Welcome
to the second of our new monthly newsletters! There's been a great
reaction to the last one, with lots of encouragement to keep this going,
so if you have any content for future ones, please let me know. There's
no need to write reams. Short pieces (complete with photos if possible)
are great. Longer articles can go in a full newsletter later in the
year. And don't forget to send us some Memories for the 100 Memories project.
CENTENARY WEEKEND - TIMETABLE
The Centenary weekend is fast
approaching. There's loads going on, and even if you're not coming to
the dinner at Wookey Hole, you're still welcome at any of the other
events listed here, so do come along and say hello and catch up with old
friends and make new ones!
7pm Friday 8th February. Open Evening in the UBSS Museum. Come
along to the museum and library, meet old friends, take a look at some
of the treasures in the society's collections, drink wine and eat some
cake! The Stables are located behind 21 Woodlands Road,BS8 1UQ, near Senate House. The car park there is available for use after 5pm. Do drop in! Afterwards, there's a party at Hellie and Rob's, 30 York Gardens, Clifton, Bristol,BS8 4LN. Take some booze with you! They also have some bed/floor space available (see post on the club Facebook page).
9.30am - 12 noon Saturday 9th March. AGM and Talk. This is being held in the School
of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road,
Bristol, BS8 1SS (almost opposite Elmdale Road). Parking is available at
21 Woodlands Road, BS8 1UQ, or on nearby meters (for up to four hours). Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available from 9.30am and the AGM will start at 10.30am.
This will be followed by a talk by Prof. Rick Schulting who will be
looking at some surprising developments on the human remains from
Aveline's Hole, the cave where it all started for UBSS. Three-line whip on attendance!
1.30pm - 2.30pm Saturday 9th March. Field Trip to Aveline's Hole
led by Rick Schulting and Linda Wilson. This will include an
opportunity to see the possible Mesolithic engravings in the gated
section of the cave. Please bring your own lights. All welcome!
2.30pm - 4.30pm Saturday 9th March. Afternoon tea at the Hut. See the results of the recent renovations and catch up with old friends. Tea and cake will be provided! Anyone who is on Cat's list for coach transport to Wookey must be in Burrington Combe at 5.15pm. The bus will not wait for latecomers!
6pm Saturday 9th March. Centenary Dinner at Wookey Hole. Meet in Captain Jack’s Bar for the start of the evening’s celebrations. At 6.30pm there will be a visit to the cave
which will include a drinks reception. For anyone who doesn’t fancy the
walk up to the cave, the bar will remain open. Those visiting the cave
will be back by 7.30pm and the dinner will start at 8pm and will be followed by the usual awards ceremony, so if you have anyone you would like to nominate contactCat Henry or Ruth Briggs.
who are organising this. At various points in the evening, Elaine
Oliver will be singing accompanied by Dickon Morris playing the fiddle. Last orders at the bar are at 11.20pm, and the bus to take those who will be staying at the Hut will be leaving from Wookey at midnight. Those staying at Wookey can then head over to the hotel bar.
Dress code for the evening is on the smarter side of casual, but
essentially wear something you are comfortable in. Jeans have been
banned for the under 18s, on the express order of his mother. And if you
want to attempt the infamous Squeeze Machine, bring something to change
into in the bar! Or alternatively give it a go in your posh togs!
If you need transport from Bristol to Mendip, please let me know
and I will do what I can to put you in contact with people who might be
able to help, and likewise offers to help with transport will be
welcome, so contact me. Please help us out with the organisation by
being prompt for all timings set out here!
CENTENARY FUNDRAISING - 100 PLEDGES
Yes, you've guessed it, we're going
to make a shameless attempt to part you from some of your hard-earned
cash! Well, we'd be missing a trick if we didn't. Oliver Lloyd Fund
Trustee Linda Wilson is going to take you on a trip down memory lane to
1985, and the sudden death of UBSS treasurer, Oliver Lloyd ...
Oversuits,
helmets and lights purchased with funds received from the Oliver Lloyd
Memorial Fund and the University of Bristol's Alumni Foundation.
I'd be very surprised if Oliver - or Lloyd,
as he was almost universally known to members of the club - doesn't
feature in quite a few memories this year. I've certainly got a few
stories to tell, and if we're lucky, we can get Marco Paganuzzi to
relate his experiences with Lloyd's haunted typewriter! For those who
didn't know Lloyd, it's probably fair to say that he was one of the
great characters in the caving world and his death left a huge hole in
the club, one that needed several people to take on his various jobs.
