Bats, from a watercolour by Linda Wilson, inspired by a postcard from the Grotte de Tourtoirac, Dordogne, France.
Busy, busy, busy! In this issue we bring you stories of epic faff alongside tales of meticulous planning and preparation, both in Yorkshire and under the Mendips. Members have even turned their talents to drama documentaries! Is there no end to our collective talents? The answer is probably yes, but we haven't found it yet. But, as previous newsletters show, there isn't much that's new under the sun, or in our case, under the ground, as a deep dive into old newsletters quickly reveals. Following Jess Brock's lead in our last issue, Graham Mullan has put togethether a history of the newsletter in its various forms, stretching right back to our foundation in 1919.
As ever, we're open to articles, trip write ups, nostalgia, cartoons, puzzles, caving songs, poems, photos, paintings and drawings .... you name it, we'll be pleased to have it!
If you would like to check out previous issues, you can find them all here, including the scanned archive of all our paper issues.
Linda and Billy
As ever, we're open to articles, trip write ups, nostalgia, cartoons, puzzles, caving songs, poems, photos, paintings and drawings .... you name it, we'll be pleased to have it!
If you would like to check out previous issues, you can find them all here, including the scanned archive of all our paper issues.
Linda and Billy
PS As ever, if the text is in blue and underlined, it's a clickable link, so go on, press the newsletter equivalent of the big red button and venture further in, you know it makes sense ...
REMINDER - AGM & DINNER
The AGM will take place on 8th March 2025 in The Stables behind 21 Woodland Road at 2.30pm. Please come along to cast your vote for our incoming committee.
This will be followed by drinks somewhere nearby (venue to be announced), probably after most people have scurried home to change into their finery for the evening.
The Annual Dinner is taking place at The Square Club on Berkeley Square at 7.30pm. Amazingly, everyone has finally paid for their dinner tickets.
The AGM will take place on 8th March 2025 in The Stables behind 21 Woodland Road at 2.30pm. Please come along to cast your vote for our incoming committee.
This will be followed by drinks somewhere nearby (venue to be announced), probably after most people have scurried home to change into their finery for the evening.
The Annual Dinner is taking place at The Square Club on Berkeley Square at 7.30pm. Amazingly, everyone has finally paid for their dinner tickets.
WARNING - LIONEL'S HOLE
The Council of Southern Caving Clubs (CSCC) have issued the warning below regarding Lionel's Hole, Burrington. Please avoid this area and don't attempt the round trip until futher inspections have taken place.
A large boulder and slab very recently moved in the duck bypass route, very nearly crushing a caver against the wall. This is at the end of the crawl where it joins the rift that has the chocked Sandwich boulder/slab at the top. The boulder that moved is sitting on a small rock on the gravel floor and could potentially move again and someone else may not be so lucky.
There is now a warning notice just inside the entrance and another a little further down the traverse before you turn left into the start of the round trip.
IN THE NEWS ...
Photo copyright Ross Oneill.
Holes in the ground hit the news recently with excited press reports of a massive sinkhole in Godstone High Street in Surrey. The BBC were all over this like a rash and local experts from the caving and mining community were roped in for comment and advice, particulary members of the local Wealden Cave and Mine Society.
For some background tothis story, check out the impeccably researched and detailed article by Peter Burgess on the caving and mining news website www.darknessbelow.co.uk, with a quote from UBSS's own geological expert, Dr Andy Farrant of the British Geological Survey
Photo copyright Ross Oneill.
Holes in the ground hit the news recently with excited press reports of a massive sinkhole in Godstone High Street in Surrey. The BBC were all over this like a rash and local experts from the caving and mining community were roped in for comment and advice, particulary members of the local Wealden Cave and Mine Society.
For some background tothis story, check out the impeccably researched and detailed article by Peter Burgess on the caving and mining news website www.darknessbelow.co.uk, with a quote from UBSS's own geological expert, Dr Andy Farrant of the British Geological Survey
CONGRATULATIONS!
Our Gossip Secretary Imogen Clement is delighted to bring us the following news in, as she put it, the weirdly sexist way that newspapers used to use (and probably do still use in Country Life and Vanity Fair) ...
The engagement is announced between Mr Jakob Gustav Olaf Annerdal, son of Mr and Mrs Swede of Sweden and Ms Kat Osei-Mensah, daughter of Reverand and Mrs Osei-Mensah of Kent.
Kat (un)reliably informs us that all Swedes go by 'Mr and Mrs Swede', however at the time this announcement goes to press, the Swedish Embassy have not as yet responded to our request for verification of this interesting insight and we were too excited by the prospect of annother UBSS wedding to delay this exciting news.
Our Gossip Secretary Imogen Clement is delighted to bring us the following news in, as she put it, the weirdly sexist way that newspapers used to use (and probably do still use in Country Life and Vanity Fair) ...
The engagement is announced between Mr Jakob Gustav Olaf Annerdal, son of Mr and Mrs Swede of Sweden and Ms Kat Osei-Mensah, daughter of Reverand and Mrs Osei-Mensah of Kent.
Kat (un)reliably informs us that all Swedes go by 'Mr and Mrs Swede', however at the time this announcement goes to press, the Swedish Embassy have not as yet responded to our request for verification of this interesting insight and we were too excited by the prospect of annother UBSS wedding to delay this exciting news.
GLISTENING POOLS AND SQUEEZED RIBS
Sump 2 in Swildons. Photo by Brian Prewer from the Mendip Cave Registery and Archive.
Childhood daydreams do sometimes turn into adult reality as Dan Rose can testify.
Swildons Sump 9 has forever held a mythical allure within my imagination. I remember vividly the first time I learned that you could reach Sump 9 without full diving equipment. I was six years old, emerging to a dark, wintery sky after a trip to sump 1. Walking through the fields of Priddy Green, I glanced behind me, enamoured by the silhouettes of the trees. I smiled, amused by the similarity of such a landscape to the gothic forests of New Super Mario Bros. I wondered, how far the world beneath me stretched. Hearing that Swildons held 12 sumps, nine of which could be reached without diving equipment, embedded in me a sense of inspired awe. That moment, amid that ominous, brisk landscape, when I resolved to reach that fabled place, a whole eight sumps past my furthest expedition, was a formative experience for me – the first time I felt the transcendent rush of warm daydreams of the future. I knew that I would not return to Swildons for some time, and, bound by the walls of Oxford and primary education, I would not sense the glisten of Sump 9’s pool for years to come. That feeling of looking towards a goal years ahead, wondering who I would be when the time came, sparked within me something I had never thought to feel before: excitement for the future.
Fast forward 14 years, on Sunday 2nd February, I awoke at the UBSS hut, hungover and tired, having spent the night before celebrating a joint birthday party between me, Emily and Joshitha. I crawled out of my tent to see a sleep deprived Ben Morgan firing plastic waterbottles out of a carbide cannon at the tents of unfortunate victims. After gorging on cheese and onion rolls at the Hunters with Jess and Isaac, Ben and I arrived at the entrance of Swildons Hole at 3pm. We raced down to Sump 1, inspecting the water levels as we went, the double pots scarcely reaching my calves, giving us confidence that Sump 5 would be passable. Soon we were at the first sump. Our dive masks and hoods went on, and we pulled ourselves through the easiest free dive in the UK. We marched onwards to Sump 2, aware that we had entered the cave late and wanted to reach the end of the free dives without pressure from our call out.
The passage in Swildons 2 is very easy – a flat streamway interspersed with straightforward ducks that for those clad in thick neoprene constitute pleasant cooling stations. But the character of the passage does feel much colder than that of Swildons 1; the walls are darker, sharper and more brutish. Rather than the warm glow of flowstone, you get rough, muddy streambanks, with bones arranged into gory shapes. We reached the bucket of lead before Sump 2 and slid three pieces each onto our belts. The prospect of diving into constricted underwater tunnels suddenly felt much more real.
As we accepted the seriousness of the undertaking, banter changed from the usual brain-rotting silliness to a much more dry, focussed amusement. We approached the edge of the world. The opening of sump 2 felt like an event horizon into a forbidden realm, something that swallows up all who enter, the entrance to an 8m death trap. A hangman’s noose tied on the end of the diveline affirmed the respect that this sump was due. I had stared into the abyss of Sump 2 so many times, but never intended to actually dive it. I knelt into the pool, adjusted to the cold winter chill, and spat into my dive mask. Dipping my face into the water, there was zero visibility; just brown. I took five deep breaths, counted to three, and dived into the water, pulling myself through the lightless mud, dodging the constriction at the end infamous for banging into diver’s heads. I surfaced, breathing in a gulp of euphoria as water ran down my mask. I tugged twice on the line to tell Ben I was through, and watched him surface a few seconds later.
