If you're a fast reader, now's the time to throw your caving helmet into the ring and see who can make it to the end first ... there are even prizes to be had.
So now we'll hand you over to our Student President for the formal welcome to the club!
Linda and Alex
WELCOME TO UBSS!
Damien shows how it's done at the club stand. Hello everyone, welcome to and welcome back to Bristol! I'm Mia Jacobs, your Student President!
We’ve got off to a great start this term opening the doors to The Stables, the building that houses our museum and library, after four years of construction work with a welcome talk/chilli social that was so successful that security came to check it out (while i was stuck in a chair).
Our next event is THIS TUESDAY - our classic cowstails pub crawl will begin at the Apple on King St at 8pm, this is not one to miss! We’ll update our new WhatsApp group of our location throughout the night for those who wish to join later and if that doesn't work, just message me for the link.
A brief plea for more drivers on our upcoming mendip weekend (7th - 8th October). Remember you’ll be reimbursed all fuel costs + 30%.
For those who couldn't join us, we've put together a few photos of our first activities of the year ...
Come caving, we wear cool kit! Left to right, Jess Brock, Felix Arnautovic and Ryan White at the Welcome Fair.
And we can cook! Feeling beany. Stanley Lewis (left) and Dan Hill (right) prepare for their appearance on Master Chef.
We can party! The Stables is open again!
We can eat! Chilli Night at the Stables, proving yet again that the UBSS prides itself on the motto 'Never knowingly undercatered!'
We can play! Easy Peasy, Museum Squeesy! Mia and Zac demonstrate an alternative use for a chair.
We're only ever so slightly competetive! The ancient sport of chair racing.
Worm wishes,
Mia Jacobs, Student President
SAVE THE DATES!
Here's a quick note of dates so far for this term. More details will follow asap.
Freshers weekend (our hut on the Mendips) 7th – 8th October
Wales weekend (Westminster Speleological Group cottage, South Wales) 20th – 22nd October
Bonfire weekend (our hut) 3rd – 5th October
Cambridge University Caving Club Wales weekend 1st – 3rd December
TEN TIPS FOR TERRIFIC TIMES!
Zac Woodford (left) with Rick Stanton (right) at Hidden Earth. Recent graduate Zac Woodford has put together some tips based on his four years of student caving for anyone new to the club. When reading, bear in mind that Zac is the person who, at the recent Hidden Earth conference, asked Rick Stanton, one of the heroes of the Thai Cave Rescue to sign his stomach.
Friends, cavers, UBSS members. To those I know, hello again, to those who are new, Welcome! I’m sure current members of the society will at least know my name from the time I edited this very newsletter (and journalistic quality took a hit as a result), for new members of the society, I’m Zac. While I am no longer on the committee or occupy a role of any importance, I still think far too much of myself. So much so in fact that I’ve written this reflective piece on my time at UBSS during university.
I joined UBSS as a bright eyed fresher in 2019… before the dark times… before the pandemic. This was also the year that the club turned 100! A fact I laud in the faces of every-other university caving club I meet. I’d done a little caving and mining before Uni, but dived in head-first during my time at Bristol. Now four years, hundreds of caving trips and an ocean of alcohol later I am imparting some of my experience to the next generation.
1. DIVE IN! Granted, caving may not be for you, but you’ll never know until you try. Yes it sounds scary. Yes it’s dark, and yes it can be tight. But I’m 6”2’ and have never had any problems so chances are you’ll be fine.
2. PARTY!
Caving parties are not like other parties. Our games are much better. If you’re lucky you’ll remember stories to last you a lifetime. And if you can’t, that’s probably for the best (at least until the suppressed memories start coming back). Don’t be afraid to throw yourself onto the dance floor, trust me, everyone’s dancing is just as bad as yours.
3. GO TO CHECC!
My second trip with UBSS was to CHECC and I turned out fine. Some may try to dissuade you from CHECC, ignore them, there isn’t an event like it on earth. But in all seriousness, the Council of Higher Education Clubs is an incredible way to meet fellow cavers at other universities. After four years, I’ve only recently started to embed myself in the broader UK caving community (of course the pandemic didn’t help with this). Meeting cavers from all over the country opens up incredible opportunities to join trips and events that otherwise would have been out of reach. Plus, there are so many incredible people in the wider caving community.