Our then president, Professor Bob Savage, mindful of how university
grants were gradually being whittled away, was concerned about the
long-term viability of our annual Proceedings, and he proposed setting
up a trust fund in Oliver's name, with the intention of providing
in-house funding for Proceedings as and when needed. A trust was duly
set up, with the UBSS as its sole beneficiary. I was one of the original
trustees, along with Bob, Desmond Donovan and Trevor Shaw. Bob led the
initial fund-raising campaign, which raised in the region of £15,000.
As Bob predicted, the university grant that used to go towards
publications did eventually disappear, but new technology meant
that the cost of printing had gone down, and so the OCL Fund, as we
usually term it, was largely spent on things to enhance production
values, such as colour photographs and technical drawings. As time went
on, the aims of the fund were broadened by a deed of variation to enable
the trustees to benefit the UBSS more broadly, and the student
experience in particular. A telephone campaign led by Andrew Atkinson
and Helen Hodge led to the fund almost doubling in value and in the good
old days it even used to attract a decent rate of interest and so was
easily able to keep pace with spending. Both the original fund raising
campaign and the telephone campaign led to various valuable annual
pledges from members, ranging from one for £10 a year, to another at
£200 per year that comes with the proviso that it can (for can read
should!) be spent on alcohol for students to have a good time!
The fund stands aside from the UBSS main account, which is visible to
the university and the students' union. It can only be used to benefit
the UBSS and its members. The current trustees are myself, Clive Owen,
Andrew Atkinson and Cat Henry (who recently replaced Bob Churcher as Bob
will shortly be standing down as president). The fund has recently been
the recipient of an extremely generous donation from Peter Standing,
who was one of the club's student members 50 years ago!
Our aim for the centenary year (and I'll be the first to admit it's an
ambitious one), is to raise 100 pledges to the OCL Fund in the form of
standing orders to the fund. We already have several ongoing pledges to
start us off, and huge kudos to Dickon Morris for being the first of the
100 pledges in our centenary year!
The aim of the fundraising is to future proof the life of the UBSS for
the future. The club now receives no ongoing grants at all from either
the university or the students' union. Occasional grants have been
received from the University's Alumni Foundation, but recent changes to
that body mean there is likely to be less money available for our sort
of activities going forward, and so the club now relies totally on
members' subscriptions and the OCL Fund for all its tackle and
equipment, as well as other items. Recent purchases have ranged from
oversuits, helmets, lights and other gear for use by students just
starting caving to electronic surveying kit for use on the student
re-surveying projects in Co Clare as part of the preparations for the
next Irish guidebook.
The fund still supports Proceedings, as Bob Savage originally intended,
and has contributed towards the cost of radiocarbon dating, as well as
the drawings of the Picken's Hole flints that appeared in the last
issue. The fund has also contributed £2,000 to the Oral History project
that aims to capture as much of the society's history as we can in the
words of its own members, in a major collaboration with the Department
of History.
The UBSS relies heavily on the generosity of members and friends of the
society to add value over and above membership subscriptions, and it
provides a very direct way way for our older members to support the
activities of the new generations of the student club , taking forward
the fun and sense of adventure that we've all gained from our connection
with UBSS, so I hope you'll all forgive the shameless plug for the
fund, and won't mind too much if I go round rattling the metaphorical
collecting tin during the year! For my generation, Lloyd did a huge
amount to help student caving and the wider society, and his name lives
on in the fund set up in his memory! If anyone would like more
information or would like to set up an annual pledge, make a
one-off donation or remember the OCL Fund in your will, please contact me for
further details. There will also be pledge slips available for
completion at the AGM and Dinner on 9th March. The fund benefits from
the tax advantages of being viewed by the Inland Revenue as a charitable
trust, so lifetime donations and pledges can be gift aided, and the
fund is regarded as a charity for bequests in wills.
RESCUE TRAINING WEEKEND
Lauren Manton provides an account
of the recent rescue training day held on a snowy day at the Hut with
members of the Mendip Cave Rescue Organisation.
