langcliffe
Well-known member
A possible late addition to the options in the poll might be 'Books'.
In my case (and probably many others) it was Underground Adventure (Gemmell and Myers, 1952) and Ten Years Under the Earth, The Darkness Under the Earth etc. (Norbert Casteret, various English translation dates). These titles were available in my local library when I was at school. These and others inspired myself and a couple of school friends to explore caves and mines within cycling distance in north Wales.
Dave
Same here. I devoured Casteret from the age of 10 onwards. I never had the chance of going caving at boarding school, so my only experience of caves as a youth was a couple of show caves. However, when it was time to go to university, I got out a geological map and worked out that Lancaster was pretty close to a lot of limestone, so that's where I went. My first trip was on a cold October day with horizontal rain, dressed in a boiler suit and a couple of woolies, and we visited a very damp Great Douk, emerging from the top end. The freshers were supposed to go back and get changed, whilst the big boys went to do Hardrawkin in their wetsuits, but I insisted on tagging along too. A ladder was lowered down the waterfall, and Mel Gascoyne started to descend. He emerged about four seconds later spluttering and coughing, and it was declared to be "too wet". That was 56 years ago, and I haven't yet tired of it.