4. SAY YES!
If you ever get “voluntold” onto the committee, say yes. I was newsletter editor for three years, during which I learnt invaluable editorial skills (without too much stress). Plus it also looks good on the CV. But there are limits, say ‘yes’ all the time and you’ll end up the newsletter editor, mid-week caving officer, training officer and secretary.
5. ASK!
If you ever, EVER, feel uncomfortable, stressed, anxious or scared while on a caving trip, tell one of our wonderful leaders. WE ARE HERE TO LISTEN! And we will do everything we can to help you. Whether it’s menstruation, or a squeeze that looks too tight, we’re here to take YOU caving. The trips we take you on are for YOU, not us (god knows we’ve done them too many times before), so if you are uncomfortable at any time don’t be afraid to “ruin” a trip by asking us to turn around. You can never ruin a trip, after all, if you don’t bottom the cave, it’s not going anywhere, you can always come back another time.
6. LEARN THE 'HARD CAVER'
A big part of caving is singing, as you will no doubt soon learn. Don’t ever be afraid to join in! It doesn’t matter if you don’t know the words, or are too sloshed to sing, chances are we’re the same! The Hard Caver is a song known by almost every caver, hang around long enough and you’ll pick it up. (The right version, that is, Cambridge has a wrong version with exams and car keys).
7. DON'T RUSH TO BUY KIT
Don’t feel you have to rush to buy kit. Although you will want essentials pretty early (gloves, wellies, knee-pads and an undersuit) these are relatively cheap. The more specialist pieces of equipment like your oversuit, helmet and lights are a bit more pricey and you can hire these when needed until you can get your own! Don’t be afraid to ask any of the more experienced cavers about kit, we’d love to indoctrinate you into our totally unbiased opinions about which kit is best.
8. COLLECT TALES
Caving is a sport unlike any other. You will go places, do things and see stuff that you could never have conceived of before, and that’s just at the caving hut parties! When you inevitably meet people and tell them you go caving and they turn around and say “oh, I could never do that!” It’s good to have some stories that’ll fascinate and entertain. Scars are great mementos! Evidence of a fierce cave bested through effort and will! What’s more, we have millennia of accumulated caving experience in our club. There are legions of alumni who can share stories from eons past that will thrill and amaze!
9. STICK AROUND
Just because you leave university doesn’t mean you need to leave the club. I graduated in July but am still having newsletter content whipped out of me. Just imagine, in four years time it could be you passing on your ill-advised wisdom to the freshers of 2027! A bad trip is no excuse for giving up caving! Perseverance and determination will take you to some of the most incredible places under this earth!
10. WRITE THOSE DAMN TRIP REPORTS!
After each caving trip, write it down! Where, when, who! Keeping a personal log-book is invaluable! But as well as keeping your own record, our lovely editors will really appreciate a ready supply of newsletter content! It doesn't have to be a masterpiece of thespian art. Something as simple as Where, when, who and how it went can be enough. But as always, the more the merrier. So if you’re someone (like myself) who likes hogging others' attention, we’re happy to give you a platform to do so. And even more importantly than writing for the newsletter is reading it! Don’t forget the first person to respond to the “read to the end” link at the end of each newsletter gets a prize!
So, thank you for letting me occupy your time! I hope you don’t take this wisdom at all seriously! The most important thing is that you carve your own journey, your own story. So get under there! Go caving! And above all else, have fun. And if you ever find yourself lost, confused, cold, tired, hungry, sad, alone: “Go Straight On”. We’ve been doing it for over a hundred years, and we’re still here.
Zac Woodford
CLIMBS AND COWSH!
Damien (right) trying to persuade new housemate, Gina (left) to go caving. What a way to introduce a new oversuit to the joys of one of Mendips lesser known gems!. Dan Hill follows the previous advice and writes it down, providing a few words of warning about to a cave dug out many years ago by members of the UBSS.
On Sunday 24th September, we had our very first caving trip as a newly formed caver house on Deep Pit Road (real road name). By the time the morning came around some of us had already dropped out, leaving just Merryn, Claire and me driving off to Manor Farm Swallet, on Mendip (on the road to the Charterhouse caves).
I was very excited to get underground, mostly to try out all of the bargain gear I had brought for myself at Hidden Earth the week before: oversuit, helmet, wellies, Fenix, the lot, all lovely and clean (dramatic foreshadowing).