The Great Airbell, the aqua-capsule that separates Sumps 2 and 3, is a very impressive place. Its damp, triangular figure that keeps the caver in waist deep water, feels like a liminal dream. You drift across the water, dip under a small duck, then arrive at the entrance to Sump 3. People had said that this was a tougher dive than Sump 2. Whereas Sump 2 requires pulling in a straight line, Sump 3 is 11m long and 2.5m deep, requiring you to dive downwards, initially underneath an arch, then ascend upwards to surface. You must also dodge a protruding ledge of rock on the way down to avoid dislodging your mask. Although in theory this sounded scary and difficult, the smoothness with which we’d passed Sump 2 gave me a quiet, suppressed confidence. Looking at the Sump 3 entrance felt far less intimidating than Sump 2 – mostly because I knew it wasn’t going to be silted up. I told Ben I’d see him on the other side and started pulling myself downwards. With slightly better visibility than Sump 2, after what felt like quite a long time, I ascended upwards, and exited the sump on the other side into Swildons 4. The dive felt considerably longer than Sump 2, with my lungs still perfectly happy by the end but relieved to receive oxygen once more.
We left our weight belts there and traversed the Swildons 4 streamway, probably the finest in the cave where interesting rock formations dot smooth cascades and fun climbs over rotund pools follow splashes in the pretty waterway. Our enjoyment was soon cut short by the sight of the filthy dive line sticking out of sump 4. People had warned that this was a foul place, polluted by cow excrement mixing into the water via the appropriately named Cowsh Aven. On our trip, however, we felt no such disgust. The water was clean and had the best visibility yet. A change must have happened at some point in the recent past, meaning that Sump 4 is now a relatively straightforward free dive. I pulled myself into it, kicked off the ceiling a few times in its more restricted sections, then ascended a shallow slope to emerge into Swildons 5, passing the five metre dive with ease.
We continued plodding along, passing a few low airspace ducks before being greeted with Sump 5, which isn’t a true sump, but a series of atmospheric ducks. Sump 5 is not a straight passage, but a large area - far too low to breathe - where the roof very nearly meets the water. There are, however, hidden pockets of airspace zigzagging across the sump, which you must follow to get through. We removed our helmets and held them in our hands, floating on our backs to maximise our airspace. The trick here is to slowly float to the edge of each airspace and feel with either your hands or feet down the side of each airbell, once you feel a pocket of air, dive underneath the edge, and surface in that new airbell. We repeated this a few times, being sure to not commit to a duck before we were sure it led to airspace. After a few iterations of this, we were through. This was a true highlight of the trip, and felt like its most adventurous moment. The entire area feels unaccommodating to humans, and passing it feels like forcing yourself through something that shouldn’t even be attempted.
Then came the Sump 6 bypass. Sump 6 itself is only 10m long, but is not freediveable, being too awkward and constricted. The bypass comprises approximately 100m of dull hands and knees crawling. Easy enough, but sweaty when encased in neoprene. At the end of the bypass, however, came the unexpected crux of the trip. I had heard that there was a squeeze in the bypass, and had gathered from others that it was relatively easy and scarcely a squeeze at all. Unfortunately, this was not the case when we arrived.
To our dismay, we were met with a duck with just enough airspace for a hamster to breathe in, far too narrow for any human to fit through. The squeeze had silted up, nearly to the roof. Ben, far narrower than me, tried with all his might to fit through, but it was simply too tight. We promptly accepted the inevitable and dropped to our knees, removed our helmets, and used them as shovels to dig out the silt and bulldoze a path through. After half an hour of tireless excavation, Ben managed to compress himself enough to fit through, claiming on the other side that it was the tightest squeeze he had ever been through. I proceeded to attempt it and got a quarter of the way in before my chest would not allow further progress. I knew that if I continued forcing myself through, my ribs would crumble and my lungs burst, so I opted to back out and continue digging.
Another half an hour of excavation later, I tried it again, with Ben guiding my head through the widest bit. Trying with all my effort to keep my mouth out of the water, I scrambled with my feet to push off anything I could find with all my force. Each heave dug deeper into my ribs, and at the tightest point I could fill only a quarter of my lung capacity with air. This was the tightest squeeze I had ever experienced, making the Gates of Hell in Eastwater’s Technical Masterpiece feel like the Grand Canyon. After a slightly intimidating final push, in which I made a silent plea to the blackness above to allow me through rather than getting stuck in a face high pool of cold water, I breathed out my last reserves of oxygen, and forced my body through the evil slot. I felt my ribs. Unbroken. Solitary satisfaction was tempered by the knowledge that I had to return the same way. After that it was easy progress to Sump 9.
Swildon’s 7 contains a spectacular chamber where angled wall reaches up into the far distance above – a sight that, in terms of scale, dwarfs the rest of the cave up to this point. Soon, after easy roped climbs and some boulder hopping, we arrived at the impressive and ominous pool of Sump 9 – a 40m dive that leads to the elusive sections of the cave accessible only by fully equipped divers. We took a couple of minutes to take in the gratification of reaching our goal, then hurried back the way we had come, with the Sump 6 bypass proving much easier on the way out. Our exit proceeded to go pleasantly, and by the time we approached the entrance my hungover body had had quite enough, the constant heating and cooling cycle of sump diving having sapped all my energy. But we had done what we had set out to achieve, and went back to enjoy a paneer curry, happy and satisfied.
Sump 2 in Swildons. Photo by Brian Prewer from the Mendip Cave Registery and Archive.
Childhood daydreams do sometimes turn into adult reality as Dan Rose can testify.
Swildons Sump 9 has forever held a mythical allure within my imagination. I remember vividly the first time I learned that you could reach Sump 9 without full diving equipment. I was six years old, emerging to a dark, wintery sky after a trip to sump 1. Walking through the fields of Priddy Green, I glanced behind me, enamoured by the silhouettes of the trees. I smiled, amused by the similarity of such a landscape to the gothic forests of New Super Mario Bros. I wondered, how far the world beneath me stretched. Hearing that Swildons held 12 sumps, nine of which could be reached without diving equipment, embedded in me a sense of inspired awe. That moment, amid that ominous, brisk landscape, when I resolved to reach that fabled place, a whole eight sumps past my furthest expedition, was a formative experience for me – the first time I felt the transcendent rush of warm daydreams of the future. I knew that I would not return to Swildons for some time, and, bound by the walls of Oxford and primary education, I would not sense the glisten of Sump 9’s pool for years to come. That feeling of looking towards a goal years ahead, wondering who I would be when the time came, sparked within me something I had never thought to feel before: excitement for the future.
Fast forward 14 years, on Sunday 2nd February, I awoke at the UBSS hut, hungover and tired, having spent the night before celebrating a joint birthday party between me, Emily and Joshitha. I crawled out of my tent to see a sleep deprived Ben Morgan firing plastic waterbottles out of a carbide cannon at the tents of unfortunate victims. After gorging on cheese and onion rolls at the Hunters with Jess and Isaac, Ben and I arrived at the entrance of Swildons Hole at 3pm. We raced down to Sump 1, inspecting the water levels as we went, the double pots scarcely reaching my calves, giving us confidence that Sump 5 would be passable. Soon we were at the first sump. Our dive masks and hoods went on, and we pulled ourselves through the easiest free dive in the UK. We marched onwards to Sump 2, aware that we had entered the cave late and wanted to reach the end of the free dives without pressure from our call out.
The passage in Swildons 2 is very easy – a flat streamway interspersed with straightforward ducks that for those clad in thick neoprene constitute pleasant cooling stations. But the character of the passage does feel much colder than that of Swildons 1; the walls are darker, sharper and more brutish. Rather than the warm glow of flowstone, you get rough, muddy streambanks, with bones arranged into gory shapes. We reached the bucket of lead before Sump 2 and slid three pieces each onto our belts. The prospect of diving into constricted underwater tunnels suddenly felt much more real.
As we accepted the seriousness of the undertaking, banter changed from the usual brain-rotting silliness to a much more dry, focussed amusement. We approached the edge of the world. The opening of sump 2 felt like an event horizon into a forbidden realm, something that swallows up all who enter, the entrance to an 8m death trap. A hangman’s noose tied on the end of the diveline affirmed the respect that this sump was due. I had stared into the abyss of Sump 2 so many times, but never intended to actually dive it. I knelt into the pool, adjusted to the cold winter chill, and spat into my dive mask. Dipping my face into the water, there was zero visibility; just brown. I took five deep breaths, counted to three, and dived into the water, pulling myself through the lightless mud, dodging the constriction at the end infamous for banging into diver’s heads. I surfaced, breathing in a gulp of euphoria as water ran down my mask. I tugged twice on the line to tell Ben I was through, and watched him surface a few seconds later.
