A simple survey about UK caving practice (mostly with respect to surveying) also asked how many caves and how many caving clubs there are in the UK. I found it surprisingly difficult to find out a plausible answer to either of these questions. BCA must know approx how many clubs there as most (all?) must be BCA member clubs. 150 clubs? 200? more?
And someone must have a fairly good idea how many caves there are, although possibly only regionally.
Is this info available somewhere, or can someone tell me?
I did find that there are 182 caves >1km long and >60m deep in the UK + Ireland. I estimate that if you include all the poxy caves too we have something in the 1-2500 range?
And yes I know 'caves' vs 'entrances' and 'is a rock-shelters a cave?' is a complicated subject, but 'thing that is a cave and/or gets an entry in the guidebook or registry' is a perfectly good definition for this purpose.
cheers for clues
And someone must have a fairly good idea how many caves there are, although possibly only regionally.
Is this info available somewhere, or can someone tell me?
I did find that there are 182 caves >1km long and >60m deep in the UK + Ireland. I estimate that if you include all the poxy caves too we have something in the 1-2500 range?
And yes I know 'caves' vs 'entrances' and 'is a rock-shelters a cave?' is a complicated subject, but 'thing that is a cave and/or gets an entry in the guidebook or registry' is a perfectly good definition for this purpose.
cheers for clues