UBSS Monthly Newsletter - December 2022

Section through stal in Kent's Cavern, Torquay, Devon.

Your hard-working newsletter team would like to wish all our readers the compliments of the season and very worm wishes for 2023! December is often a quiet season for caving, but we've done our best to rustle up a few things for you to read so that the new year can start with some customary procrastination!

Thanks to the diligent performance of the rituals at the Hut (and the consumption of yet more turkey!), the sun rose again on New Year's Day and all was well.

There's more caving to look forward to this term, and if you haven't gone underground yet, there's still plenty of time to get involved.

You can find all the back issues of the monthly newsletter online. So if you're sitting in a dull lecture, take a look at what the club has been up in past months and years.

Linda and Zac

DIARY DATES

Post-exams Mendip weekend January 21st - 22nd
We'll be staying in the MNRC (Mendip Nature Research Committee) so it will be extra luxurious (think real toilets) and there are no hut fees! Sign up here.

UBSS x UBES x UBMC Yorkshire weekend February 24th - 26th
In February we'll be teaming up with the Expeditions Society and Mountaineering Club for a crossover weekend in Ribblesdale. Further details and signups will be released at a later date - put it in your calendar!

UBSS AGM and Dinner March 11th
The AGM will take place in the Geography Department on University Road at 10.30am. Room details to follow. The Annual Dinner will be in the evening. Details to be confirmed.

SCHECC in March
For those of you who missed this year's CHECC (or just really want another one), UBSS will be attending Southern CHECC in South Wales this March. Exact dates TBC.

SANTA'S STUCK IN THE SNOW!

Henry Morgan did an excellent job organising the Christmas dinner at The Spotted Cow in Bedminster, but unfortunately he ended up stranded in Prague with several other UBSS members after a long weekend turned into an even longer weekend due to snow. So this year, Santa will kindly be calling twice.

The Spotted Cow were very accommodating with all the last minute changes, some of which were being made only hours before the start of the meal,but all ended up well when 22 people turned up for a night of good food and plenty of fun. A UBSS team even came second in the pub quiz later that night.

Elliott McCall kindly stepped into the breach and became Organising Overworm, making sure everyone got their meals (although he's still hunting down the person who ate his dessert!) and that Santa remembered whose presents were delayed due to more snow than even he could cope with.

Secret Santa presents were handed out with the prize for the most inventive going to the one Michael Farmer received - a Fimo model of Augustus, his recent frog tattoo.

Augustus, we'd like to introduce you to Augustus!

HEAVY NIGHT, TIME FOR A NAP!

Railway Sleepers, Brown's Folly, Bathford.
UBSS members have a long history of wandering around Bath stone quarries after an excess of alcohol, and this year's CHECC weekend proved to be no exception to that rule, as Zac woodford relates ...

So, it was CHECC… need I say more? Oh, all right. Well, naturally given the Friday evening’s activities, re. excessive drinking, caving wasn’t many people’s priority among UBSS members. Not least because we were on Mendip and therefore not really wasting any opportunities that we wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the rest of the year. I was only looking to do something light and then maybe go the pub. This plan was scuppered over breakfast when Merryn revealed that Cambridge was going to a mine. Naturally my curiosity was kidnapped and after the brisk kilometre stroll back to the campsite I had a brief elucidating chat with Johno.

He'd heard of the Bathford sidings tunnel and wanted to investigate. I explained that it would be a terrible trip and that Brown’s Folly Quarry would be much more entertaining. After much Faff we were on our way. However, I’d forgotten that it was the first Saturday of the Bath Christmas market and there was a train strike. Now I’ve lived in Bath my entire life and I have never, NEVER, seen the traffic as bad as it was then. Usually abandoned village roads were clogged with cars. Roads that rarely see even pedestrians were jammed. But utilizing every rat run I know of, I managed to get to my parents’ house where we stopped for tea and mince pies while we waited for the others to cross the city; a task particularly difficult for Johno as he also had to negotiate the clean air zone.

Having just finished my tea, I received a message from Johno say that they were all waiting for us at the Brown’s Folly car park. Dashing over, I quickly parked and changed just at the top of Farleigh rise before jogging down to them. Upon arriving at the car park, a member of Cambridge looked at me in my old Barbour coat and tatty trousers and asked: “Are you going to get changed” to which I quipped, “I am”.