On the 3rd February 2019, ten UBSS cavers, including four members of the
Wilderness Medicine Society, made their way through the snow to
Goatchurch Cavern for a rescue training day, run for us by Mendip Cave
Rescue (MCR). We began by making our way to the boulder chamber where
the casualty, a manikin named Archibald, was in quite a bad way.
The poor guy was lying with his back over a rock, complaining of pains
to his back and leg. Preliminary checks of the casualty were made, under
the watchful supervision of the MCR mentors and after discovering
Archibald had potentially broken his leg, we proceeded to put the leg
into a splint and then began to get the stretcher ready. After
eventually manoeuvring Archibald onto the awaiting stretcher, we
strapped him in as instructed and covered him with a survival blanket to
keep him warm.
Then the fun began to try to successfully get Archibald out of the cave.
We began by putting three people either side of the stretcher and one
additional person was in charge of his head. The remaining cavers went
up ahead of the stretcher forming a human conveyor belt, along which the
stretcher could travel. We managed with the stretcher quite well. Some
of the more challenging episodes occurred when we tried to move the
stretcher round corners and over the top of narrow rifts as if the
stretcher fallen down the rifts it would have been extremely awkward to
try and manoeuvre it out again.
Eventually, we got to just before the exit of the cave and had to
prepare a Z-Rig in order to hoist the stretcher up the more vertical
section of cave and out into the open where the emergency services would
have taken over had the rescue been real.
Many thanks to Wayne Starsmore, Claire Cohen and Roz Simmonds from
Mendip Cave Rescue who gave us such a fun and informative day.
The rescue training was attended by Lauren Manton, Ashley Gregg, Dickon
Morris, Si Hadfield , Dan Heins, Charlotte Lyon-Dean, Caitlin McConnell,
Elaine Oliver, Kack Thomas, James Rowe,
TRIP REPORT - GB CAVERN
Formations in GB Cavern, photo by Alan Gray
Lauren Manton gives an account of a recent wet trip to that old UBSS Mendip favourite, GB.
On a cold and slightly soggy Friday evening, four of us (Lauren Manton,
Si Hadfield, Tabby Conole and Chris Hill) made our way to GB for a short
evening trip. We set off at a reasonable time and made it into the cave
around 8.30pm.
After passing some bats near the entrance, we made our way on past the
entrance to Devils Elbow and soon arrived at the Gorge. Here the
deafening sound of the river and waterfall reflected the amount of rain
that had occurred a few days before. We continued downwards through Main
Chamber and then across the Bridge, through the Loop and then on up to
the sight point from where we looked back over Main Chamber and Simon
pointed out some impressive stalactites and calcite formations.
After ogling Main Chamber for long enough, we proceeded on towards the
Ladder Dig. Here we then ascended into the small wriggle passage towards
the duck. Unfortunately upon arriving at the duck, time meant that we
could not continue any further, so we made our way back down the ladder
and started up the river towards the waterfall. When we got there, I was
initially hopeful that we may still be able to make our way up, but
before too long that idea was shattered by the sheer volume of water
cascading down. This meant that the required step across the waterfall
in order to continue up the other side was nearly impossible.
Now very wet, we backtracked and reversed our original route into the
cave. We soon made our way through the Loop and back to the Bridge and
from here we followed the top half of the river back to where the exit
route lay to our left. Following this passage back through the cave, we
made our way out and into the night.
100 MEMORIES - DIVING IN LITTLE NEATH RIVER CAVE
Little Neath Rver Cave. Photograph by Pete Glanvill
As part of the ongoing UBSS - 100 Memories project, Graham
Mullan recounts a trip from the 1970s which formed an played an
important part in the exploration of Little Neath Rive Cave.
In 1973, Sump 6 in Neath was finally passed by UBSS member Aldwyn Cooper
and it was realised that Sump Passage had already bypassed Sump 6 and
that the way on was a previously overlooked outlet passage in Sump 6A,
really Sump 7.
The passage was pushed inconclusively by Adrian Wilkins who had a
sizeable support team but also something of an epic, although I forget
why as this was about the only diving trip that I didn’t take part in at
that time, Not only did Adrian seem reluctant to have another crack at
it but desire amongst the sherpas also seemed lacking.
