UBSS Monthly Newsletter - September 2021

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And in our first competition of the newsletter, there will be a prize for the first person to tell us which Mendip cave this photo was taken in! And a bonus for anyone who tells us who this is in the photo!
Yes, it's that time of year again when students, new and old, descend on Bristol looking for a fun new activity! The UBSS mob were out on force manning our stall at the Welcome Fair, which was back on the Downs after a year in which most recruitment was done online. But despite that, we ended up with 45 student members and managed to get a lot of people underground.

We got lots of interest and we're hoping to convert as many people as possible to the joys of caving! Around 25 prospective new cavers turned up to our introductory Chilli and Caving Games night at Imogen's flat. Thanks to everyone who helped with this! The hut is getting pretty full for the Mendip Weekend already, so get your names in ASAP to avoid disapointment.

If you're new to the club, we hope you'll find lots to interest you here, and some prizes to be won, so keep your eyes peeled for prize opportunities and do keep reading! There might be something to be had at the end!

We would love to have some more volunteers for our Countdown to Caving slot! So drop us a line to sign up, otherwise we'll just have to resort to tried and tested methods such as flogging or blackmail, or even flogging AND blackmail. Our Countdown slot will help everyone in the club get to know members new and old!

Huge congrats to former Hon Sec Lauren Manton, whose great-grandfather Bertie Crook was also a UBSS member, on graduating this year with a First in Physics! And yes, she did still manage to go caving!

Remember, your over-worked, desperately insecure editors love hearing from our adoring public! You do all adore us, don't you?

Back issues of the newsletter can be found here.

Zac and Linda

WELCOME FROM STUDENT PRESIDENT

Welcome Fair. Left to right: Mia Jacobs, Sam Bowers (Social Sec), Damien (on the ladder), Henry Morgan (Student Prezz).
Hello and welcome to UBSS and our first newsletter of the term!

If you’ve just signed up at the welcome fair and are intrigued about caving, then you’re in the right place reading this.

We are having many welcome events, socials and caving weekends throughout term, details of which can be found on our Facebook group and in the section by Sam (Social Secretary) in this newsletter.

We meet at the Pub every Tuesday evening at 20:30 in the Eldon House (near Jacob Wells Road). If you want to get on a caving trip midweek or find out more about us, then pop along. (Be aware that this won’t be happening on Tuesdays when there is another social planned – or we might get there slightly later, check the Facebook page).

If you want more information on anything caving wise, then consult the ‘Freshers Handbook’ on our SU Webpage in the ‘Resources’ section.

(Or drop us an email or a message on Facebook).

Henry Morgan
Student Prezz

UBSS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Join us on Facebook:

Follow us on Instagram: @ubsstagram

Follow our museum on Twitter: @UBSSmuseum (Tweets by Whatley Mammoth are entirely his own views. He's only been on the receiving end of three lawsuits so far).

YAY, SOCIALS AND CAVING!

PUBSS CRAWL - 7th OCTOBER

Previous PUBBS Crawl. [Editors' Note: Someone thought this was a good advert??]
Meet at the Hope & Anchor (on Jacob Wells Road) @ 19:30 Thursday 7th October.

Sam the Social Secretary is prepping a legendary pub crawl not to be missed, taking you around some of the finest public houses Bristol centre has to offer. Keep your eyes peeled on the Facebook event for any last minute info, and we will see you at the Hope & Anchor!

Click 'Going' on our Facebook event so we know how many to expect.

Message us if you struggle to find us, no ticket required! And You do not need to be a member to come to this event!

THE UBSS PUB MEET

How to find the Eldon House.
Tuesdays 20:30 @ The Eldon House BS8 1BT

This is the place to be if you want to meet us and chat about caving! We meet every Tuesday in the Eldon for pints, chat and plotting mid week caving trips. If you want to get underground and can't make the weekends (or you are super keen!) then this is where to get it sorted!

Sometimes the pub location or time will change, this will be posted on the Facebook group. If you have a question about the Pub, Sam is your man.