There were some signs of what was to come before we even got to Muddy Hole as various small mobs sauntered after their guide arriving piecemeal at the entrance. We counted that there was about 17 of us.

Zac Woodford at Clapham Junction. Photo by Linda Wilson.
We started well, entering and moving swiftly on to Clapham Junction. We then proceeded to Back Passage. It was here where things got complicated as various individuals wandered hither and thither. So we found ourselves among the deads between Back Passage and the passage south of Clapham Junction. Fortunately, I found the small doorway between the two and we popped through to the other side. I then swiftly led people back to Clapham Junction to show them how turned around you can get. It was then that we lost Johno and three others, having literally just counted how many were with us.

With no better idea than to continue hoping to find them on the way, and if not have me go back in to find them once everyone else was out, we continued. Heading up Middle Passage people seemed a lot more eager to stick together, for some reason. Fortunately, we caught up with the group we’d lost at the side passage that leads to the Crane and Devil’s Chamber. We proceeded, taking our time in Devil’s Chamber to practice our humming and photography.

Jumping from Devil’s Chamber to Front Passage we wandered south to the Stables. I got there first to discover some previous visitor had left a parting gift in the corner, I need not describe what, but I struggle to believe that they couldn’t hold it until they got out.
At that point, we turned around and took Front Passage back north, stopping at the calcite falls on the way, before reaching the old rail cart. We posed there for a group picture in an attempt to win the CHECC photo competition. The prize for which was 200m of rope which we agreed to split evenly between the two clubs in the event of success.

From the rail cart we swiftly exited via Muddy Hole, changed quickly and then headed back to CHECC for a night of drunken antics.

Zac Woodford

SEATHWAITE GRAPHITE MINE, BORROWDALE, CUMBRIA

Seathwaite Graphite Mine, photo by Mandy Glanvill.
Cumbria isn't the first place that springs to mind when looking for an underground trip, but there are plenty of excellent mines to visit around there. Sally Britton describes one such trip.

It’s been a while since I ventured underground, but who could resist an abseiling through-trip in a pencil mine…? It’s graphite actually, the only high quality deposit in the UK and one of only two in the world in a volcanic series - made up of volcanic debris formed c.450 million years ago.

Mining of graphite (previously known as black lead or plumbago) started in the 16^th century and continued for about 300 years - originally by locals who used it to mark their sheep (and allegedly invented pencils). It was more commercially exploited once German mining engineers arrived in the late 16^th century and was used to coat cannon ball moulds. The price by the early 19^th century had risen to £5,000 a ton. The mine closed in 1891.

Seathwaite Graphite Mine, photo by Mandy Glanvill.
The mine/land is owned by the National Trust and there are no access restrictions, though the NT are keen to discourage ‘casual’ visitors to the mine which is an SSSI. There is road parking at Seathwaite and access is through an arch in the farm buildings, across the River Derwent and then up a long, winding not very obvious path, though the spoil heaps make the general direction clear. There are several entrances; we reached the top entrance (Gills Stage) in about 50 minutes.

There are various horizontal levels and several pitches as well as the through-trip pitches. There are some tram lines in evidence and occasional remnants of wooden ladder rungs. The through-trip pitches and traverses are all bolted and there were ropes in place on all of them, though we took ropes with us.

Seathwaite Graphite Mine, photo by Mandy Glanvill.
The first four pitches (11m, 6m, 10m, 18m) follow each other in quick succession, with a traverse between the second and third, and various short and longer passages leading off. The Farey’s Level exit is reached by traversing around the top of the Grand Pipe – a bit disconcerting as it is very unstable and crumbles away as you cross it.

We exited here, having decided against the very wet 5^th(24m) and 6^th (55m in three stages) pitches and found a slightly clearer route back down the fellside.

Sally Britton

A ROMP DOWN READ'S

Alice Holland in the entrance to Read's Cavern. Photo by Linda Wilson.
As part of a quick recce for an archaeological dig next year, Linda Wilson visited Read's Cavern with Graham Mullan, Kostas Trimmis and Alice Holland.

OK, I admit it, I failed to adequately brief caver and archaeologist Kostas about our trip to Read's Cavern, but in my defence, Kostas has been caving for years! It has been a tad wet recently, so a change of clothes might have been advisable, especially as he had to meet the new Head of Department that afternoon! Alice, recently back from a South Wales weekend had brought waterproofs and boots, while Kostas was doing his best to keep his feet dry while navigating the not inconsiderable stream pouring into the cave.