The Great Airbell, the aqua-capsule that separates Sumps 2 and 3, is a very impressive place. Its damp, triangular figure that keeps the caver in waist deep water, feels like a liminal dream. You drift across the water, dip under a small duck, then arrive at the entrance to Sump 3. People had said that this was a tougher dive than Sump 2. Whereas Sump 2 requires pulling in a straight line, Sump 3 is 11m long and 2.5m deep, requiring you to dive downwards, initially underneath an arch, then ascend upwards to surface. You must also dodge a protruding ledge of rock on the way down to avoid dislodging your mask. Although in theory this sounded scary and difficult, the smoothness with which we’d passed Sump 2 gave me a quiet, suppressed confidence. Looking at the Sump 3 entrance felt far less intimidating than Sump 2 – mostly because I knew it wasn’t going to be silted up. I told Ben I’d see him on the other side and started pulling myself downwards. With slightly better visibility than Sump 2, after what felt like quite a long time, I ascended upwards, and exited the sump on the other side into Swildons 4. The dive felt considerably longer than Sump 2, with my lungs still perfectly happy by the end but relieved to receive oxygen once more.
We left our weight belts there and traversed the Swildons 4 streamway, probably the finest in the cave where interesting rock formations dot smooth cascades and fun climbs over rotund pools follow splashes in the pretty waterway. Our enjoyment was soon cut short by the sight of the filthy dive line sticking out of sump 4. People had warned that this was a foul place, polluted by cow excrement mixing into the water via the appropriately named Cowsh Aven. On our trip, however, we felt no such disgust. The water was clean and had the best visibility yet. A change must have happened at some point in the recent past, meaning that Sump 4 is now a relatively straightforward free dive. I pulled myself into it, kicked off the ceiling a few times in its more restricted sections, then ascended a shallow slope to emerge into Swildons 5, passing the five metre dive with ease.
We continued plodding along, passing a few low airspace ducks before being greeted with Sump 5, which isn’t a true sump, but a series of atmospheric ducks. Sump 5 is not a straight passage, but a large area - far too low to breathe - where the roof very nearly meets the water. There are, however, hidden pockets of airspace zigzagging across the sump, which you must follow to get through. We removed our helmets and held them in our hands, floating on our backs to maximise our airspace. The trick here is to slowly float to the edge of each airspace and feel with either your hands or feet down the side of each airbell, once you feel a pocket of air, dive underneath the edge, and surface in that new airbell. We repeated this a few times, being sure to not commit to a duck before we were sure it led to airspace. After a few iterations of this, we were through. This was a true highlight of the trip, and felt like its most adventurous moment. The entire area feels unaccommodating to humans, and passing it feels like forcing yourself through something that shouldn’t even be attempted.
Then came the Sump 6 bypass. Sump 6 itself is only 10m long, but is not freediveable, being too awkward and constricted. The bypass comprises approximately 100m of dull hands and knees crawling. Easy enough, but sweaty when encased in neoprene. At the end of the bypass, however, came the unexpected crux of the trip. I had heard that there was a squeeze in the bypass, and had gathered from others that it was relatively easy and scarcely a squeeze at all. Unfortunately, this was not the case when we arrived.
To our dismay, we were met with a duck with just enough airspace for a hamster to breathe in, far too narrow for any human to fit through. The squeeze had silted up, nearly to the roof. Ben, far narrower than me, tried with all his might to fit through, but it was simply too tight. We promptly accepted the inevitable and dropped to our knees, removed our helmets, and used them as shovels to dig out the silt and bulldoze a path through. After half an hour of tireless excavation, Ben managed to compress himself enough to fit through, claiming on the other side that it was the tightest squeeze he had ever been through. I proceeded to attempt it and got a quarter of the way in before my chest would not allow further progress. I knew that if I continued forcing myself through, my ribs would crumble and my lungs burst, so I opted to back out and continue digging.
Another half an hour of excavation later, I tried it again, with Ben guiding my head through the widest bit. Trying with all my effort to keep my mouth out of the water, I scrambled with my feet to push off anything I could find with all my force. Each heave dug deeper into my ribs, and at the tightest point I could fill only a quarter of my lung capacity with air. This was the tightest squeeze I had ever experienced, making the Gates of Hell in Eastwater’s Technical Masterpiece feel like the Grand Canyon. After a slightly intimidating final push, in which I made a silent plea to the blackness above to allow me through rather than getting stuck in a face high pool of cold water, I breathed out my last reserves of oxygen, and forced my body through the evil slot. I felt my ribs. Unbroken. Solitary satisfaction was tempered by the knowledge that I had to return the same way. After that it was easy progress to Sump 9.
Swildon’s 7 contains a spectacular chamber where angled wall reaches up into the far distance above – a sight that, in terms of scale, dwarfs the rest of the cave up to this point. Soon, after easy roped climbs and some boulder hopping, we arrived at the impressive and ominous pool of Sump 9 – a 40m dive that leads to the elusive sections of the cave accessible only by fully equipped divers. We took a couple of minutes to take in the gratification of reaching our goal, then hurried back the way we had come, with the Sump 6 bypass proving much easier on the way out. Our exit proceeded to go pleasantly, and by the time we approached the entrance my hungover body had had quite enough, the constant heating and cooling cycle of sump diving having sapped all my energy. But we had done what we had set out to achieve, and went back to enjoy a paneer curry, happy and satisfied.
Dan Rose
THE GREAT SELL GILL CLUSTERFUCK
Sell Gill. Photo by Tom Richardson. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Some caves can prove to be too popular, as James Hallihan and a UBSS group discovered on a recent trip to Yorkshire.
“Any decent freshers trips besided Alum that you recommend, Todd?” I asked.
“Sell Gill is a nice, easy one,” Todd replied.
And with that, and a fair amount of faff over breakfast, a plan was formed. Billy, Ash, Grace, Dylan and myself from UBSS would team up with a group from Manchester University Speleology Club (MUSC) consisting of Lara, Eleanor, Phoebe, Poppy, Hamish, splitting into two groups to do an exchange trip in this quiet, rarely used cave.
We hiked up the hill and decided that Lara and I would lead Eleanor, Dylan and Phoebe down the wet (Goblin Shaft) route while Billy and Ash led Hamish, Poppy and Grace down the dry route before meeting at the bottom and climbing out. The dry route consists of a 20m pitch with a rebelay, a 30m free hanging pitch and a 30m pitch with a free hanging rebelay whereas the wet route recommends two 45m ropes through a series of rebelays, deviations and a J-hang down to the main chamber. We got to the entrances and realised that as well as the Sheffield University Speleological Society (SUSS) group we met in the lay-by, there was a Nottingham University Caving Club (NUCC) group just starting the dry route and a Glasgow University Potholing Association (GUPA) group just starting the wet route, overall 26 people across the two routes.
My group chatted for a while whilst GUPA rigged their ropes and we followed shortly after. While underground we found out that not only did they have someone learning to rig, therefore taking their time, they had someone on their first ever trip. We decided that bridging across a streamway was less comfortable than sitting in the sunshine 20m away so we resurfaced and chatted for a while longer. Eventually (at roughly 3pm) we headed back underground to find that most of GUPA were through the first rebelay and onto the J-hang so we started rigging and followed on, Lara led, I followed thinking that Lara could rig and I could talk the others through the J-hang from the bottom. Turned out that neither of these schemes really worked as the J-hang came into a tight, 5m crawl with three members of the GUPA crowd on the other side waiting for their rope to be free. I descended and entered the crawl just in time to hear Lara and the GUPA 2nd screaming as the first timer let go of the dead end of the rope. Not 100% sure what had happened, I crawled faster than ever before and popped out to see him still on both cowstails at the pitch head, now holding the dead end of the rope and locking his stop.
I turned around and called rope free for Dylan who followed after a few minutes. A while later Phoebe came down and called free for Eleanor. A short time passed with no sign of movement until a call for “help” came down. A combination of thick rope and descending onto the long, instead of short, cowstail meant she couldn’t open her stop at the rebelay. Some advice to prussik up a little resolved the situation and Eleanor shortly followed through the crawl. We re-ordered, with Lara leading and rigging, while I took up the rear with Phoebe, Dylan and Eleanor. An agreement with GUPA that we could use each others’ ropes allowed us to move faster which worked up until Phoebe got strung up in the two sets of rope. As she had both ropes loaded, neither Eleanor nor I could descend to help so Lara had to come up to untangle her and after that we were shortly on our way and in no time at all we were huddled around drinking hot chocolate waiting for NUCC/SUSS/GUPA to clear.