By that time, I had left uni for the world of work and Bob Churcher was
with the army. Neither of us had been on Adrian’s dive trip, but Bob was
keen to take a look himself and I was happy to help carry the kit
although a team of two seemed a touch on the small side. Bob, however,
found that part of his duties, if stretched a bit, allowed him to take
squaddies away on caving trips and that the army would even pay his
expenses for undertaking this ‘training.’ So one weekend in May 1973 Bob
turned up in Bristol with two squaddies in tow and we deemed this
enough for a team.
Neither of them had been caving before, of course, so on the Saturday we
gave them a short trip on Mendip to familiarise them with the
underground and on Sunday we set off for South Wales and Neath Sump 7.
After the usual stop at the village shop in Ystrafellte and the equally
usual assurance to the lady there that we wouldn’t dream of doing
anything dangerous, we drove down to Bridge Cave and got changed. Bob
dived in through the Bridge Cave sump and I took the rest of the
hot-shot Sherpa party in through Flood Entrance to meet him. I’m not
sure they were awfully impressed, but they got through and between the
four of us we carried all his kit down to Sump 2.
In no time at all, Bob had kitted up and vanished into the water and I
now had two slightly unhappy and tired novices to look after for the
next few hours. It seemed unlikely that they would have been keen on any
of the usual waiting activities of digging in Gyrn Fawr or exploring in
the Old World series so I dug myself a trench in the gravel, got in and
promptly fell asleep.
Many hours later, I was woken from sleep by people moving around and
looked up to see Bob crawling out of the sump. He was knackered and
dumped his diving kit as soon as he hit airspace and so I crawled down
to retrieve it. He and I packed it away while he recovered and the rest
of team walked up and down a bit to get warm. As we finished and were
about to set off out he turned to me and said, “Oh by the way, it went.”
That was all I got out of him until we were out.
Despite being so knackered, Bob was still in better nick than his two
squaddies and so a little re-organisation of duties was needed. In
short, I carried out a full twin set of diving kit and Bob cajoled and
harassed his two charges into keeping moving. Well, he probably wouldn’t
have got his expenses if he hadn’t returned them in reasonable working
order.
Two years later we returned with larger parties, the streamway beyond
Sump 7 was explored and the inevitable Sump 8 dived. This ended in a
choke of large gritstone boulders at a depth of something over 20m and
has not been passed during the following 30 years to now.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Cat and Edward in Jug Holes, Derbyshire.
Congratulations are due to Cat and Adam Henry on the birth of Edward Geoffrey on 2nd March!
Cat's long-awaited kitten weighed in at 8 pounds 11 ounces and was
promptly taken caving the following day by his mother who had gone
stir-crazy after a day and a half in hospital.
TRAVELS BENEATH THE EARTH: 100 YEARS OF THE UBSS History interns Nick Stromberg and Lena Ferriday
Thanks to generous grants from the
Oliver Lloyd Memorial Fund and the British Cave Research Association, a
major collaboration is underway between the Department of History and
UBSS, which aims to collect memories from some of the UBSS’s
longest-standing members in order for them to be preserved for posterity
and to also collect memories of adapting to life in the darkness, in
accordance with project leader Dr Andy Flack’s present research themes.
Andy
received expressions of interest from several potential interns from
the history department who will be employed to work on the project over
summer of which four were selected for interview. Andy and Linda
interviewed the candidates and are delighted to announce that 3rd year
student Lena Ferriday and masters student Nick Stromberg have now been
appointed.
Nick says: "I’m
currently doing a History MA at Bristol after graduating from Cambridge
in 2017. My particular field of interest is Environmental History - I
love exploring how histories of the human and natural worlds interact in
interesting ways. I’m really excited to be part of the UBSS Centenary
project. Collecting oral testimonies from members of the society will
provide us with a unique and fascinating record of life underground, one
that I hope we can share with a wide audience in the future. I also
hope I can make it into a cave before the end of the year! "
Lena says: "I’m
a Third Year History student, currently focusing on the relationship
between people and landscapes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
and how places are made meaningful and evoke emotions as they are lived
in. It is for this reason that I became interested in the project, and I
am looking forward to speaking to people about their experiences of
caving, to uncover more about the connection between caver and cave,
particularly the sensory dimension of the caving experience, and the
emotional attachment to the natural landscape that is evoked through an
activity as corporeal and dynamic as caving. "
GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT - PLUG SOCKETS FINALLY INSTALLED IN THE TACKLE STORE!