MENDIP FRESHERS' WEEKEND - 9th - 10th OCTOBER

At the UBSS Hut - Burrington Coombe 9-10th October, Meet @ Students' Union at 9am Saturday 9th October.

Your first chance to get underground this year! Join us at our very own caving hut in the Mendip Hills for a weekend of Partying and Caving.

We'll meet at the SU on Saturday morning at 9am, where we will supply caving kit before driving out to Mendip (about a 30 minute drive).

We will be catering to all abilities, especially those who have never caved before - everyone is welcome!

We share out the costs of the weekend, but thankfully caving is a fairly cheap sport! The cost of this trip is £20pp (including the deposit).

We'll sort transport, food, accommodation, and caving equipment. All you need to do is sign up (at one of the freshers events or by emailing Henry. £5 deposit required and bring drinks of your choice!

Stoked to see you all there, Yay caving!

Click 'Going' on Facebook so others can see you are coming!

IMPORTANT: Unlike the welcome events, you will need to be a member of UBSS for this weekend. It only costs £5 for the whole year which includes British Caving Association insurance.

SOUTH WALES WEEKEND 22 - 24th OCTOBER

Selenite Tunnel, Ogof Fynnon Dhu Top Entrance, South Wales.
Meet @ SU on Friday evening (we'll contact you with details nearer the time.)

We are still finalising the details for this weekend (another email will be sent in due course) however in South Wales you can expect lots of large chambers and passages, with a good smattering of pretty stalagmites and stalactites along the way! Watch your inbox.

IMPORTANT: Unlike the welcome events, you will need to be a member of UBSS for this weekend. It only costs £5 for the whole year which includes BCA insurance.

OTHER SOCIALS AND TALKS

We will be running more socials, and a series of talks on various aspects of caving (cave diving, expeditions and cave science) this term. Keep your eyes peeled on the Facebook group and keep checking your email so you don't miss out!

If you have any questions on anything caving related, find us at the pub or drop us an email or Facebook message!

LE GOUFFRE BERGER - UBSS GOES TO FRANCE!

Hon Prezz Elaine Oliver in the entrance series to the Berger. Note the pink wellies. More on them later...
You'll be hearing a lot about the Berger trip in our newsletters! There are a lot of stories to tell. Student Prezz Henry Morgan sets the scene with a brief introduction...

This summer, UBSS members had a very special opportunity presented to them, as our Hon President Elaine Oliver managed to secure a permit to the Gouffre Berger in the Vercours region of France. This cave has been steeped in caving history since it was first discovered in 1954 by Joseph Berger, from whom the cave takes its name.

The Berger was at one time the deepest explored cave in the world, and although it has since been surpassed, the journey down 1122m below the surface still presents a very tough physical (and mental) challenge to adventurers today.

Formations in the Berger. Photo by Fleur Loveridge.
Thanks to some generous funding from the Tratman Fund (set up by the University from money donated to them by our former Hon Pres) and the Oliver Lloyd Memorial Fund (set up by the club in memory of our former Hon Treasurer), which contribute to travel and equipment costs and enable students to go caving in far flung places where otherwise they might be ‘priced out’, a UBSS contingent of nine made it out to the Vercors (there was also a week of more casual caving in the week before the Berger, but more on that in a future issue!) where we were joined by members of CUCC (Cambridge University CC) and members of a Polish Club that Elaine and Haydon had met the previous year.

A typical day on the expedition would involve a trip to the local boulangerie, to buy breakfast for everyone, before the groups going underground would set off early to drive to the car park near the cave. There was then a 40 minute walk to the entrance, so you were already warmed up by the time you arrived! After some kit faffing at the entrance, we turned on our lights and descended into the darkness below…

The Gouffre Berger is far larger than anything we will be attempting as we welcome our new members who have just joined the University (fear not, we won’t be putting you in a cave for 20-30 hours just yet!), however this level of expedition style caving is certainly something achievable and attainable for new members of UBSS as you gain experience! We try to run a trip abroad every year (in recent years members have been to Ireland, France, Austria and Mulu) so there is plenty to look forward to.