After finishing all the hot chocolate with people still on the ropes, we decided to wander around the lower reaches of the cave until we reached the terminal sump where we found a frog. We decided to rescue said frog but struggled to figure out how as we’d all need our hands to prussik out. That was until someone figured out the hot chocolate flask was empty and with a wash out and a loose lid a handy way of rescuing the creature. This flask (and the small tackle sack it was placed in) was handed to the vet student (me) as they reasoned: “It’s an animal and you’re the most qualified to look after it”.
With this, I began prussiking out, passed a tight rebelay I was too lazy to loosen and caught up with GUPA again. After they called rope free I began climbing the 2nd pitch with the precious cargo swinging below me. Upon reaching the top I found what was technically all correct and useable rigging and an accepted way of rigging that specific pitch (with a Y-hang coming from the last two traverse bolts straight into a deviation half a metre lower) but knowing the group’s struggles earlier I decided to re-rig it using a higher bolt on the far wall to make an easy free-hang. While Lara de-rigged I took the others to the base of the final pitch to the surface and sent them up. We exited eventually after a four hour trip, almost as long as we spent faffing behind GUPA.
Sell Gill. Photo by Tom Richardson. Used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Some caves can prove to be too popular, as James Hallihan and a UBSS group discovered on a recent trip to Yorkshire.
“Any decent freshers trips besided Alum that you recommend, Todd?” I asked.
“Sell Gill is a nice, easy one,” Todd replied.
And with that, and a fair amount of faff over breakfast, a plan was formed. Billy, Ash, Grace, Dylan and myself from UBSS would team up with a group from Manchester University Speleology Club (MUSC) consisting of Lara, Eleanor, Phoebe, Poppy, Hamish, splitting into two groups to do an exchange trip in this quiet, rarely used cave.
We hiked up the hill and decided that Lara and I would lead Eleanor, Dylan and Phoebe down the wet (Goblin Shaft) route while Billy and Ash led Hamish, Poppy and Grace down the dry route before meeting at the bottom and climbing out. The dry route consists of a 20m pitch with a rebelay, a 30m free hanging pitch and a 30m pitch with a free hanging rebelay whereas the wet route recommends two 45m ropes through a series of rebelays, deviations and a J-hang down to the main chamber. We got to the entrances and realised that as well as the Sheffield University Speleological Society (SUSS) group we met in the lay-by, there was a Nottingham University Caving Club (NUCC) group just starting the dry route and a Glasgow University Potholing Association (GUPA) group just starting the wet route, overall 26 people across the two routes.
My group chatted for a while whilst GUPA rigged their ropes and we followed shortly after. While underground we found out that not only did they have someone learning to rig, therefore taking their time, they had someone on their first ever trip. We decided that bridging across a streamway was less comfortable than sitting in the sunshine 20m away so we resurfaced and chatted for a while longer. Eventually (at roughly 3pm) we headed back underground to find that most of GUPA were through the first rebelay and onto the J-hang so we started rigging and followed on, Lara led, I followed thinking that Lara could rig and I could talk the others through the J-hang from the bottom. Turned out that neither of these schemes really worked as the J-hang came into a tight, 5m crawl with three members of the GUPA crowd on the other side waiting for their rope to be free. I descended and entered the crawl just in time to hear Lara and the GUPA 2nd screaming as the first timer let go of the dead end of the rope. Not 100% sure what had happened, I crawled faster than ever before and popped out to see him still on both cowstails at the pitch head, now holding the dead end of the rope and locking his stop.
I turned around and called rope free for Dylan who followed after a few minutes. A while later Phoebe came down and called free for Eleanor. A short time passed with no sign of movement until a call for “help” came down. A combination of thick rope and descending onto the long, instead of short, cowstail meant she couldn’t open her stop at the rebelay. Some advice to prussik up a little resolved the situation and Eleanor shortly followed through the crawl. We re-ordered, with Lara leading and rigging, while I took up the rear with Phoebe, Dylan and Eleanor. An agreement with GUPA that we could use each others’ ropes allowed us to move faster which worked up until Phoebe got strung up in the two sets of rope. As she had both ropes loaded, neither Eleanor nor I could descend to help so Lara had to come up to untangle her and after that we were shortly on our way and in no time at all we were huddled around drinking hot chocolate waiting for NUCC/SUSS/GUPA to clear.
After finishing all the hot chocolate with people still on the ropes, we decided to wander around the lower reaches of the cave until we reached the terminal sump where we found a frog. We decided to rescue said frog but struggled to figure out how as we’d all need our hands to prussik out. That was until someone figured out the hot chocolate flask was empty and with a wash out and a loose lid a handy way of rescuing the creature. This flask (and the small tackle sack it was placed in) was handed to the vet student (me) as they reasoned: “It’s an animal and you’re the most qualified to look after it”.
With this, I began prussiking out, passed a tight rebelay I was too lazy to loosen and caught up with GUPA again. After they called rope free I began climbing the 2nd pitch with the precious cargo swinging below me. Upon reaching the top I found what was technically all correct and useable rigging and an accepted way of rigging that specific pitch (with a Y-hang coming from the last two traverse bolts straight into a deviation half a metre lower) but knowing the group’s struggles earlier I decided to re-rig it using a higher bolt on the far wall to make an easy free-hang. While Lara de-rigged I took the others to the base of the final pitch to the surface and sent them up. We exited eventually after a four hour trip, almost as long as we spent faffing behind GUPA.
James Hallihan
SNOW, SUMPS AND WATERY BLISS
Ben Morgan watches as Dan Rose dives into the sump.
On a freezing cold weekend in January, after months of meticulous planning, a UBSS team set off to Yorkshire to celebrate Jess Brock's birthday and also to attempt the through trip from Rowten Pot free-diving three sumps to emerge from Kingsdale's Valley Entrance. Dan Rose tells the tale of their watery adventure.
Rowten Pot contains some of the finest vertical sequences in Yorkshire. 105m of uninterrupted, theme park-style SRT, featuring pendulum swings, big pitches and crashing waterfalls. At the bottom of this aqueous pit, the streamway disappears into three short, free-divable sumps, leading to the Valley Entrance side of Kingsdale Master Cave. Having descended the pot last summer, Ben and I felt that a return trip was warranted – this time to dive the Kingsdale connection, and complete a Rowten - Valley Entrance through trip.
The idea came to me in early December, amid an all-nighter in the Arts and Social Sciences Library (ASS). Bathing in a deep depth of regret, seething at my own impotence and failure in leaving my essay to the last possible moment, I scrambled to apply Clifford Geertz to E.P Thompson. Craving fresh air, I walked outside. It was 3am. The looming deadline allowed for only a short rest of mind. As Red Bull approached my lips, my mind latched to any conceivable sense of meaning to this madness; a reason to keep going. I nostalgically thought back to the summer, back to Rowten, and a flash of motivation hit me. I saw the sumps in vivid detail, their enthralling inaccessibility, their summoning, static silence beneath the roar of water above. I had to return. I jogged back upstairs, leapt into cyberspace and finished off my psychotically sleep deprived intellectual endeavour.
Fast forward to the 11th January; Ben Morgan, Billy Evans, Stanley Lewis, Jess Brock and I, rose at Greenclose on a frosty, snow covered morning. I had convinced Ben Morgan to do the dives with me, while Jess, Billy and Stan kindly offered to prussik out and derig Rowten for us. It was a subzero day with no chance of snowmelt and water levels were low – perfect conditions for our plan. After a morning of unreasonable faff, Ben and I encased ourselves in our coffins of neoprene. 7mm all over, with neoprene hoods, gloves and socks in matching style, complimented by dive masks weight belts to top off this exercise in sartorial elegance. Suddenly the prospect of hyperthermia felt much more threatening than hypothermia – a trade off we were happy to take. While we were peeling our suits of masochism onto our bodies, the other three went to rig Rowten.
Couldn't resist this gorgeous snowy image!
The sumps connecting Rowten with Valley Entrance are 8m, 3.5m and 2m. These relatively short lengths, coupled with the generous width and height of the flooded passage, means that they are relatively easy undertakings. The most significant danger comes when the airbell between the 8m and 3.5m sumps becomes flooded in high water conditions, thus unexpectedly turning an 8m dive into a very confusing, zig-zaggy 11.5m dive. Although we were confident that the low water conditions would not allow for this, we felt it sensible to check that the airbell existed from the Valley Entrance side first, so that if it did not, we would only have to retreat 3.5m, instead of either committing to an 11.5m dive, or retreating to create a 16m dive.