Several years ago, when the UBSS tackle
store finally moved back into the newly-refurbished Richmond Building,
the home of the Students' Union, we were promised that some plug sockets
would be installed so that lights could be charged. Well, it took a
little while, and several generations of tackle warden, but thanks to
the persistence of Ben Pilling and Christie Moore from the Union, we now
have our long-waited plug sockets. Persistence pays!
T5 BARROW - THE LAST SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD Section drawing of T5 round barrrow.
Work on the society's last
unpublished excavation has started, only 50 years after the work ended.
UBSS Museum Curator Linda Wilson talks about the project.
The UBSS has always had an excellent track
record when it comes to recording and publishing its work. Occasionally,
things take a little longer than the editor would like, as Picken's
Hole proved, but that eventually started to come to fruition in the last
issue of Proceedings, with more to come in the next issue. That success
left a Bronze Age round barrow on Mendip, very close to the UBSS hut,
as the society's only major unpublished excavation.
T5 (the T stands for tumulus) was excavated from 1949-57 with Herbert
'Porthos' Taylor as the lead excavator. The position of the barrow (just
on the opposite side of the track that leads to the hut, to the left of
the track that leads over Blackdown) was a convenient one for the
diggers, and Taylor worked on the barrow with his wife and other members
of the society for nearly 10 years, keeping an excellent photographic
record of the work, as well a numerous notebooks relating to the dig.
But an account of the work they did never reached Proceedings and it is
clear from the numerous crossings out the the notebook that Taylor was
never really happy with his interpretation of the site.
When Porthos, as he was always known, died in 1983, the prospects of
publication receded even further. Although he had made numerous note and
taken a large number of photographs, his legacy presented a problem for
future researchers as his handwriting is virtually illegible. He was a
GP, so no surprise there, as doctors' writing is notoriously hard to
read!
Over the years, various attempts to get a grip on the site failed. But
with the centenary fast approaching, we decided it was high time we made
a concerted effort to get at least something about the site into the
public domain. Allan Summerfield carried out an audit of the barrow
material, checking each piece in the archive off against the catalogue
and carrying out some conservation work on the material, as well as
creating box lists, so the material was easier to work on. The plan was
also to digitise the archive so that we would not be dependent on having
to loan irreplaceable written material to future worked. To facilitate
this, Allan has been working with the university's Print Services
division on a project to get as much as possible scanned. This work is
ongoing and is being funded out of the museum's budget.
The overall project received a huge boost from the involvement of caver
and archaeologist Kostas Trimmis, who has recently joined both the
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology and UBSS. Kostas has now
photographed all the objects from the site and is currently working on a
report on the lithic objects found at the site and - with a good luck
and a following wind - this will appear in the forthcoming issue of
Proceeding. Further work will then be carried out on an interpretation
of the site with a view to full publication.
SRT TRAINING/PRACTICE
Cavers dangling on ropes down the
central stairwell of the Students' Union Building has been familiar
sight for over 40 years. Lisa Smith explains how you can learn the
ropes...
Single-rope technique (SRT) is a set of
methods used go up and down ropes in caves. It's great fun, the training
sessions are a good way to find out a bit more about caving and allows
you to access lots of impressive caves in areas like Yorkshire and the
Ardeche, and to go on the Cambridge University Caving Club's annual
Austria expedition this summer.
Our sessions are free and held in the SU, and open to novices and newcomers as well as those who have been before, message Lisa Smith or Ashley Greggif you want to get involved this term.
2019 CALENDAR
8th March, 7pm, UBSS Social in The Stables, behind 21 Woodlands Road
9th March, 9.30am,
Welcome, with tea and coffee, 10.30am - 12 noon AGM and talk by Rick
Schulting on recent developments in Aveline's Hole. 1.30pm Caving &
Aveline's Hole Field Trip; 2.30pm Afternoon Tea at the Hut; 6pm Annual
Dinner starts at Captain Jack's Bar, Wookey Hole; midnight, party
continues in hotel bar and at the Hut/
30th - 31st March, Southern CHECC (South Wales)
13th July, Old Timers' Reunion at the Hut
19th - 21st July, University of Bristol Reunion Weekend
27th September, University of Bristol Students' Union Welcome Fair
9th - 10th November, UBSS Centenary Symposium
We hope you've enjoyed the first of our new monthly newsletters! If you have any comments or suggestions for future issues, please get in contact.
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