Even more formations! Photo by Fleur Loveridge.
There will be plenty of trip reports to come from the Berger trip, so look out for those in the coming editions of the newsletter. If you are intrigued, then ask a member of the club to chat about it (we don’t bite, and tend to love talking about caving).

Anyway, enough about that for now. Here are some photos of our time away and what you can expect over the next year….

Henry Morgan, Student President

DOES IT GO? HILLIERS AND FAIRY CAVE, MENDIP

Fairy Cave, Mendip. Photo by Jakob Annerdal.
The Berger wasn't the only cave visited by UBSS members over summer. Here's a report about a trip a bit closer to home on the Mendips.

On 27 September 2021 Jakob, Si and Sara decided on an evening trip to Fairy Cave Quarry. The goal was a leisurely stroll down the Hilliers streamway and to emerge through the Fairy Cave entrance. Upon realising that the streamway was completely dry, and upon realising that none of us could remember what one runs into if you go to the left, into Hillwithy Cave, instead of right, to Hilliers, we decided on pushing through a low (And I mean low), squeezy, muddy crawl towards Hillwithy.

The group, after having committed to two rather squeezy squeezes decided, as one does, that ‘we’re here now’. The party put all eggs in one basket and kept on crawling in hopes that they were misremembering the description saying the trip undoable due to silt and that we would in fact, emerge on the other side, in the Hillwithy entrance. After some additional metres of crawling we emerged in a small chamber, with just enough room to sit up.

After Si explored further on towards what seemed like the most obvious route without luck, the team pushed on upwards through a strange looking aven. Jakob explored two more squeezes at the top of the aven only to come up short. There was no way on. At this point, the cavers turned around, and completed a very normal, slightly dragged out, trip through Hilliers to Fairy cave. All in all a good trip involving a passage that I suspect not many cavers visit.

Jakob Annerdal

COUNTDOWN TO CAVING ... WITH MIA JACOBS

Mia Jacobs (left) meets the Queen (right). Guess the mystery cave and win a prize!
I’ve been caving with UBSS since autumn 2019 when I began my Modern Languages BA (French, Spanish and German) at Bristol uni. The summer before I started, I scoured the SU website and clicked all the way to the end of the alphabet (‘S’ for speleology) to decide what societies to try.

As a fresher I joined krav maga, salsa, Pokémon society and more, but clearly caving was the one for me. I had no prior experience of ‘outdoorsy’ things and had never been fit in my life, but I enjoyed the sport and the social side so much that I decided to make sure that I could take part. My latest achievement is the Priddy Green Sink through trip (including the entire short round as the mud sump was unexpectedly sumped!), whereas during my first trip I didn’t manage to lift myself through the slot bypass in Pierre’s Pot.

Ten words to summarise your caving career ...

Loud
Ale
Overcoming
Bruises
Dinner <3
Groggy
I actually love mud

Nine cavers (living or dead) you would like to go for a drink with ...

- Megan Malpas because she is truly magical – think Pegasus meets salmon .
- Bob Churcher because he didn’t let me get the last round.
- Linda Wilson (after a swim).
- Elaine Oliver but only if I can hold her hand and tell strangers that we’re dating.
- Henry Morgan because we are actually dating.
- Merryn Matthews who I have owed at least one pint for several months.
- Simon Hadfield is my friend.
- Imogen Clement is my friend.
- Haydon Saunders is my friend

Apologies to all the other friends that didn’t make the list.

Eight things you never want/wanted to hear underground ...

- “I don’t think this is actually a through trip”
- “We don’t have anything to bail out the mud sump”
- “We don’t have enough rope”
- “Where did we put the key?”
- Me: “my womb is cramping”
- Me: “my bowels are cramping”
- A tackle sack falling down a pitch
- A person falling down a pitch

Seven public figures you'd least like to go caving with ...

Seven dead ones they’d be useless

Six of the weirdest things you've done, seen or heard of in connection with caving ...