Armed with a laminated copy of the trip description from Not for the Faint Hearted, we marched through the friendly passage of Valley Entrance, pre-rigging the 6m ‘Roof Tunnel’ pitch and leaving a dry bag filled with a towel, warm clothes and emergency shelter in case things didn’t go to plan. After a few minutes of route finding issues where the path takes an ‘oblique left turn’ off the streamway, we found the passage that led to the sumps. This was an ominous place, where bits of vegetation dot the ceiling from past flooding, where gloopy, gooey sounds reverberate from waves of water filling gaps in the walls. After a few minutes of deep-water wading, a small slot in the wall marked the first sump. I filmed a brief introduction on my GoPro, braced myself and dived through the first sump – 2m pull that’s over before you realise it’s begun. The water was low enough so that this ‘sump’ had a small sliver of airspace in it, meaning I could hear Ben from the other side once I had dived through.
Ben Morgan at the entrance of Rowten. Yes, it's definitely cold on the surface!
Eager to get down Rowten, I waited for Ben to come through, then dived through the underwater hole at the end of the airbell. This was a three and a half metre helmet scraper, requiring me to pull myself underneath a descending ceiling, and felt like more of a real sump than the first one. I emerged to a large airbell with slimy stalactites descending from the ceiling. Airspace confirmed, we retraced our steps out of Valley Entrance and emerged to pink streaks of candyfloss tearing the sky. Marching up the snow covered hill and approaching Rowten, we sped down the pre-rigged paradise. Within ten minutes we had reached the bottom and found our wonderful friends waiting for us.
The team at the bottom of Rowten. Left to right: Dan Rose, Stanley Lewis, Billy Evans, Jess Brock, Ben Morgan.
As we slid weights onto our belts, I pondered the 8m sump ahead. The water was clean, the visibility clear, and the temperature pleasant. Everything had gone swimmingly so far. Now for the main event. I knelt down, stared into the inviting pool ahead of me, and entered the embrace of winter water. The bliss that followed brings a smile to my face as I reminisce – 8m of spacious, crystal, sub-aqeuous underworld. Everything about this sump felt friendly. The ocean-blue colour of it, the newly replaced handline along its length, the straightforwardness of leisurely tugging myself along. It was wonderful, and I emerged, covered in deep-seated bliss; not grinning, but smiling with warm contentness.
Ben Morgan watches as Dan Rose dives into the sump.
On a freezing cold weekend in January, after months of meticulous planning, a UBSS team set off to Yorkshire to celebrate Jess Brock's birthday and also to attempt the through trip from Rowten Pot free-diving three sumps to emerge from Kingsdale's Valley Entrance. Dan Rose tells the tale of their watery adventure.
Rowten Pot contains some of the finest vertical sequences in Yorkshire. 105m of uninterrupted, theme park-style SRT, featuring pendulum swings, big pitches and crashing waterfalls. At the bottom of this aqueous pit, the streamway disappears into three short, free-divable sumps, leading to the Valley Entrance side of Kingsdale Master Cave. Having descended the pot last summer, Ben and I felt that a return trip was warranted – this time to dive the Kingsdale connection, and complete a Rowten - Valley Entrance through trip.
The idea came to me in early December, amid an all-nighter in the Arts and Social Sciences Library (ASS). Bathing in a deep depth of regret, seething at my own impotence and failure in leaving my essay to the last possible moment, I scrambled to apply Clifford Geertz to E.P Thompson. Craving fresh air, I walked outside. It was 3am. The looming deadline allowed for only a short rest of mind. As Red Bull approached my lips, my mind latched to any conceivable sense of meaning to this madness; a reason to keep going. I nostalgically thought back to the summer, back to Rowten, and a flash of motivation hit me. I saw the sumps in vivid detail, their enthralling inaccessibility, their summoning, static silence beneath the roar of water above. I had to return. I jogged back upstairs, leapt into cyberspace and finished off my psychotically sleep deprived intellectual endeavour.
Fast forward to the 11th January; Ben Morgan, Billy Evans, Stanley Lewis, Jess Brock and I, rose at Greenclose on a frosty, snow covered morning. I had convinced Ben Morgan to do the dives with me, while Jess, Billy and Stan kindly offered to prussik out and derig Rowten for us. It was a subzero day with no chance of snowmelt and water levels were low – perfect conditions for our plan. After a morning of unreasonable faff, Ben and I encased ourselves in our coffins of neoprene. 7mm all over, with neoprene hoods, gloves and socks in matching style, complimented by dive masks weight belts to top off this exercise in sartorial elegance. Suddenly the prospect of hyperthermia felt much more threatening than hypothermia – a trade off we were happy to take. While we were peeling our suits of masochism onto our bodies, the other three went to rig Rowten.
Couldn't resist this gorgeous snowy image!
The sumps connecting Rowten with Valley Entrance are 8m, 3.5m and 2m. These relatively short lengths, coupled with the generous width and height of the flooded passage, means that they are relatively easy undertakings. The most significant danger comes when the airbell between the 8m and 3.5m sumps becomes flooded in high water conditions, thus unexpectedly turning an 8m dive into a very confusing, zig-zaggy 11.5m dive. Although we were confident that the low water conditions would not allow for this, we felt it sensible to check that the airbell existed from the Valley Entrance side first, so that if it did not, we would only have to retreat 3.5m, instead of either committing to an 11.5m dive, or retreating to create a 16m dive.
Armed with a laminated copy of the trip description from Not for the Faint Hearted, we marched through the friendly passage of Valley Entrance, pre-rigging the 6m ‘Roof Tunnel’ pitch and leaving a dry bag filled with a towel, warm clothes and emergency shelter in case things didn’t go to plan. After a few minutes of route finding issues where the path takes an ‘oblique left turn’ off the streamway, we found the passage that led to the sumps. This was an ominous place, where bits of vegetation dot the ceiling from past flooding, where gloopy, gooey sounds reverberate from waves of water filling gaps in the walls. After a few minutes of deep-water wading, a small slot in the wall marked the first sump. I filmed a brief introduction on my GoPro, braced myself and dived through the first sump – 2m pull that’s over before you realise it’s begun. The water was low enough so that this ‘sump’ had a small sliver of airspace in it, meaning I could hear Ben from the other side once I had dived through.
Ben Morgan at the entrance of Rowten. Yes, it's definitely cold on the surface!
Eager to get down Rowten, I waited for Ben to come through, then dived through the underwater hole at the end of the airbell. This was a three and a half metre helmet scraper, requiring me to pull myself underneath a descending ceiling, and felt like more of a real sump than the first one. I emerged to a large airbell with slimy stalactites descending from the ceiling. Airspace confirmed, we retraced our steps out of Valley Entrance and emerged to pink streaks of candyfloss tearing the sky. Marching up the snow covered hill and approaching Rowten, we sped down the pre-rigged paradise. Within ten minutes we had reached the bottom and found our wonderful friends waiting for us.
The team at the bottom of Rowten. Left to right: Dan Rose, Stanley Lewis, Billy Evans, Jess Brock, Ben Morgan.
As we slid weights onto our belts, I pondered the 8m sump ahead. The water was clean, the visibility clear, and the temperature pleasant. Everything had gone swimmingly so far. Now for the main event. I knelt down, stared into the inviting pool ahead of me, and entered the embrace of winter water. The bliss that followed brings a smile to my face as I reminisce – 8m of spacious, crystal, sub-aqeuous underworld. Everything about this sump felt friendly. The ocean-blue colour of it, the newly replaced handline along its length, the straightforwardness of leisurely tugging myself along. It was wonderful, and I emerged, covered in deep-seated bliss; not grinning, but smiling with warm contentness.
To watch the video of the Rowten Sumps, click above.
Ben followed, sharing a similar experience. We dived the remaining two sumps and emerged to Valley Entrance. Expecting the trip to be practically over, I reached for my GoPro to film a post-dive video, yet as my hand touched my Ercrin Roc’s clean, slippery surface, I felt a distinct gap where my GoPro had previously rested. Somewhere along the dive the tacky plastic mount had snapped and it had been knocked off my helmet. This was not a bad thing, it merely meant we had to go back into the sumps to search for it, which we were more than happy to do. Ben found it first, at the Valley Entrance side of the 8m sump.
We stomped out of Valley Entrance and returned to Greenclose feeling thoroughly fulfilled. One of the best trips out there. Pure fun. Also, to get a glimpse of how brilliant the sump visibility was, watch the video Ben and I produced of our dive. It shows our lights getting gradually bigger as we approach the fallen GoPro lying in the sump. It was like pool water – but much nicer!