Alice Holland in the Main Chamber of Read's Cavern. Photo by Linda Wilson.
In preparation for an archaeological dig next year, a collaboration between UBSS and the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Kostas wanted to take a look at the site of the last dig there in 2010, when UBSS caver Ruth Briggs found a gorgeous little bronze brooch while doing some wet sieving.

Read's Cavern (originally called Keltic cavern) was excavated by UBSS between 1919 to 1931. Layers dated to the Iron age were discovered. Pottery, nave hoops, iron shackles, antler cheekpieces and animal bones were included in the finds. An iron handle and bronze bands were recovered from the cavern in 1919. The artefacts are thought to date to the first half of the first century AD. Bone 'cheek pieces' are also reported to have been found in the cavern.

The 2010 excavation suggested that the 1920s interpretation of a single phase of industrial and domestic occupation in the Iron Age should be modified. Although the main deposit was charcoal-rich there were no signs of burning on the artefacts within it or on the surfaces beneath. The material is interpreted as having midden-like origins and was possibly placed in the cave in a structured manner.

Alice Holland in the area of the 2010 dig. Photo by Linda Wilson.
The plan for the 2023 is to return to the cave for ten days of fieldwork in June, to conclude the 2010 trench and to conceptualise the finds. A full 3D scan survey of the main chamber will also be carried out alongside micromorphological sampling, from the trench profiles. Sampling for paleoenvironmental studies from cave crusts and deposits will also take place.

A full analysis of any finds from the 2023 campaign will then be analysed in context with the 2010 finds, to lead to the full publication of the University of Bristol involvement with the site. The finds discovered by the earlier UBSS excavations will also be revisited and will be studied and recorded again, conceptualised with further analytical work.

If anyone is interested in helping with this excavation, please contact me.

I'm pleased to report that Kostas stayed mostly dry, despite the waterfall flowing down the entrance, and did get back in time for his meeting!

Linda Wilson and Kostas Trimmis

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SUPER-SIZE YOUR ORDER?

Easter Cave, photo by Max Koether.
There's no denying it, size matters in caving, and there's also no denying that Mulu is the place to go if you want to super-size your caving activities. Several UBSS members made it to Mulu this year (Ash Gregg, Andy Farrant and Chris Howes) and Ash has kindly put together an introduction to this year's expedition, with more detailed write-ups to follow in future issues.

During November 2022 I was lucky enough to participate in the Mulu Caves Project expedition to Malaysian Borneo. These caves are notable for their gigantic passages, some of the largest in the world, and an abundance of wildlife in the caves: including bats, swifts, snakes, crickets and spiders. This year’s expedition was very successful with the following outputs:

6.5km of new cave discovered and surveyed
Cave of the Winds was connected to Racer Cave via a 15-metre cave dive, adding 11.9 km to the total length of the Clearwater system – now the 8th longest in the world.
5 km of cave passage re-surveyed to modern standards
3D laser scanning of over 4.0 km of the gigantic major passages.
Multitudes of scientific experiments looking at cave formation and biology.

Revival, photo by Rob Eavis.
My main focus during my time in Mulu was exploration and surveying. This included excursions into the Clearwater system via Easter Cave, Racer Cave and Snake track entrance to Scumring series. In addition, a couple of shorter trips into Lagang’s Cave and Deer Cave. Many nights were spent camping underground to allow for deeper exploration and discoveries, leading to a personal total of 214 hours underground over three weeks.

Near Armistace, photo by Will Pearson.
A typical trip to camp Scumring would involve a 20 minute boat ride up river before an hour of hot sweaty hiking through the rainforest.

Once in the cave the going was generally easier, through large walking passage. This included going through Revival, a truly enormous passage, as well as traversing around large holes, slogging up big boulder slopes and skirting past vast quantities of guano. The camp itself was pleasant with flat space to sleep, a reliable water source and lots of nearby leads. I did two four-day camps to scumring with Rob Eavis, Will Pearson and Andi Smith.