Manor Farm Swallet is so named because it is in (and under) a farm: Manor Farm. So, before we could get in the cave, we had to go see the farmer. As we wandered towards the titular manor, wondering which door was best to knock on, we ran into the resident guard dogs. They weren’t very big and scary, but they did make very good burglar alarms, following us around and barking loudly and constantly. This eventually attracted the farmer, a very cheerful guy who skipped the “hello” part and promptly demanded the small goodwill fee for the use of the cave and made sure we knew to bring the key back straight away. The dogs decided to accompany us back to the car whilst we got changed… still barking constantly, I don’t think they realised that we weren’t even on their master’s property anymore, but I respected their commitment.
Once we got inside the elaborate cage protecting the entrance to the cave, we saw the entrance was a mossy shaft 15m straight down. The guide suggested using a ladder, but since I needed some practice, we chose to SRT it, making this my 3rd Single Rope Technique trip (this time with no serious injuries!). At the bottom of the shaft, we followed a short crawl to a narrow rift. This would be technically free climbable, but very scary, so we got another excuse to use our SRT kits which we then left behind at the bottom to take on the rest of the cave horizontally.
In the absence of any underground photos, have a cow in a cave instead, courtesy of Bing AI images. Following the stream passage, we came to a steep drop. The guide assured us that there would be a nice bypass we could use to avoid it. It turned out getting to the bypass basically required climbing all the way down anyway... useful. So, we carefully (and very slowly in my case) climbed down, hugging the wall of the passage.
Following the stream deeper into the cave, we started to notice an interesting smell, not awful, just weird and grassy. It turned out that the water dripping down from above us was coming in through another entrance and was mostly made up of runoff from the farm. This means that pools were full of bubbles from some mystery farm chemical and much of the mud we were walking through may well have been inside a cow at some point. Our proximity to the outside was also marked by a sudden increase in wildlife, most notably hundreds of tiny spiders which all hung down from the roof on single threads and weirdly coloured worms.
We briefly managed to escape to slightly fresher air through a (very tricky to find) hole in the roof, but this didn’t last long. Following this upper passage, we found ourselves crawling through thicker and thicker mud (cow shit), in tighter and tighter passages. It was in the middle of a long, slippery crawl, breathing bad air and knowing that all that was waiting for us on the other side was some boulders and a chamber we couldn’t access without a ladder, that we decided it was in everyone’s best interest to turn around.
On the march out, my nice new oversuit was so heavy with mud (cow shit) that it was hanging off me and quite hard to move in. In conclusion, fantastic trip, great time had by everyone.
Dan Hill
HIDDEN EARTH2023
Student President Mia Jacobs helping to staff the UBSS stand at Hiden Earth as well as conducting a roaring trade in stickers advertising the British Cave Research Association (BCRA). The return of the Big Cavers' Bash aka Hidden Earth provided a welcome opportunity for cavers from all over the country to get together for a weekend of talks, the chance to catch up with old friends and browse the gear stalls in the trade hall. There was even a chance to mull over the future of club newsletters in a digital age. Jess Brock gives her take on the weekend, with a few additional words from our co-editor, Linda Wilson and Proceedings editor/web officer, Graham Mullan
The UK’s national caving conference, Hidden Earth, took place at Gordano school in Portishead on 15th - 17 September 2023. A stone’s throw from Bristol so UBSS infiltrated the hoard of silver speleologists.
I had never heard of Hidden Earth until my mum suggested we go. I didn’t know what to expect and I am happy to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it (the beer certainly helped). The site consisted of three lecture theatres, a main bar/catering/reception, and a trade hall.
Dangling on ropes in the trade hall. Over the Saturday and Sunday there were 48 lectures and workshops available. I managed to attend eight over the two days, most notably Linda Wilson’s lecture Forgotten Voices Speak: Recording Historic Graffiti in Kents Cavern and The future of Club Journals in the age of social media led by Peter Glanvill. I was sad to miss the SpeleoSisters+: Alternative spaces in caving lecture and viewing the submitted cave videos in the trade hall.
The trade hall had a constant flow of browsing cavers, some UBSS people managed to buy their own gear and even snag some for stores!
