Dudley Caving Club 50th Anniversary Open Weekend

chunky

Well-known member
Being on the Committee for the caving club I fully appreciate the organisation that goes in to even the smallest of events and so when it was proposed that we open up the Ruiton windmill for an open day I knew we were taking on something of a task.

Brendan set the bar high early on with a very professional flyer which would be used to advertise the day and so the posting begun.

A press release was worded and released to local radio and media and at some point the idea of building a Speleo assault course was born. One of the members managed to procure some pipework from a builders yard and this gave inspiration for for the design and building of an awesome ball pit,  traverse and stalactite crawl which would become the centre piece of the weekend.

Display and presentation areas were erected on the mills upper floors and AV's were run by one of the founder members (John Smith) throughout the weekend and an AV by our very own CaverKeith attracted a number of people who must have thought they'd wondered in to a cinema as they grabbed refreshments and chairs and settled in to find out what all this caving malarky was all about.

BBQ, refreshments and buffets were laid on and the weekend was kicked off with a radio interview which must have reached a couple of people as we wound up with a very healthy turnout of members of the public, Ex members of the club and even the Lord Mayor!

Great fun was had running the gauntlet through our assault course, watching the various presentations and AV's, as well as the SRT demonstrations put on by members of the club.

We had expected people to drift in and out, but the average stay was well over an hour, even the Mayor stopped for a good couple of hours.

All in all a very successful celebration and promotion of caving within our little area.

For any Ex-members of Dudley we will be having a formal meal on October 1st and all are invited to attend and help us celebrate. For more information please message me.

Finally a quick plug for the latest CaverKeith production linked below...only a minute and a half, but it gives a flavour of the fun we had on the day!


https://youtu.be/RS-_teKUWqs


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(All Photo's and Video Taken By Keith Edwards)
 
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