ACCESS TO LONGWOOD VALLEY FOR CAVERS

The problem of ash dieback has severely affected many areas of Mendip. Longwood Valley is badly affected and as a result, the landowner, Somerset Wildlife Trust (SWT)  have taken the decision to close the permissive path that runs along the bottom of the valley from the north to Velvet Bottom in the south. Linda Wilson, Conservation Officer for Charterhouse Caving Company Ltd (CCC Ltd), explains the new arrangements.

As Longwood Valley is home to two important cave systems, Longwood Swallet and Rhino Rift, as well as two digs, CCC Ltd has been working closely with the landowner, Somerset Wildlife Trust (SWT), to preserve access to the caves for cavers as SWT recognises the important role cavers play in managing and conserving the caves, all of which are Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

Further information about the revised access conditions for cavers can be found on the CCC Ltd website. Please follow the link and read the information carefully if you intend to visit either Longwood Swallet or Rhino Rift. The following information is a brief summary only.

• Helmets must be worn at all times whilst in the reserve.
• Cavers must not enter the reserve when winds are expected to be gusting at approximately 35mph and over. Cavers should check a reliable weather source for the area when planning a visit if high winds seem likely. The Met Office forecast for Cheddar can be found here. This should be consulted when planning trips to the area. The site gives estimated rainfall and wind speed (gusting).
• Access to the reserve will ONLY be from the north end and NOT from Black Rock/Velvet Bottom.
• To enable SWT to assess any risks from continued caver access, clubs will be asked to keep a note of the number of visiting cavers to the reserve eg number in party and date visited. This information will be collated by CCC Ltd and passed to SWT.
• Visiting cavers are expected to play an active role in conserving and managing the sites, as they do now, by immediately reporting any of the following safety and conservation concerns to the CCC Ltd secretary.

Hey there! I’m Guy Maalouf, I am Lebanese, and I came to Bristol to pursue an MSc in Aerial Robotics. Yes, I am a nerd and love anything that can fly.  I have a YouTube channel where I occasionally post nerdy/engineering related videos. You can check it out here.

I am into all kinds of outdoor sports, watersports, winter-sports, hiking and camping, etc… One of my close friends back in Lebanon was into caving, and he once convinced me to go caving with him. After going up and down a 20m outdoor SRT rope twice, he sent me down a 70m straight pitch for my first ever caving experience!
 
I am the one who always wakes up early to light the fire up at our Mendips Hut. I was also given the prestigious title of …  “Fire Master’.  Also, if you ever lose me, you can probably find me at the gym.
 
Ten words to summarise your caving career ...
 
Cold, Wet, Dark, Type: 2 fun, sometimes type: no fun
 
Nine cavers (living or dead) you would like to go for a drink with ... 

Elliott, Henry, Gabriel, Kat, Jakob, Bram, Haydon, Sam, Imogen.
 
Eight things you never want/wanted to hear underground …

• Where is Theo?
• I think someone moved the rope (While you’re on the rope)
• Bones Cracking
• Complete Silence
• I think it’s the wrong way
• Rope noises while doing SRT
• A powerful stream/waterfall
• I think my welly is falling, could you grab it for me? (credits to Ben Alterman)

• Vladimir Putin
• The Queen
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Dwane the Rock Johnson
• Warren Buffet
• Bill Gates
• Jeff Bezos

• Caving
• Cave diving (Are regular caves not cold or wet enough for you?)
• Watching a person breathe out to fit in a hole
• Turning all the lights off in a cave and waving your hand in front of your face
• Yorkshire Pudding Shot
• Seeing Imogen dance under the Trident

• Gaping Gill
• Attin Azar, Lebanon
• Aquamole
• Eastwater
• OFD

• SRT Kit
• Good wellies that actually grip
• Fenix Lights. There was darkness, then there was Fenix!
• Are cave snacks considered gear? Please?
• Yorkshire
• Mtein, Lebanon

• Yorkshire
• Mtein, Lebanon

A MENDIP EXCURSION


Becka in Unlucky Strike, Eastwater.
On the weekend of 11th/12th February, Sioned Haughton escaped some serious nerding on Mendip in favour of a couple of caving trips.

The Advanced Surveying Group met at the Wessex for their annual weekend of nerding. I have no idea what went on as it was all completely indecipherable. I was just there to go caving and to try to tire Becka Lawson out (of course I didn’t manage it).

On Friday night, Andrew and I went with Becka and Julian Todd (on a rare non-virtual caving trip for Julian) to see the new stuff in Wookey 20. The last time I was there when Elliott Smith was trying to drum up support for an UBSS dig, which must have been 5 years ago, not long before someone else got in there instead and it went for many many metres.

The new stuff is quite different in character, with intersecting high rift passages, a weird conglomerate section and lots of very red, very sticky mud. There’s even a little round trip to be had. The breakthrough point is very close to what was the dig face and didn't look like it required too much engineering, so I’m guessing it would have been one of those deeply satisfying digging endeavours that you hear about all the time but which are actually like hen’s teeth. All of which could have been UBSS’s… Incidentally if any of the newer folk are keen to get involved in discovering exciting new cave passage, I’m sure some of the older members could point them towards any number of highly promising opportunities.

