As Chris pointed out, BCRA manages the British Caving Library on behalf of BCA; it is not the 'BCRA Library' (Jenny can clarify the historical reasons of whay and how it was set up). BCRA pays for the rent, services, buying books, library expenses, postage, journal exchanges etc. directly. The...

The British Caving Library is a fantastic resource, all the more so because of the dedicated work by Jenny, Mary and others behind the scenes. I have used it on many occasions to access material not easily available elsewhere, and more often than not, Jenny or Mary can deal with any queries...

C14 dating?

The next BCRA Cave Science seminar on Zoom is tonight at 7.30 pm Marion Dowd will be speaking on 'The Archaeology of Caves in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland' See https://bcra.org.uk/seminars2024.html for info on how to join.

Yup, definitely an oblique cross section through a solitary rugose coral.

What can caves teach us about climate change? The answer is a lot. This is mainly because caves preserve archives of climatic change in the sediments, speleothems, ice deposits and archaeology which are protected from surface weathering, degradation and erosion. And what's more, many of these...

I'd say it was worth it. It is something a bit different and fun from the sporting angle, with the bonus of some nice formations at the end in Far Rift. Certainly one an enthusiast of “collectors item” caves needs to tick off. Don't know the current access situation.

HS2 have been pretty lucky with these; had they occurred beneath an urban area, the consequences could have been more serious. There have been four sinkholes now. All are in areas where the potential for over-break was known, either where tunneling through areas of weak ground due to faulting...

Sad news. I first met Dave just before the 1991 Mulu expedition, and most recently in Miri last November. He was someone willing to pass on his knowledge and expertise; he did a huge amount to help conserve the caves and karst in Sarawak.

The BCRA is currently running a monthly series of cave science webinars on Zoom, held on the first Monday of the month (except bank holidays). The next one is on Monday 4th December at 19:30 GMT by Claire Ansberque (Stockholm University) on ‘The past, present and future use of stalagmites in...

The new series of BCRA online webinars starts tonight with a talk by Prof. Andy Baker on 'Caves as Observatories of Groundwater Recharge' at 7.30pm. For more info and instructions how to join, see https://bcra.org.uk/seminars2023.html This is followed by other talks on the first (or second)...

It is amazing how many people think that by watching a few Youtube video or reading a few online blogs, they become an authoritative expert on climate science. There is an awful lot of crap and misinformation out there on the web. It is complex matter, so I rather defer to the experts, the real...

The role of the lava beds and ash deposits, including the weathered ash deposits forming the clay wayboards are well known potential inception horizons and act in a very similar way to the shale beds in Yorkshire and marl seams in the Chalk. Other stratigraphical discontinuities within the...

Most of the published BGS maps and memoirs have been available for free online for some years now. This new update relates to some of the 10K scale maps.

After writing my last post, we received the sad news that Alexander Klimchouk passed away earlier this week. Alexander was the main exponent of hypogene speleogenesis and has done a huge amount to raise our awareness of this type of cave development. As part of his secondment to Manchester...