindeer move bi-annually between summer and winter grazing pastures as food becomes less accessible during the winter. Looking at the movements of past populations can therefore help us to understand how reindeer may respond to future climatic and environmental changes. This is possible due to the fact that reindeer only come together in large herds at certain times of year, with each season being characterised by different combinations of ages and sexes, which in turn can be determined from bones, teeth and antlers.
And so, with the help of museum curator Linda Wilson and volunteers Allan Summerfield and Wendy Russ (supplying both their expert help and much needed tea and biscuits), I spent two days scouring the many boxes of cave finds kept in the museum for any hint of reindeer.
This tiny shed antler from Picken’s Hole once belonged to a reindeer calf. Photo by Emily Weisendanger.
For my particular project, the most important collection from the UBSS was the reindeer from Picken’s Hole, a cave on the northern side of Crook Peak, near the village of Compton Bishop in the Mendip Hills. Picken’s Hole was excavated by E. K. Tratman (then society President) and the UBSS during the 1960s, after the teeth of woolly rhinoceros and spotted hyenas were unexpectedly found by M. J. Picken, who at the time was studying the modern inhabitants of the cave – badgers.
Two large assemblages from the cave contained reindeer, one from Unit 5, thought to have been brought by wolves around 82,000-71,000 years ago, and one from Unit 3, brought by spotted hyenas around 57,000-29,000 years ago.
So, reindeer roaming the Mendip Hills, whoever would have guessed it?
However, the findings from this and other sites in southwest Britain suggest that reindeer were probably not using this area continuously throughout the year. Instead, the wider trend in Britain saw reindeer moving between autumn/winter ranges in Devon and Somerset towards spring/summer ranges further north in Derbyshire, North Yorkshire and north west Scotland.
Although this pattern was recognisable from Unit 5 at Picken’s Hole, with reindeer occupying the site in the autumn/winter (just in time for Christmas), in Unit 3, reindeer were only present during the spring/summer. This apparent shift in seasonal ranges over time is particularly interesting and could perhaps relate to changing sea levels opening up movement between Britain and continental Europe.
As with most research, this certainly leaves me asking more questions about the Mendip reindeer!
I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone at the UBSS who made it possible for me to include these fossil reindeer in my research.
Emily Weisendanger
As part of the Alumni Network Group Spring Showcase 2022, another University Challenge contest was staged, and after their very creditable performance last year, the gauntlet/muddy caving glove, was firmly thrown into the ring again ...
The student team consisting of Sam Bowers, Imogen Clement, Zac Woodford and Omri Porat did battle with last year's winners, the Cambridge Blues, and new entrants, Starter for Ten. The contest was very hotly fought, with the UBSS team neck and neck with the Blues for most of the contest, finally being beaten into an extremely respectable second place.
The next round, due to feature a team aptly named the Old Codgers (as the original equally apt name of the Old Farts was swiftly changed by the organisers!) consisting of Graham Mullan, Clive Owen and two non-UBSS members John Barnbrook and Jane Thompson quickly descended into a degree of chaos as their opponents were a no show. Some hasty panicking saw a hastily constituted 2BSS team step into the breach with Zac and Imogen being joined by Linda Wilson and non-UBSS member Josh Mudie (taking a break from running the scoreboard). This turned into another strong contest, with the Old Codgers narrowly emerging victorious.
Sadly, the Old Codgers lost in the final to the Cambridge Blues, with only 35 points between them at the end. Question master Robert Villain, the perfect cross between Bamber Gasgoigne and Jeremy Paxman, declaring himself to have been particularly impressed by the UBSS student team! And trust me, Robert has a brain the size of a planet and is not easily impressed.
Thanks to Caving Cat's devoted servant, Graham, for this image.
Caving Cat is back again to cast his eyes over the readership in readiness for handing out some kitty treats. First up last month was Buff Fresher of the Year Guy Maalouf, scooting through to the end in an incredibly fast time. So let's see who can be quicker off the mark this time around. Remember, Caving Cat is watching you read....
- I did it! Thank you for giving me one additional reason to stay distracted from my studies! :D [Guy Maalouf]
- Great trips, great descriptions! Candidate for best snarky line ever (by Sioned Haughton): “You immediately ascend the opposite wall using some very old and solid stemples and avoiding the very new and shiny stemples which you can literally pull out of the rock with your fingers.” The Grotte du Poirier was a fascinating place! [Jan Walker]
- I'm deeply saddened and personally hurt that Guy didn't include me in his list of cavers he'd wanna have a drink with. [Jake Reich] [Editors' note: the UBSS Newsletter, ruining friendships since 1919!]
- Thanks for this. Fantastically entertaining and highly informative. So much that makes one feel that one is actually there! Nostalgic - for me - picture of GG main chamber. [Tim Hill]
- Finished it - great as always. It was a good excuse to delay gardening until the outdoor temperature reaches double figures (currently a balmy 2.3!) [Carol Walford]
- Nice cat! And again an amazing volume of reports, all good. [Chris Howes]
- Thanks for this, you provided me with yet another excuse to procrastinate rather than get on with the report I am due to submit on Friday. [Dick Willis]
- Another excellent read! Very wide range of articles, from Mendip mud to French graffiti! [Bob Taylor]
- I love caving cat, hope he doesn’t eat any bats! [Lucy Dufall]
I did it, Caving Cat! Kittie kibble for me, plz?!
THE END