The Old Ruminator
Well-known member
There seemed some insinuations that photographers are a bit of a pest. That they should put up with roadworks tape in their photos. Well I for one certainly wont and for me it spoils the look of any cave photo. AA has been overdone to a point of nonsense . Do we yet know who was responsible ? Not only had the horse long left the stable but the lurid tape just ruins the good bits that have survived ( IMHO ). We had to protect areas of The Frozen Deep from the very first day and eventually used fairly innocuous white rot proof electric fence tape after removing the more traditional orange tape which looked horrible. Even then it was just to mark the pathways we had devised rather than tape off every nook and cranny. Our fixed aids, if you like, were two platforms added for safety reasons on unstable pitches. Both had large unsafe boulders on where any line or ladder would hang. When you start adding fixed aids just for the convenience of less athletic cavers ( and at 74 the climbs posed no problem to me ) you are in danger of creating a caving culture that expects such things. A process that once started that could easily proliferate in AA and other caves. To my mind both Shatter and Withyhill on Mendip have been over taped. Sometimes the actual damage done is insidious. Pillar Chamber in Shatter lost its sparkle years ago. Not so much from tape transgression but by dust from passing cavers clothing. As for shutting passages and caves forever that too goes against all that I believe. Sure have more control and " open days "but shutting things permanently is just daft. That brings me back to those pesky photographers. I have photographed every dig and discovery I have been involved with for nearly 60 years. More folk should do the same for how else are we to know what happens over the passage of time. I am still digging twice a week at different sites. Still taking the photos. Still doing the odd trip.