Ash Gregg

KENT'S CAVERN GRAFFITI PROJECT

Come to Narnia, kiddies, we have Turkish Delight and puppies! Kent's at Christmas. Photo by Linda Wilson.
Anyone who's been reading the newsletter for a while will know that Linda Wilson has an unhealthy obsession with things written and drawn on the walls of caves and mines, and has been steadily working her way forwards in time from the Upper Palaeolithic to modern day. Her latest project involves undertaking a survey of the historic and other graffiti in Kent's Cavern, Devon.

This project started with a campervan trip to Devon for Graham and I, with the dogs, earlier this year. When I realised we weren't very far from Kent's Cavern, a showcave in Torquay, I emailed the manager, James Hull, to see if he was around for a catch up, as I'd not seen him for ages. This turned into a trip around the showcave on one of their guided tours and ended up with a chat about historic graffiti in the cave. I agreed to look at taking on a project to record the historic graffiti in the cave, as this is one of the aims in their Cave Conservation Plan. The earliest known graffiti in the cave is the name William Petre and the date 1571.

William Petre 1571, photo by Linda Wilson.
I talked about the project with my collaborators on the website www.rakinglight.co.uk I run with two friends, Anthea Hawdon and Rebecca Ireland, both of whom were interested, especially Rebecca, as she lives in Devon not far from Torquay. A further visit to the cave with Rebecca and Jan Walker to check out the viability of this resulted in us booking in a week in early January to work in the cave on a pilot study in the chamber known as the Bear's Den, which contains the William Petre inscription. The owner of the cave, Nick Powe, is kindly housing us for the week in their on site AirB&B, formerly the owner's house. The team will consist of (from UBSS) myself, Graham Mullan, Tony Boycott and Jan Walker, together with Rebecca Ireland and Anthea Hawdon (Raking Light).

Rebecca has already put in a lot of work going through William Pengelly's diaries and recording all the graffiti he notes having seen, as one of our project aims will be to see how much of this we can still find, and to ascertain whether any of this is now being lost to stal growth.

Our most recent trip just before Christmas saw Jan, Rebecca and myself going off the show cave route with Tara Beacroft, who worked at Kent's for 11 years and drew up their excellent conservation plan. This was Rebecca's first time caving and she took to it like a duck to water. With the aid of a builder's ladder and a couple of slings, we made our way up into Lake Chamber, an area of the cave where Pengelly and others noted many inscriptions.

1571, below right of centre. 1702, top. Photo by Linda Wilson.
The small chamber is covered in historic graffiti and Jan realised that I'd found something particularly interested when I started emitting high pitched squeaks. Rebecca was called in to verify what I thought were two more early dates, one from 1571 (the same date as the William Petre inscription) and the other from 1584. Also, while checking this photo again, I saw what appears to be a 1572 just below the 1702. There were other dates from the 17th and 18th centuries nearby. The temptation to sit there and keep hunting was overwhelming, and we were also dying to decipher any names close to the dates, but we needed to time our visit to Lake Chamber to get down before the next tour arrived in that part of the cave, so after a brief visit to the inscriptions by Jan, we headed back down the ladder and made our way out, via a trip into some of the side passages near the entrance.

1584 (centre). The angular 5 and the straight topped 8 are very characteristic of the period. Photo by Linda Wilson.
This will be an ongoing project for a couple of years at least, so if anyone would like to get involved, please get in contact.

Linda Wilson

INCY WINCY SPIDER ...

Grotte de Douyme II, entrance looking out. Photo by Linda Wilson.
During a French trip in the summer, Linda Wilson and Jan Walker paid another visit to the smaller of the two caves near the ruined mill north of Azerat in the Dordogne to take a few more photos.

Grotte de Douyme II is a straightforward meandering streamway very reminiscent of many caves in Co Clare, Ireland. To find it, locate the village of Azerat in the Dordogne, then follow the map shown below to the parking place on the left of the road. Almost opposite, on the other side, there's a track leading down into the valley. Follow it down and down, and then down again until you reach the bottom of a deep valley. Carry on until you reach an old mill leat on your right and the ruins of an old building. There's a path leading along the leat. Follow this ntil you meet a streeam coming down from your left, then head up hill on the right bank until you see a fallen tree in front of an obvious entrace. Well done, you've arrived.