Dan Rose
We stomped out of Valley Entrance and returned to Greenclose feeling thoroughly fulfilled. One of the best trips out there. Pure fun. Also, to get a glimpse of how brilliant the sump visibility was, watch the video Ben and I produced of our dive. It shows our lights getting gradually bigger as we approach the fallen GoPro lying in the sump. It was like pool water – but much nicer!
Dan Rose
POETRY CORNER
We're delighted to bring you, for the first time in print, Billy Evans' entry for the cave poetry competition in this year's Southern CHECC! If anyone else would like to try their hand at cave related poetry, we would be delighted to hear from you.
We're delighted to bring you, for the first time in print, Billy Evans' entry for the cave poetry competition in this year's Southern CHECC! If anyone else would like to try their hand at cave related poetry, we would be delighted to hear from you.
THE SOURCE DE GAUBERT
The stream cascades down bank, recently cut back after a road-widening scheme.
If you drive along the south side of the River Vézère in the Dordogne region of France from Terrasson-Lavilledieu towards Condat, something Linda and I do fairly frequently, then just outside Terrasson you will see a stream coming down the cliff and flowing through a culvert under the road to the river. On many occasions, I’ve idly wondered where the stream came from and was surprised to learn from a friend who lives in town that it flows out of a cave.
Our ears promptly pricked up. "A cave?" we chorused. "More details, please!"
So, armed with that knowledge and a description from our friend Alan, Linda and I set off a couple of days later with two dogs in tow to have a look. The route is simple: park on the Route de la Cave, behind the food processing plant, follow the road around to the right (downstream) and then take the obvious path that continues on around the hill. Pass the turning to a little chapel on your left and continue until the main path turns sharply back on itself and heads uphill. A smaller track continues straight on at this bend and after about 50m, you will see the stream issuing out of the hillside and flowing down a small gully. At the head of the stream is a gated entrance with a sign saying ‘Defense d’entrer’ – a clear indicator in France that you’ve got the right spot.
The gate was not locked when we visited and looked like it hadn’t been locked or even closed in a very long time. With two dogs to mind and, not expecting much, we hadn’t bought much kit beyond wellies, a helmet and a couple of Fenixes so we took it in turns. Linda went first and returned to report about 40m of walking-sized canyon passage lowering towards the end to a muddy crawl. The cave looks to end in a sump as there a diving line has been left in situ. The passage doesn’t have much in the way of decoration but was a pleasant enough, if short, womble. When my turn came, I didn’t grovel into the crawl at the end without proper kit; I leave the getting mucky to Linda.
Walking size passage a couple of metres just inside the entrance.
This was a pleasant addition to a morning dog walk and we might even go back, better prepared, as there seems to be another cave apparently called the Grotte des Rocs de Gaubert No 1(according to the somewhat unreliable Grottomap) a few metres further along at the head of another (dry) gulley. The Grottomap website is an interesting resource, but needs to be used with caution. On the hillside above our French house, we’ve several times walked a small area where it shows multiple cave entrances none of which seem to exist!
Diving line leading into the sump.
The Source de Gaubert, Terrasson-Lavilledieu, Dordogne.
Latitude 45.126321 Longitude 1.286793
Estimated length 40 - 50m
The stream cascades down bank, recently cut back after a road-widening scheme.
If you drive along the south side of the River Vézère in the Dordogne region of France from Terrasson-Lavilledieu towards Condat, something Linda and I do fairly frequently, then just outside Terrasson you will see a stream coming down the cliff and flowing through a culvert under the road to the river. On many occasions, I’ve idly wondered where the stream came from and was surprised to learn from a friend who lives in town that it flows out of a cave.
Our ears promptly pricked up. "A cave?" we chorused. "More details, please!"
So, armed with that knowledge and a description from our friend Alan, Linda and I set off a couple of days later with two dogs in tow to have a look. The route is simple: park on the Route de la Cave, behind the food processing plant, follow the road around to the right (downstream) and then take the obvious path that continues on around the hill. Pass the turning to a little chapel on your left and continue until the main path turns sharply back on itself and heads uphill. A smaller track continues straight on at this bend and after about 50m, you will see the stream issuing out of the hillside and flowing down a small gully. At the head of the stream is a gated entrance with a sign saying ‘Defense d’entrer’ – a clear indicator in France that you’ve got the right spot.
The gate was not locked when we visited and looked like it hadn’t been locked or even closed in a very long time. With two dogs to mind and, not expecting much, we hadn’t bought much kit beyond wellies, a helmet and a couple of Fenixes so we took it in turns. Linda went first and returned to report about 40m of walking-sized canyon passage lowering towards the end to a muddy crawl. The cave looks to end in a sump as there a diving line has been left in situ. The passage doesn’t have much in the way of decoration but was a pleasant enough, if short, womble. When my turn came, I didn’t grovel into the crawl at the end without proper kit; I leave the getting mucky to Linda.
Walking size passage a couple of metres just inside the entrance.
This was a pleasant addition to a morning dog walk and we might even go back, better prepared, as there seems to be another cave apparently called the Grotte des Rocs de Gaubert No 1(according to the somewhat unreliable Grottomap) a few metres further along at the head of another (dry) gulley. The Grottomap website is an interesting resource, but needs to be used with caution. On the hillside above our French house, we’ve several times walked a small area where it shows multiple cave entrances none of which seem to exist!
Diving line leading into the sump.
The Source de Gaubert, Terrasson-Lavilledieu, Dordogne.
Latitude 45.126321 Longitude 1.286793
Estimated length 40 - 50m
Graham Mullan
A LONG (AND GLORIOUS) HISTORY ...
UBSS is widely known for its academic journal The Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society, but often overlooked is its rather more informal companion, the Newsletter, which provides rather less formal reading including everything from trip write ups to notices of upcoming events and other items of interest. Following the success of Jess Brock’s article Interesting Things From Days Gone By in our last issue, Graham Mullan succumbed to editorial blandishments and agreed to write a short history of a surprisingly long subject …
To start in the middle, in the mid-1990s, the late Tony Boycott and I took it upon ourselves to collect copies of all the extant documents known to have been circulated to members throughout the Society’s history. Tony was, when Secretary, responsible for the first of the New Series Newsletters (Winter 1970) and as Librarian and Archivist, he felt it important for these sometimes rather ephemeral items to be collected and catalogued. We scoured the Library and prevailed upon older members to search their own cupboards and drawers.
Everything we found was preserved and scanned and is on the website. In one form or another, the Newsletter has been around since the very beginning; two rather nicely typed booklets, with photographs, called The Troglodytes (Volume 1 Nos 1 & 2) were produced to record the goings on at the Summer Camps in Burrington in 1919 and 1920. The shield on the front cover is the very first appearance of our crest, much modified but still in use and, note that the Newsletter is even older than the Hut, which dates to New Year 1919/20.
Only two issues of Troglodytes were produced and little else in the way of informal communications survived the destruction of much of the Library and Museum in the Blitz. All we have is a single notice of the Winter Camp 1928-29 (above) held over New Year. Activities included exploration of Gough’s Cave and as I write this one member is working as a temporary guide in Cox’s Cave in Cheddar. Some things never change.
In the post-war years, communication slowly improved. There were six issues between 1952 and 1955, mostly reporting on the Irish trips but after 1956, Circulars to Members became more frequent – or have survived better – coming out on occasion up to three times a year.
As mentioned above, in December 1970 New Series No. 1 appeared and this was followed in May 1971 by No. 2. Although not recorded in print, I know that the cover of this one was designed by Tony Boycott to look like a culture in a petrie dish, inspired by his medical studies. He would no doubt be all over some recent events like a rash (and yes, the pun is definitely intended!).
The occasional Circular, mainly produced by Trat or Oliver Lloyd, probably when they thought the Secretaries weren’t getting ‘their’ newsletter out fast enough, did appear after this, see Secretaries’ Letter to members 20.10.76 following on from Treasurer’s Letter to Members 28.9.76! However,despite occasional hiccups, UBSS managed a surprisingly almost consistent publication rate of one per term through the rest of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
A different kind of change occurred in 1981. After editing the newsletter for three years, Charlie Self handed the reins to Chris Pepper. But Charlie being Charlie, he couldn’t quite let go completely and so for the next few years he produced Privateer a wholly gossip-driven section which appeared upside-down at the back of the regular stuff. (All of these have been turned ‘the right way up’ in the online copies to save people having to read with their computers upside down.) And to prove there's nothing new under the sun, that issue also contained an engagement announcement, in surprisingly similar form to the one penned by our current Gossip Sec, and also a Poetry Corner (although history no longer relates who Keith's mum was or what the poem is about, so if anyone can enlighten us, please do!).
