aricooperdavis
Moderator
Exeter University Speleology Society (EUSS) is a small, friendly university club. As far as I'm aware we're older than the university, being a club before it got its royal charter, but almost all of that recorded history was lost during the transition to the new library. All we have to show for our exotic past is an asbestos roofed shed full of stolen road signs, old hand-drawn surveys, and naked photographs of the recent club presidents (which may not quite be the famous members that you had in mind)...
We have weekends away each fortnight, free bi-weekly SRT training sessions, and the odd day trip. As with many other university caving clubs we struggle a little with numbers; convincing people that they should spend their free time and money exploring dirty caves with even dirtier cavers isn't an easy task. That being said though, we've done very well this year, having convinced a cracking 43 members to part with their ?30 sign up fee, with only 7 or 8 of these being returning members!
This fee is about as low as we can get it, and it covers their:
- BCA insurance (?30-?8 = ?22)
- membership of the university's Athletic Union which provides the club and its members with training, first aid supplies, financial support, and representation within the university (?22-?10 = ?12)
- a free trip to our lovely local Pridhamsleigh Cavern (?12 - ?1.50 - ?2.50ish = ?8ish)
- a small donation to DCRO (we've not sent our cheque yet since I've not been able to go to a DCRO meet yet, but it's coming!) (?8ish - ?1 = ?7)
- a years worth of caving trips (always costs ?30, often subsidised by the club - we're lucky enough to often receive an Experience Sport grant that we use to encourage non-cavers to come to our SRT sessions where we hope to slowly break their spirit)
- a years worth of using all of our caving kit
- a years worth of competent :blink: leadership
We kicked off with freshers week during which we had cavers abseiling from trees and accosting unsuspecting freshers, a huge number of free taster trips, a packed first social, and a move into a new swanky tackle shed!
We ran 2 days of taster trips to Prid that week, with 4 groups of caver recruits in a row each day, for a grand total of 16 hours in Prid for me in the space of a week! These trips were most popular with people who'd never tried caving and didn't know if they wanted to join, so we had a few entertaining facial expressions when we pointed out Junction Squeeze, and a lot of worried laughter when we got to the lake jump. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and we had a good conversion rate from these trips, with a lot of those who tried trips joining the club.
We ran a nice relaxed meet and greet social in The Ram bar, but due to an unfortunate error somewhere this never made it into the fresher's guide, so it was only advertised at the last minute. We still got around 4 or 5 poor new members coming along for a chat, who had to deal with intense caving talk from the 6 committee members!
Over the summer a good number of us headed North to Eurospeleo, which was utterly superb, and we returned home burdened with BCA conservation leaflets and coasters. These were on full display at our freshers squash, alongside some posters kindly donated by Simon Mullens, some very amateur cave photography, and our very own magnificent OFD survey. Whilst this gave those uninterested students another excuse not to join ("I'm deathly afraid of the... urhhh... Barbastella barbastellus?") it also sparked the interest of a couple of members who were super keen on seeing some of our fluffy friends.
Fresher's week was over too soon, and before long we had sign-ups for our first trip, which was massively oversubscribed. We're not used to this problem, so somehow managed to take 16 people caving, which was fantastic. Since then we've had 2 more weekend trips (to Wales, and the Peak District) with another trip off to Wales next weekend, and we hope to keep our keen cavers caving - training them up to lead the club into a glorious golden age of somewhat competent caving!
We have weekends away each fortnight, free bi-weekly SRT training sessions, and the odd day trip. As with many other university caving clubs we struggle a little with numbers; convincing people that they should spend their free time and money exploring dirty caves with even dirtier cavers isn't an easy task. That being said though, we've done very well this year, having convinced a cracking 43 members to part with their ?30 sign up fee, with only 7 or 8 of these being returning members!
This fee is about as low as we can get it, and it covers their:
- BCA insurance (?30-?8 = ?22)
- membership of the university's Athletic Union which provides the club and its members with training, first aid supplies, financial support, and representation within the university (?22-?10 = ?12)
- a free trip to our lovely local Pridhamsleigh Cavern (?12 - ?1.50 - ?2.50ish = ?8ish)
- a small donation to DCRO (we've not sent our cheque yet since I've not been able to go to a DCRO meet yet, but it's coming!) (?8ish - ?1 = ?7)
- a years worth of caving trips (always costs ?30, often subsidised by the club - we're lucky enough to often receive an Experience Sport grant that we use to encourage non-cavers to come to our SRT sessions where we hope to slowly break their spirit)
- a years worth of using all of our caving kit
- a years worth of competent :blink: leadership
We kicked off with freshers week during which we had cavers abseiling from trees and accosting unsuspecting freshers, a huge number of free taster trips, a packed first social, and a move into a new swanky tackle shed!
We ran 2 days of taster trips to Prid that week, with 4 groups of caver recruits in a row each day, for a grand total of 16 hours in Prid for me in the space of a week! These trips were most popular with people who'd never tried caving and didn't know if they wanted to join, so we had a few entertaining facial expressions when we pointed out Junction Squeeze, and a lot of worried laughter when we got to the lake jump. Everyone enjoyed themselves, and we had a good conversion rate from these trips, with a lot of those who tried trips joining the club.
We ran a nice relaxed meet and greet social in The Ram bar, but due to an unfortunate error somewhere this never made it into the fresher's guide, so it was only advertised at the last minute. We still got around 4 or 5 poor new members coming along for a chat, who had to deal with intense caving talk from the 6 committee members!
Over the summer a good number of us headed North to Eurospeleo, which was utterly superb, and we returned home burdened with BCA conservation leaflets and coasters. These were on full display at our freshers squash, alongside some posters kindly donated by Simon Mullens, some very amateur cave photography, and our very own magnificent OFD survey. Whilst this gave those uninterested students another excuse not to join ("I'm deathly afraid of the... urhhh... Barbastella barbastellus?") it also sparked the interest of a couple of members who were super keen on seeing some of our fluffy friends.
Fresher's week was over too soon, and before long we had sign-ups for our first trip, which was massively oversubscribed. We're not used to this problem, so somehow managed to take 16 people caving, which was fantastic. Since then we've had 2 more weekend trips (to Wales, and the Peak District) with another trip off to Wales next weekend, and we hope to keep our keen cavers caving - training them up to lead the club into a glorious golden age of somewhat competent caving!