The lecture that stuck out most to me was The future of Club Journals in the age of social media led by Peter Glanvill. It was interesting to be in a room where I was easily the youngest person by decades on a topic that needed younger input. Those who spoke were older and spoke about their difficulty with technology. I was slightly concerned about the Facebook bashing as they missed the point that social media is a place to draw people into the happenings of a club. To visually entice with photos and stories, and act as a tool to promote the caving. A notification about newsletters should be posted to social media to draw people into their email inboxes where they can view a well formatted, high resolution issue, not to clog up with hundreds of club journals from decades ago.
The discussion itself was interesting. It narrowed down to main points of paper vs digital publications and the issues of promotion. How can the caving community cater to cavers who want physical copies to read and archive personally to those who find it easier and more accessible to have a digital copy?
There is a distinct lack of a solution, therefore the problem will be solved by not standardising journals as paper or digital but perhaps a hybrid. Most importantly focusing on doing whatever is easiest for the club - the continuation of journals is the most important thing. The whole point of journals, newsletters and articles is to show what people in the club are up to and to continue the documented legacy of caving clubs.
From my perspective as a student, having the newsletter delivered directly to my inbox fits in with my wants and needs of club journals. There to read at my leisure with pictures that are high quality and saving on countless pages of wasted paper. With other physical club journals I read them then put them in the recycling (or occasionally keep an interesting article or photo). The younger generation of cavers have grown up with technology. Our phones are now portable computers that fit into our pockets and give us access to the world. So let’s not be stuck in the 1970s and begin to explore new ways to make caving documents easily accessible and organised.
An online archive could work side by side with physical publications. I don’t think there is an easy, straightforward or simple solution that could be a national standard as each club has its own unique audience. The UBSS digital newsletter caters to students by delivering it right into their inboxes - it couldn’t be easier.
Older cavers have had a physical copy for a long time and that is the way they like it. The Cave Diving Group tried to go paperless but went back due to public demand but look at the age demographic of the club. Younger cavers are more in tune with digitisation and find it more accessible and preferable over paper publications. Especially with UBSS, the readership is high and engagedue to its convenience.
We live in an increasingly digital world, so it is time that caving caught up. One solution for the future of club journals could be to upload issues onto a website and as a member have full access to the archive of the club. Obviously the task of doing that is momentous but when it is done if offers an infinite extension to the legacy of the club. The BCA library is an incredible asset but what if there was an online library where members could have access to all documents from all over the country making research ten times easier?
Uploading a vast physical library onto an online site has a long list of worries, most keenly being the logistics and what happens if something went wrong with the site, would all articles be lost? I think an important question to ask would be what if it went right?
The future of club journals in the age of social media entirely relies upon the willingness of clubs to adapt to social media and modern technologies.
Jess Brock
Plug for BCA, our national body and (on the right) a banner showing covers from the Cave Radio and Electronics Group journals.. UBSS newsletter co-editor Linda Wilson also found the discussion led by Peter to be very interesting – and more than a little frustrating as so many people missed so many points.
Peter Glanvil edits the Belfry Bulletin, the journal/newsletter of the Bristol Exploration Club (BEC). Another person very active in the debate was Alan ‘Goon’ Jeffreys of the Grampian Speleological Group (GSG), a club that I’ve been a member of for nearly 20 years. Both Peter and Goon (and other editors I know) spend a long time bemoaning the fact that no one writes articles for them. Ho, hum. No surprises there. The first thing I learnt, four years ago, when I started a digital newsletter for UBSS after a long gap since our last paper newsletter was that articles don’t just come up and flop down at your feet like nice, well-behaved puppies. You have to spend time coaxing them out of hiding, offering treats (and occasionally threatening to deploy the rolled-up newspaper). As an editor, you need to constantly keep an eye on what’s happening in the club and then cajole articles out of people. But in four years, with the help of a succession of student newsletter editors, namely Mia, Zac and now Alex, we have only missed one month (February this year, when I was in hospital nearly all month). There has never been a shortage of material, and often we have to hold stuff over to the next issue if it’s not time critical.