The next day Becka and I did our best to escape the nerding again with a trip to Eastwater. We were accompanied by Andrey, a Russian caver Becka had met while on expo in Abkhazia who was over for the weekend from London. I chose a trip to the lesser visited parts of the cave because at the time I didn’t realise that Becka, who mainly caves everywhere but Mendip, hadn’t done Eastwater since she was an undergrad, if at all. So instead of trundling off on a nice touristy 13 pots trip, we ended up doing Unlucky Strike and the Technical Masterpiece. Oh well, Becka enjoyed it anyway. Andrey, I’m not quite so sure about. Although he was very stoic and didn’t complain once, he did turn around before the end of the TM. In retrospect maybe it wasn’t the best choice for a first trip on Mendip. Hopefully he will be back…

The Upper Series trip was fun for everyone though. Unlucky Strike (we found out afterwards from MadPhil that it got its name from the perched boulder at the top of the pitch that was there when they broke through but no longer there when they returned, and one of the curtains lower down that seemed to be missing a large chunk) is a worthwhile excursion, with some sporting climbs and modest pretties.

We also had a look at the climb up into Dark Cars and Sunglasses. Here I feel that the suggestion of ‘handline useful’ in Mendip Underground is something of an understatement. It’s a 15m climb the start of which is probably okay if you have long legs. Andrey offered to go and check it out for us, reporting that it got easier and then harder again at the very top where there is a tight slot you have to post yourself through. If Becka and I had been dithering about doing the climb, thinking about having to reverse that move was essentially what settled it for us. So, the ‘large, decorated canyon passage’ that apparently lies beyond will just have to wait.

Sioned Haughton

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK IN SWILDON’S

Sioned and Si Hadfield on their second go round Vicarage, before they had experienced the delights of North West Stream Passage.
There are times when only something unusual is enough to scratch a caving itch, as Sioned describes in the next of her Mendip rambles …

For a change, Si and I decided to go somewhere we’d never been in Swildon’s - Vicarage Pot and North West Stream Passage. Vicarage is quite good fun. After a ladder climb down, you immediately ascend the opposite wall using some very old and solid stemples and avoiding the very new and shiny stemples which you can literally pull out of the rock with your fingers.

We then embarked on the Hairy Passage round trip - an entertaining option for the small and flexible. Mendip Underground instructed us to remove all extraneous items, but as we have become used to descriptions written for the more classically shaped Mendip caver, we didn’t heed the advice. It wasn’t until Si was in a most inconvenient location for removing his belt that he decided this was necessary. I even had to remove my helmet (eek).

Once through the squeezy bit we had much fun trying to extract ourselves from the bell-shaped pot with no hand or foot holds and I am pleased to report that I didn’t need to stand on Si. Once completed, we of course had to go back in to collect all the kit we had discarded. This turned out to be a lot more difficult second time round and an upwards squeeze we hadn’t really noticed the first time turned into a complete epic once we were wet and covered in mud, causing some hilarity.

After Vicarage we headed to North West Stream Passage, which is only just around the corner. Andrew had said we should do it while we there, although as both places are really close to the Short Round I couldn’t really see why they don’t get done more often. Well, now I know. And I can safely say that NWSP is somewhere I do not want to go again. It started with a duck through murky green foul-smelling water that you follow down a pitch to where it joins the eponymous streamway. Fortunately, most of the passage is upstream of this, but although the water in the upstream duck was clear you could see sinuous patterns on the mud at the bottom. We tried not to think too much about these as we went through.

What followed was a very awkward section of slanting stooping passage that made you feel like you’d forgotten how to walk. This ended at not one but two separate sumps (just to make you feel like you got your money’s worth) although both were at the bottom of long slippery climbs that even in the spirit of completeness neither me nor Si wished to do. However, it was in this same spirit that we ended up in the not-entirely-appropriately-named Heaven and Hell passage which included a seemingly never-ending slog through body-sized triangular passage half full of gritty liquid mud. When we finally got back to the Swildon’s 2 streamway, I was so happy to see it I literally wallowed in it.

Sioned Haughton

A huge thank you to both the University's Student Experience Committee's Alumni Grants Committee and to the Oliver Lloyd Memorial Fund who have helped the club purchase some much-needed new kit!

The post-COVID boom in new student members meant that the club needed to source nine Fenix lights, seven helmets, one SRT kit and three oversuits to help meet the need for kit. Not all of this has been commissioned immediately, but we now have sufficient to meet our needs.

The Student Experience Committee's Alumni Grants Committee awarded the club a grant of £817 and the Oliver Lloyd Memorial Fund put in £400 which, along with the same amount from the club's tackle fund, made up the matched funding element that helped secure the grant.

Thanks are due to Henry Morgan and Zac Woodford who put together the funding application with help from Linda Wilson.

The University fund that the £817 grant came from was set up in 1982, and since then graduates of the University of Bristol have donated £1.5 million via the Alumni Fund to students groups like ours.  This fund, which has in the past helped with the purchase of oversuits and surveying equipment, has been a big help in the purchase of capital items, as has the Oliver Lloyd Memorial Fund, set up in memory of Oliver, our former Hon. Treasurer, which has provided matched funding on all the applications to the Alumni Fund.