- Went for a walk from the UBSS hut, got lost, and spooned in a bus shelter.
- Made sandcastles underground.
- Wore an oversuit to the pub (it was warmer than my coat).
- Got stuck in a chair for an hour.
- Painted a 12-piece worm costume in my first year flat.
- Started dating Henry.

Five of your favourite caves ...

- Marble Arch
- Poulnagollum/Pollelva
- Stoke Lane Slocker
- Pierre’s Pot
- Swildon’s Hole

Four pieces of gear you've fallen in love with ...

- Wetsuit
- Wellies that fit
- Fenix (true step up from a Duo)
- Really really thick socks

Three of the best caving books you've read ...

- Mendip Underground (obviously)
- Harry Potter caving edition by Megan Malpas
- The Gruffalo

Two of your favourite caving regions ...

- Mendip
- Yorkshire

One thing you'd tell yourself as a fresher ...

Hello

COUNTDOWN TO CAVING WITH ... ELAINE OLIVER

The Prezz in one of her favourite caves.
Hi, I’m Elaine, but I also answer to “Prez”, “Glorious Leader” or “Yes, Ma’am”. I’m a linguist by trade – in my experience somewhat of a rarity in uni caving clubs, which tend to be dominated by geologists and engineers. My first memory of anything approaching caving was aged around ten on a primary school trip to an outdoors centre, where one activity involved crawling through concrete pipes: I loved it, and I’ve since spent countless happy and miserable hours underground, with plans for so many more to come. I still have the wellies bought for me for that trip (they’re now my dog-walking boots for when I visit my parents), but more importantly, I also still have the (at times questionable) curiosity for seeing what’s at the end of those dark, tight crawls

Ten words to summarise your caving career …

“You like rock music, we like rocks. Wanna come caving?”

Nine cavers (living or dead) you would like to go for a drink with ...

- Edouard-Alfred Martel
- Jo Berger
- Maurizio Montalbini (mainly to ask “why?”)
- The Lascaux artists, and we’d invite Picasso along too
- Trat
- Lloyd
- The Organhoehle guys
- Bob Churcher
- You, next time we’re both in Bristol

Eight things you never want/wanted to hear underground …

- That disconcerting clunk as your central maillon spins mid abseil and you HOPE it’s all properly done up.
- The “floor” of boulders you are standing on in a hitherto unexplored Alpine cave just shifting.
- The _tink as your spanner/last bolt/other critically important piece of equipment disappears down a very large hole.
- (in a constricted location deep within Quaking Pot) “Mate I really need a shit...,
- “Is there supposed to be this much water?” (cue many hours in the highest place we could find…)
- (at the end of many hours of surveying) “Oh… we forgot to calibrate the Disto!”
- “Sorry, that was the last Mars Bar”- “The Hunters will be closed by the time we get out”

Seven public figures you'd least like to go caving with …

- Winnie the Pooh, because it would be really embarrassing to have to call Cave Rescue to Goatchurch.
- Kim Kardashian, in case she broke a nail (might also necessitate a call out; see above).
- The Very Hungry Caterpillar, due to Mars Bar concerns.
- Dominic Cummings – you couldn’t trust him to read the survey properly with those eyesight issues.
- Donald Trump, for a whole host of reasons.
- Elon Musk, particularly in a wet cave.
- Count Dracula, mainly because he’d really show me up on the exploring new small passages side of things.

Six of the weirdest things you've done, seen or heard of in connection with caving …

- The notion that someone wouldn’t want to go caving “because they don’t like small places” (cue photographs of massive borehole passage).
- The squeeze machine, until I tried it.
- An upside-down press-up to get into a particular bit of passage, until I tried it.
- Five people carrying on the party in the back of a Berlingo, in a snowstorm, having been banished from a notoriously party-heavy hut for being too rowdy (?!).
- A full tea party complete with teapots and those little sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
- Spending absolutely hours chest deep in a sump with a radio in one hand and waving drain rods with a light duct taped to them with the other, trying desperately to prove a connection (we did!).