We use Mailchimp to produce the issues, and I stick to a simple one column format as that optimises best for mobile phones, as it was quickly clear that a high proportion of the audience consume information that way. But UBSS doesn’t only have a student membership, and a high proportion of our readership falls into the age bracket present at the Hidden Earth discussion. I can confidently state that our older members have enthusiastically embraced our digital newsletter. We receive loads of feedback (mainly through the Read to the End section but also through unsolicited emails praising the photos, the articles and often offering equally unsolicited articles. So our success is not just due to having a younger readership. I think it’s down to having discovered and made use of Mailchimp. It’s easy, it’s free, it works. But no one in a large audience (apart from the UBSS members in the room) had even heard of it, and no one even seemed interested in asking what it was all about and how it worked. All they seemed to want to do was cling to paper production, despite the obvious drawbacks and difficulties.
With a monthly digital offering, there’s a constant feedback loop. People see stuff happening. They see their articles on line. People like them. There’s encouragement to write more. There was such a huge lost opportunity in that room at Hidden Earth. The most valuable thing would have been to listen to the youngest person in the room explaining what worked for her and why. So many thanks to Jess putting her views out there in the workshop and here iin writing. As one half of the editorial team for UBSS, I’m incredibly happy that we’ve settled on something that works. It’s a fair bit of work every month, but no one clubs me to death with a large brick when I make puppy dog eyes for articles and photos and we’ve never had to send out a note that says ‘sorry, folks’ nowt happened last month’. So please keep the words and piccies flowing!
Old v, New. The red cover in the background is from Troglodytes, the first UBSS newsletter.
For any budding underground photographers, there is a waterproof box in stores so you can take a phone underground! There will also be prizes for write ups from new members, and of course a prize for the first student to claim the honour of having Read to the End!
To sum up, as Graham reminded those who extolled the virtues of hardcopy and railed against the impermanence of online media – the Great Library of Alexandria might have been one of the wonders of the ancient work but it certainly wasn’t fireproof!
Linda Wilson
And we've had another editorial afterword from Proceedings editor and website officer, Graham Mullan ...
There are three parts to this .... firstly, content creation, which with gentle prodding, UBSS is very good at compared with others; secondly, delivery, which Jess has covered in detail above; and thirdly, archiving, because even newsletters can end up being the only or the best record of events. Again, I think that we are ahead of the game here in that virtually all of our publications and records from the last 104 years are available online without any restrictions at all.
Yes, the Library of Alexandria was destroyed (twice, in fact) and yes, we had a close shave when the Geography Department caught fire when we were housed in their basement, but despite such issues, people will still point at electronic storage and worry about its durability. It is one of my long-term aims, as society Treasurer, to ensure that UBSS is in a position to fund its continued online presence for the foreseeable future. I can’t guarantee it beyond 250 million years, but I’ll do my best.
Graham Mullan
ACCESS RESORED TO SINGING RIVER MINE, SHIPHAM, MENDIP
Singing River Mine, Shipham. Photo vopywrigh Mark Burkey and used with his kind permission. Following a lengthy acess negotiation with the new onwers, the Council of Southern Caving Clubs (CSCC) have announced that this popular Mendip cave/mine is now available again for visits. The terms of the access agreement are laid out below. Please respect these so that there's no loss of access again in the future. The site is one of Mendip's lesser known gems.
New gate on Singing River Mine. Please observe the access procedure and note that the mine entrance is within the owners' back garden, so discretion when accessing the site is needed.
1) Access will be controlled by the Council of Southern Caving Clubs on behalf of the landowner.
2) The access procedure is:-
a) Access is strictly by prior booking only
b) Bookings can be made by emailing the CSCC Conservation and Access Officer, giving at least 1 week's notice
c) The booking email must contain:-
The name and contact details of the trip leader, confirmation the trip leader has BCA Insurance, the date and time of the proposed trip, the party size.
d) C&A Officer will check the mine is available (one trip at a time) and enter the booking on a calendar shared with the Landowner
e) 24 hours before the trip, the C&A Officer will contact the trip leader to confirm the booking is still OK (the landowner has not asked for the booking to be changed \ cancelled) and confirm the padlock combination code.
f) The entrance gate must be kept closed at all times, including while the party is in the mine.
g) Trips can only take place between 9:00am and 9:30pm.
h) Cars should be parked in the village centre and not on Folly Lane.
i) Please do not change into your caving kit in the garden or the adjoining lane.
j) A trespass fee of £2 per head should be deposited in the collection tin by the entrance.
k) Please only belay from the belay bar built into the gate. Do not use the landowner's trees, fence posts etc.
l) Please be quiet whilst in the garden and comply with any requests made by the landowner and their family.