Several recurring features were found here including an affectionate copy (for ‘copy’ read ‘complete rip-off’) of the A Doctor Writes column in Private Eye (Privateer – yes, you get the name now) called A.B. Doctor Writes and featuring a cartoon of our own Dr Tony Boycott. Tony was so taken by this that he adopted the nickname of ABDr for himself, as can be seen in the labelling he used on his kit, including on the helmet shown in his obituary in the last Proceedings. This first column is yet another example of how cavers' antics haven't changed over the years.
Another cartoon often found was Hon. Sec. penned by Cec Haynes and copying Private Eye’s Hom Sap. This often featured our longstanding Treasurer Oliver Lloyd. This lead to one unfortunate problem when the cartoon featured joke threats against Oliver after he had cocked up the tackle needed for a Yorkshire Weekend. Sadly Oliver died suddenly between this cartoon being drawn and printed and it being published. Our then president, the late Prof. Bob Savage, deemed it in poor taste and demanded that it be physically cut off the copies before distribution. Long after the event it was reinstated on the copy put online, but in deference to Bob’s memory and sensibilities I won’t give a link here, I’ll make you forage for it. To my knowledge, this is the only time content in the newsletter has been ‘censored’.
The next major change occurred in the Summer of 2005 with the introduction of colour, at least to the front cover. There was a period when the cover was in colour but the inside contents were printed in black and white but put online in colour. As a result, the newsletter acquired two ISSN numbers (International Standard Serial Number), one for the print version and one for the online version. These are now to be found on the Newsletter introduction page, as requested by the ISSN official body.
However, by the early 2000s the frequency began to drop off. From 2010 to 2012 there was only one edition each year and in 2013 no Newsletters appeared at all. The problem then was that the time taken to edit, print and distribute the Newsletter meant that the content wasn’t exactly news, which was quite discouraging to contributors especially when people were finding other ways, via social media, to talk about their caving. So, after struggling on for a little while with two editions in 2015, one in 2016 and the last in 2017, the printed edition of the UBSS Newsletter quietly faded away.
Under all that mud lies Adam Henry!
This left a gap in our communications. The committee lost a reasonably reliable – albeit slow – method of communicating with members and also came to feel that we were short-changing them, especially our more distant members, when it came to the benefits that they received from their membership, as particularly those outside Bristol were very much out of the loop when it came to what was happening in the club. So at the beginning of 2019, our Centenary year, the Montly Online Newsletter was born. Linda, who has co-edited it from the start, took a quick lesson from a friend in the use of Mailchimp and the newsletter in its current form was launched in January of that year.
The Online Newsletter has been a great success, as can be seen from the readership statistics that Mailchimp provides, and the immediacy (and reliability) of publication is a great incentive to contributors. It’s now in its seventh year and has only missed one month, when Linda was in hospital, which led to the combination of the news and articles February and March 2022 into one issue!
UBSS is widely known for its academic journal The Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society, but often overlooked is its rather more informal companion, the Newsletter, which provides rather less formal reading including everything from trip write ups to notices of upcoming events and other items of interest. Following the success of Jess Brock’s article Interesting Things From Days Gone By in our last issue, Graham Mullan succumbed to editorial blandishments and agreed to write a short history of a surprisingly long subject …
To start in the middle, in the mid-1990s, the late Tony Boycott and I took it upon ourselves to collect copies of all the extant documents known to have been circulated to members throughout the Society’s history. Tony was, when Secretary, responsible for the first of the New Series Newsletters (Winter 1970) and as Librarian and Archivist, he felt it important for these sometimes rather ephemeral items to be collected and catalogued. We scoured the Library and prevailed upon older members to search their own cupboards and drawers.
Everything we found was preserved and scanned and is on the website. In one form or another, the Newsletter has been around since the very beginning; two rather nicely typed booklets, with photographs, called The Troglodytes (Volume 1 Nos 1 & 2) were produced to record the goings on at the Summer Camps in Burrington in 1919 and 1920. The shield on the front cover is the very first appearance of our crest, much modified but still in use and, note that the Newsletter is even older than the Hut, which dates to New Year 1919/20.
Only two issues of Troglodytes were produced and little else in the way of informal communications survived the destruction of much of the Library and Museum in the Blitz. All we have is a single notice of the Winter Camp 1928-29 (above) held over New Year. Activities included exploration of Gough’s Cave and as I write this one member is working as a temporary guide in Cox’s Cave in Cheddar. Some things never change.
In the post-war years, communication slowly improved. There were six issues between 1952 and 1955, mostly reporting on the Irish trips but after 1956, Circulars to Members became more frequent – or have survived better – coming out on occasion up to three times a year.
As mentioned above, in December 1970 New Series No. 1 appeared and this was followed in May 1971 by No. 2. Although not recorded in print, I know that the cover of this one was designed by Tony Boycott to look like a culture in a petrie dish, inspired by his medical studies. He would no doubt be all over some recent events like a rash (and yes, the pun is definitely intended!).
The occasional Circular, mainly produced by Trat or Oliver Lloyd, probably when they thought the Secretaries weren’t getting ‘their’ newsletter out fast enough, did appear after this, see Secretaries’ Letter to members 20.10.76 following on from Treasurer’s Letter to Members 28.9.76! However,despite occasional hiccups, UBSS managed a surprisingly almost consistent publication rate of one per term through the rest of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
A different kind of change occurred in 1981. After editing the newsletter for three years, Charlie Self handed the reins to Chris Pepper. But Charlie being Charlie, he couldn’t quite let go completely and so for the next few years he produced Privateer a wholly gossip-driven section which appeared upside-down at the back of the regular stuff. (All of these have been turned ‘the right way up’ in the online copies to save people having to read with their computers upside down.) And to prove there's nothing new under the sun, that issue also contained an engagement announcement, in surprisingly similar form to the one penned by our current Gossip Sec, and also a Poetry Corner (although history no longer relates who Keith's mum was or what the poem is about, so if anyone can enlighten us, please do!).
Several recurring features were found here including an affectionate copy (for ‘copy’ read ‘complete rip-off’) of the A Doctor Writes column in Private Eye (Privateer – yes, you get the name now) called A.B. Doctor Writes and featuring a cartoon of our own Dr Tony Boycott. Tony was so taken by this that he adopted the nickname of ABDr for himself, as can be seen in the labelling he used on his kit, including on the helmet shown in his obituary in the last Proceedings. This first column is yet another example of how cavers' antics haven't changed over the years.
Another cartoon often found was Hon. Sec. penned by Cec Haynes and copying Private Eye’s Hom Sap. This often featured our longstanding Treasurer Oliver Lloyd. This lead to one unfortunate problem when the cartoon featured joke threats against Oliver after he had cocked up the tackle needed for a Yorkshire Weekend. Sadly Oliver died suddenly between this cartoon being drawn and printed and it being published. Our then president, the late Prof. Bob Savage, deemed it in poor taste and demanded that it be physically cut off the copies before distribution. Long after the event it was reinstated on the copy put online, but in deference to Bob’s memory and sensibilities I won’t give a link here, I’ll make you forage for it. To my knowledge, this is the only time content in the newsletter has been ‘censored’.
The next major change occurred in the Summer of 2005 with the introduction of colour, at least to the front cover. There was a period when the cover was in colour but the inside contents were printed in black and white but put online in colour. As a result, the newsletter acquired two ISSN numbers (International Standard Serial Number), one for the print version and one for the online version. These are now to be found on the Newsletter introduction page, as requested by the ISSN official body.
However, by the early 2000s the frequency began to drop off. From 2010 to 2012 there was only one edition each year and in 2013 no Newsletters appeared at all. The problem then was that the time taken to edit, print and distribute the Newsletter meant that the content wasn’t exactly news, which was quite discouraging to contributors especially when people were finding other ways, via social media, to talk about their caving. So, after struggling on for a little while with two editions in 2015, one in 2016 and the last in 2017, the printed edition of the UBSS Newsletter quietly faded away.
Under all that mud lies Adam Henry!
This left a gap in our communications. The committee lost a reasonably reliable – albeit slow – method of communicating with members and also came to feel that we were short-changing them, especially our more distant members, when it came to the benefits that they received from their membership, as particularly those outside Bristol were very much out of the loop when it came to what was happening in the club. So at the beginning of 2019, our Centenary year, the Montly Online Newsletter was born. Linda, who has co-edited it from the start, took a quick lesson from a friend in the use of Mailchimp and the newsletter in its current form was launched in January of that year.
The Online Newsletter has been a great success, as can be seen from the readership statistics that Mailchimp provides, and the immediacy (and reliability) of publication is a great incentive to contributors. It’s now in its seventh year and has only missed one month, when Linda was in hospital, which led to the combination of the news and articles February and March 2022 into one issue!