Five of your favourite caves …

- Ferkelhoehle – the first one I got to name!
- Tunnocksschacht
- Pippikin
- Pollnagollum
- Pierre’s Pot

Four pieces of gear you’ve fallen in love with …

I wish I could take my new Connect Adjust into a cave (essentially a cowstail that you can adjust in length while hanging on it), but I harbour no illusions about how long it would last underground! So four bits of caving gear I wouldn’t be without: my Raumer Handy braking krab (a dream on skinny ropes!), my undersuit which has a zip that goes all the way back so I can pee without completely stripping, a nice toasty sleeping bag for after the trip, and my sparkly pink wellies with bows, because I love to challenge perceptions!

Three of the best caving books you’ve read …

- It would be remiss of me not to include Irlande et Cavernes Anglaises by Martel – I translated part of it for my Masters dissertation, and I think this was the hook that convinced me to keep caving after I left university.
- Any guide book that covers whichever caving area I find myself in (I recently enjoyed the dry humour of the Vercors guides)
- Next on my to-read list is Aquanaut (I still haven’t read it – sorry Rick!)

Two of your favourite caving regions …

- Ardèche, because it’s warm and the wine/baguettes/cheese are plentiful.
- Mendip, where there are plenty of caves, or so runs the tale

One thing you'd tell yourself as a fresher …

Ignore the boyfriend who wants to visit – the caving trip will be much more fun and the friends you’ll make will last longer!

HANG IN THERE! DAMIEN READ TO THE END - DID YOU?

Everyone who visited the UBSS stall at the Welcome Fair will have met Damien! He's here to supervise the first Read to the End competition of the new term. There will be a fabulous prize for the first student to get to the end of their first newsletter and to click the button to claim your prize! If you want to leave us a comment as well, please feel free! And yes, the rest of you can still play, as Damien is kind like that. So we'll have two prizes, one for students and one for the rest of the mob.

So, now to announce the winner for August ... for the second month running, we have Sharon Wheeler, aided and abetted by her faithful companion, came in first! Guess who was procrastinating instead of working ...

- Me and the sainted FT Bear read to the end and want to know why the cast of Father Ted were in OFD! Excellent newsletter with some stunning pix. [Sharon Wheeler]

- Can I please win this time? I think I still have the letter from Co Clare which described UBSS and particularly me as loose and immoral! It was sent to my parents from Co Clare after the mad/sad man was prosecuted for endangering our lives! 50 plus years later… I wish!! [Eve Wheeler] {As Eve came a very creditable second, we did award a prize, after all, being described as loose and immoral should win a prize any day!}

- I read to the end! Caving skills coming in handy at the moment navigating under and over all the moving house boxes! Need to go caving sometime soon though - I've missed it! [Helen Frawley]

- Yes, again, a great read. Weird things happening to authors still seem to continue to become weirder. [Chris Howes]

- This time I am in the office…! Cracking read as ever… [Andy Farrant]

- I'd forgotten about that letter. I used to have our summons to appear as witnesses somewhere, must find it - Sean Donnellan did throw a missile (stone) in contravention of the offences against the persons act 1897 (or some such date). Happy memories of cutting out the wetsuit from a paper template on the floor of 8 Dover Place and gluing and taping. It was great shame when I had to dispose of what was eventually a pile of crumbling bits a while ago. [Steve Trudgill]

- Great newsletter, love all the pics! [Rick Schulting]

- The description of my OFD 1 contretemps had me laughing. If anyone ever asks me if an injury will ever put me off caving, they will first receive a look of total disbelief, then a short and pithy “Not happening!” Great newsletter, great photos, lots of interesting stuff here! And no, I didn’t do it deliberately to get out of more photos! LOL [Jan Walker]

- Thanks for another great newsletter! [Kat Osei-Mensah]

- I did it! am I a newsletter behind yet? sorry, been very busy holidaying [Cat Henry] {No, Cat, you're all caught up, and win a prize for being the last entrant!]

So, there's everything to play for! Tell Damien you read to the end and he will dish out prizes. But remember, the orang's decision is final.

THE END