3) CSCC have replaced the lid (as the old one was unsafe and had no secure belay points) and will maintain it whilst the access agreement is in place.
4) The operation of the access agreement will be reviewed after the first 12 months and may be subject to changes.
Wayne Starsmore
CSCC C&A Officer
GETTING THERE!
Working hard! After almost four years, our Museum and Library is almost back in use again! Over the summer, we have decorated the museum display area and moved all the bookcases for the library stack room back upstairs. Museum curator, Linda Wilson, takes up the tale ...
Over the past couple of weeks, Si Hadfield and Zac Woodford have put the finishing touches to our lovely new staircase, with two coats of woodstain and a coat of varnish. The university's sustainability team took away two heavy, awkward metal cupboards and a very old, disused filing cabinet for recycling, and then a massive team of students turned up to get the downstairs rooms ready for the beginning of the new term.
It's looking like a museum again! We started work at about 10.30am and most people stuck it out to the end at 4.30pm, during which time we had returned all the drawers and their contents to the display room, to the echoes of comments like: "Is it real?" and Can I touch it?", to which the answers were 'Yes!" and "Yes!". And to continue our very own Engaging With Collections" module, people worked in pairs to reassemble the displays, working without the benefit of the reference photos Nathan Cubitt had taken when we emptied the cabinets! To may amazement, the plan of matching the display material to the darker shapes on the cabinet lining worked very well, and everything looks pretty much as it did before the last move!
This is what happens when a lot of people spend a day shifting stuff around! By the end of the day, we had a very respectable result! We'd also played an energetic game of finding places to stow the surplus stock of our second guidebook, Caves of County Clare. The reason for the surplus is a tale for another day! Plans are underway for an art installation ...
"Can I perhaps interest you in another copy or several of Caves of County Clare?"
What remained of the team at the end of the day: Left to right, Felix Arnautovic, Charmaine Sew, Dan Hill (back), Mia Jacobs (behind the book), Jess Brock, Graham Mullan, Dan Runcan. Thanks to everyone who gave up their Saturday to clean and tidy the rooms and to get the downstairs ready for use, in particular: Mia Jacobs, Jess Brock, Charmaine Sew, Felix Arnautovic, Dan Hill, Dan Runcan, Alex Blencowe, Merryn Matthews, Zac Woodford, Jake Reich and Graham Mullan. Now we just have to get the upstairs back in order ...
Linda Wilson
I DID IT! I READ TO THE END!
Welcome to our first Read to the End competition of the year! This is open to all new student members of the society and the first one to get to the end of this literary masterpiece and record your effort by clicking the link and sending your tireless editors a quick message will receive a handy little back-up light as your very first item of caving gear! If you've been caving before, you're still entitled to enter!
And we hope our regulars will still drop us a line! We always love hearing from the readers, especially in view of the discussion now being held throughout the wider caving community on the future of club newsletters. Most clubs seem to struggle with one a year, let alone one a month, so we must be getting something right!
Here we go with the Hall of Fame of last month's eagle-eyed readers ...
- Nice to hear people are still enjoying expo. Really want to go back at some point but work / life keep getting in the way. Perhaps if / when I retire. [Stu Walker]
- I thoroughly enjoy, always, the old fart stories! [Chris Howes]
- The Austria Expo sounds like a trip that combined hell will loads of fun. Aw, Belay looks adorable. Well done for the brilliant Plan B at the Stables. [Jan Walker]
- I appreciate White Fathers is in Ireland and trips through are often followed by ingestion of foamy black liquid, but I never realised that a couple of pints resulted in turning one’s memory on its side; and the moth pic is upside down… The editor/s must be losing his/her/their touch; tsk! Ref getting knotted, I’d personally recommend that all life-critical knots have the tail end finished off with an overhand. And well done Zac for getting out, I remember similar energy crashes. [Dick Willis] [Editor's note: Question "Whats one of them?" Answer "A dead one of them."]
- Excellent report from Fishmonger’s and I’m most impressed with the adventurous young ‘uns and their shinning up the climbs and wallowing in mud! I want to learn how to flint-knap, please! [Sharon Wheeler and the blessed FT Bear]