Graham Mullan
DAREN CILAU GRAND TOUR - THE MOVIE
Our readers will no doubt remember the recent write up of a Daren Cilau trip that didn't quite go according to plan, so having read the book, you can now grab some popcorn, settle down and watch the film! Directed by Billy Evans, this tale of heroism will take you deep into the Welsh Hills and down passages that few bother to tread. (Does that sound suitably like ghastly movie teasers? We certainly hope so, and we even threw in an inverted sentence just to irritate Sharon Wheeler.)
Our readers will no doubt remember the recent write up of a Daren Cilau trip that didn't quite go according to plan, so having read the book, you can now grab some popcorn, settle down and watch the film! Directed by Billy Evans, this tale of heroism will take you deep into the Welsh Hills and down passages that few bother to tread. (Does that sound suitably like ghastly movie teasers? We certainly hope so, and we even threw in an inverted sentence just to irritate Sharon Wheeler.)
To watch, click above.
EMAIL TO THE EDITORS
With zombie spiders hitting the news recently, Chris Howes sent us a quick note together with one of his photos.
It’s been interesting to read so much in the media recently about the zombie spider in Ireland. While I was Descent editor, it was frequently the case that we would spot something in the news that Descent had reported long, long ago. Just so with this story, which Tim Fogg wrote about in issue 290 in 2023. There’s also a photo of him giving a lecture about it in issue 296. It just goes to show: when it comes to the media, don’t believe every caving story is ‘news’.
Some of these fungi have been known for years. The above photo is Hirsutella species growing on the deceased body of a Leria serrata fly in Ogof Rhyd Sych, taken by me in 1982.
With zombie spiders hitting the news recently, Chris Howes sent us a quick note together with one of his photos.
It’s been interesting to read so much in the media recently about the zombie spider in Ireland. While I was Descent editor, it was frequently the case that we would spot something in the news that Descent had reported long, long ago. Just so with this story, which Tim Fogg wrote about in issue 290 in 2023. There’s also a photo of him giving a lecture about it in issue 296. It just goes to show: when it comes to the media, don’t believe every caving story is ‘news’.
Some of these fungi have been known for years. The above photo is Hirsutella species growing on the deceased body of a Leria serrata fly in Ogof Rhyd Sych, taken by me in 1982.
Chris Howes
HAVE WE FOUND THE CAVE?
Last month we threw it open to our eagle-eyed readers to help identify the cave in this copy of an etching found amongst the late Tony Boycott's photos.We had some thoughts, which Linda Wilson discusses below:
The scenes shows two beautifully dressed ladies venturing into a cave through a large entrance that's obviously been adapted for visitors with stone slabs positioned to form steps, and there's a neat metal handrail on the left. Bob Churcher commented that this is a "mid-19th century show cave," but goes on to say "problem is not necessarily in UK?" So yes, as Bob rightly points out, we might have to widen our search area for this one.
Dick Willis, however, feels there is only one candidate. "Goatchurch. Why – entrance in the background, a gently descending passage of the appropriate shape and metal fencing of which the remnants are still in place (or where when I last went down it about 15 years ago."
Goatchurch was certainly my first thought when I first saw this. The factors in favour of this are exactly as Dick describes, and the remnants of the old handrails can still be seen in the upper entrance passage. But, there's water in the background of this image, and that's not true of Goatchurch, so is this just artistic licence to add interest? And as Graham Mullan has pointed out, the women's clothing seems too early for period when the entrance was enlarged, which was well into the second half of the 19th century. I haven't had time to research women's clothing in the 1800s, so if anyone would like to take that on, we might get closer to the answer.
The presence of water led me to wonder whether Yordas in the Yorkshire Dales might be a candidate, but I don't know what degree of modification, if any, was carried out there, so that's something I'll check out when I'm in Yorkshire in April (I also want to go hunting for historic graffiti in there, but that's another story.
So I think the jury is still out on whether we've solved the mystery yet, if anyone else has a suggestion, do let me know!
Last month we threw it open to our eagle-eyed readers to help identify the cave in this copy of an etching found amongst the late Tony Boycott's photos.We had some thoughts, which Linda Wilson discusses below:
The scenes shows two beautifully dressed ladies venturing into a cave through a large entrance that's obviously been adapted for visitors with stone slabs positioned to form steps, and there's a neat metal handrail on the left. Bob Churcher commented that this is a "mid-19th century show cave," but goes on to say "problem is not necessarily in UK?" So yes, as Bob rightly points out, we might have to widen our search area for this one.
Dick Willis, however, feels there is only one candidate. "Goatchurch. Why – entrance in the background, a gently descending passage of the appropriate shape and metal fencing of which the remnants are still in place (or where when I last went down it about 15 years ago."
Goatchurch was certainly my first thought when I first saw this. The factors in favour of this are exactly as Dick describes, and the remnants of the old handrails can still be seen in the upper entrance passage. But, there's water in the background of this image, and that's not true of Goatchurch, so is this just artistic licence to add interest? And as Graham Mullan has pointed out, the women's clothing seems too early for period when the entrance was enlarged, which was well into the second half of the 19th century. I haven't had time to research women's clothing in the 1800s, so if anyone would like to take that on, we might get closer to the answer.
The presence of water led me to wonder whether Yordas in the Yorkshire Dales might be a candidate, but I don't know what degree of modification, if any, was carried out there, so that's something I'll check out when I'm in Yorkshire in April (I also want to go hunting for historic graffiti in there, but that's another story.
So I think the jury is still out on whether we've solved the mystery yet, if anyone else has a suggestion, do let me know!
Linda Wilson
SAY HELLO TO FREDERICA FOX!
Last month we threw it open to our loyal readers to nominate a cartoon critter for this slot and Danielle Shreve came first with a request for an Arctic Fox, so, et voila, welcome Frederica Fox! But blame Bing AI for the spelling mistakes as your busy editors didn't have time to fix them this time and we didn't want to disappoint this month's guest star. If you'd like a favourite critter to appear, so drop us a line, using the link at the end and we'll see what can be done! And, as ever, there will be a prize for the first student member to get this far and let us know you've arrived. Prizes to be handed out at the annual dinner (or in the pub). So don't be shy! Even an emoji will make us happy! And we can even add WhatsApp replies, so thanks for that too, folks!
- Good NL as always. [Bob Churcher]
- Excellent range of features and reports. I particularly enjoyed reading the Kents Cavern piece. And I'd love to know the source of the laydeez wot cave illustration. And might that be Bob Churcher having a crafty snooze? [Sharon Wheeler and the saintly FT Bear]
- My starting to get covered in fungus after last autumn is starting to make more sense now! [Dan Runcan]
- Am I allowed an Arctic fox for the cave critter next time?! Pleeeease! [Danielle Shreve]
- I read to the end! Lovely newsletter! Thanks. [Mia Jacobs]
- Ta, a bit late reading it. Caption: RA Churcher, eyes closed, thinking ‘When will Linda stop?” [Dick Willis]
- Obsessed with Mia's Kent cavern trip. More of Jess' newspaper vaults please. Love these women! [Imogen Clement]
-
Hello, Frederica, it's lovely to meet you!
THE END
Last month we threw it open to our loyal readers to nominate a cartoon critter for this slot and Danielle Shreve came first with a request for an Arctic Fox, so, et voila, welcome Frederica Fox! But blame Bing AI for the spelling mistakes as your busy editors didn't have time to fix them this time and we didn't want to disappoint this month's guest star. If you'd like a favourite critter to appear, so drop us a line, using the link at the end and we'll see what can be done! And, as ever, there will be a prize for the first student member to get this far and let us know you've arrived. Prizes to be handed out at the annual dinner (or in the pub). So don't be shy! Even an emoji will make us happy! And we can even add WhatsApp replies, so thanks for that too, folks!
- Good NL as always. [Bob Churcher]
- Excellent range of features and reports. I particularly enjoyed reading the Kents Cavern piece. And I'd love to know the source of the laydeez wot cave illustration. And might that be Bob Churcher having a crafty snooze? [Sharon Wheeler and the saintly FT Bear]
- My starting to get covered in fungus after last autumn is starting to make more sense now! [Dan Runcan]
- Am I allowed an Arctic fox for the cave critter next time?! Pleeeease! [Danielle Shreve]
- I read to the end! Lovely newsletter! Thanks. [Mia Jacobs]
- Ta, a bit late reading it. Caption: RA Churcher, eyes closed, thinking ‘When will Linda stop?” [Dick Willis]
- Obsessed with Mia's Kent cavern trip. More of Jess' newspaper vaults please. Love these women! [Imogen Clement]
-
Hello, Frederica, it's lovely to meet you!
THE END