Once in the cave, there are zero route finding options. Just follow the stream. A hell of a lot of greater horseshoe bats roost in the cave in winter, along with lesser horseshoes, so don't visit in hiberation season. In places, there is a very strong smell of bat urine, and it's advisable, as well as pleasanter, to wear a face mask when you start to notice that niff in the air. Er, and the fuzzy lumps floating in the low stream in places are the remains of the bats that didn't make it through the winter. This is a very good cave for studying dead bats! You can find them still clinging to walls high up, and some that have fallen off. There are also large piles of guano in places. But in summer, it's pretty rare to see any live bats. You usually encounter a couple flying around in the entrance passage, but that's about all.

Dead bat. Photo by Linda Wilson.
The passage ends in the sort of bloody great big choke that if it was on Mendip would have already seen feats of massively improbably engineering. But there are few diggers in the area, so if you want a project ...

WARNING: ARACHNAPHOBES COVER YOUR EYES NOW!

Meta menardi. Photo by Linda Wilson.
On the way out, took some dead bat photos and some of a large spider in the entrance. I showed this to UBSS member Colin Rogers who knows a few things about cave spiders and he showed it to another spider expert. The consensus of opinion is that it was a Meta menardi. This is a common spider to find inside cave entrances. Charlie Self always used to refer to it in the vernacular as the 'fat brown spider'. I remember from a cave biology talk I heard a few years ago that they can live up to ten years!

I also played around with photos of reflections in the stream.

Jan Walker. Photo by Linda Wilson.
A little way further up the valley to your right (when facing Douyme II is the unsurprisingly named Douyme I cave, which contains the largest chamber in the Dordogne, written up in an earlier newsletter. Just follow the stream and make your way behind another ruined mill building.

Both caves can be combined in a pleasant couple of hours wombling around a very pleasant area.

Linda Wilson

I READ TO THE END, REGINALD! I DID, I DID!

Reginald was created with the help of the Midjourney AI art generator from the prompts 'steampunk raccoon in a cave'. If anyone else fancies playing around with Artificial Intelligence art generators and creating some more cave critters in glasses for 2023 newsletters, we'd be very grateful!
Let's have a round of applause for Jake Reich whose speed reading brought him home to a very respectable first place last month! A prize will be winging its way to him when term starts again.

In the meantime, there are still prizes to be won in 2022! So let our latest mascot, Reginald, know when you've made it this far and we'll add you to the 2022 Hall of Fame.

- My fav pics in this edition: Ash's Salamander and Cave Baby, [Jake Reich]

- Rufus is just as adorable as Chloe! Super newsletter, lovely caves, and I do want to go to Alderley Edge one day. Congratulations to the grads! It was interesting to see the eastern US caves, having only been to TX caves. And the filming day at Aveline’s was cold, damp, but fun. They were pretty nice people. PS Mia’s sign-off of ‘worm wishes’ made me giggle. [Jan Walker]

- Hope the Scottish UBSS enjoy the Elphin Hut….and look over the Moine Thrust! [Eve Gilmore]

- Fab read as usual. Appropriate procrastination as I hype myself up with a strong coffee for my deadline which is in 1.5 hours (I snoozed my alarm for 2 hours this morning). Especially enjoyed our new members’ write ups – so happy to hear they have enjoyed discovering caving! [Mia Jacobs]

- Excellent newsletter, as always! Linda, your description of exploring the mines (“going feral”) on Alderley Edge as a girl rang bells with me! I grew up in Bramhall, about 6 miles north of the Edge. As teenagers in the early sixties we would often cycle over to the Edge with friends to race around the many hilly paths there on our bikes. Sometimes - without telling our parents - we took torches to explore the mines. We didn’t go in very far, with stories of people dying after falling into hidden shafts putting us off, but it was great fun. Gates started to appear on some of the entrances, but were often broken or easy to bypass. Great to see photos of how it all looks now. I was not aware that the mines were so extensive. [Bob Taylor]

- I'm late to the party, as I've spent the day shovelling shit at high speed! Really enjoyed the Alderley Edge and the filming at Aveline's reports. I remember going into the mines when we all went up to Cheshire for that Alan Garner weekend. And I am still tittering at the film company's impression of Linda! And hey, doesn't George have groupies already? [Toodle pip from Sharon Wheeler and the blessed FT Bear!] [Editors' Note: Yep, George 'The Talent' Nash has had groupies for ages, he's a star, dahling!]

I did it Reginald, I read to the end!

THE END