Our Club and Freshers Season 2016

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! ;)
 

CatM

Moderator
Great report, and great to hear the club is doing well. Your new tackle shed looks swanky indeed!  8)
 

nobrotson

Active member
ULSA Freshers Season 2016

ULSA has been a club since 1965, after LUUSS (Leeds University Union Speleological Society, formed in 1957) needed a way to keep hold of their more experienced members without having to go through university channels. In 2012 we formed LUUCaS, largely for the purpose of maximising returns from the unions inner workings, but also because the word ?Caving? is much easier to understand than ?Speleology?. If you want to learn about ULSA?s history and exploits a bit more, please buy some of our publications or visit our fine website.

As eluded to by others, a principal difficulty for university caving clubs has always been ensuring a healthy turnover of new members. The eponymous fair run during freshers week is the initial event where impressionable newcomers can be lied to about caving such that they may want to try it. An added incentive to join this year was the reduction in membership to ?15, due to a healthy cash injection from Leeds Sport, and also the abundance of nice, comfortable caving kit due to further union funding last year.

This year?s fair proved to be a good success, with some excellent ?postcard? flyers designed by Amy, our secretary, being distributed, advertising such excellent events as the ?Giver it a Go?. Later that week was the Intro talk at the Packhorse Pub, a once regular haunt which has now been superseded by the Fenton as pints are a quid cheaper there. At the end of freshers week we had some good leader training trips to Newby Moss and Bar Pot to get everyone up to speed with ladder and line rigging before throwing freshers at these often neglected apparatus.

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The second ?fresher? event of the season is Laddermeet, where we shove people on a bus to Ilkley and let them climb and descend ladders in the quarry, mainly for our own amusement as the number of annoyed climbers who arrive to fall off VS?s is substantial. Some confusion over the location of the Cow and Calf pub in the aftermath lead to a few freshers being escorted to the Station Inn in central Ilkley, but aside from that it was a very smoothly run event where everyone seemed to have fun.

The following weekend was that of that well known excellent fundraiser, the ?Giver it a Go?, which had excellent weather and a good turnout of around 40 freshers. This is a daytrip where we visit three easy caves on Birkwith fell and do lots of faffing. The inspired decision to bring the Dinghy and the Rubber Ring to the event proved an excellent success, with the sump in Birkwith being reached by many freshers in the boat. There was also only one instance of hauling.

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By most accounts, university caving is about two things: drinking and failing to go caving. ULSA try and circumvent the latter criteria most of the time. Thus far this year, we have run freshers trips every weekend with a healthy turnout for all trips. 14th ? 16th October saw around 45 of us descend on Mendips to breathe bad air and eat the excellent baked offerings of Eileen Butcher, who kindly pays host to us every year. Lots of freshers floundered and frothed in Sump One and there were many admirable attempts at the Shepton squeeze machine and all the usual games. Luke, the treasurer, got into rather a state and concluded the night by burping into a pan and then sleeping on a shelf in the pantry.

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Our second weekend away (over Halloween) started out as a rather frantic and panicked affair. When we went to collect the key for the university hut that we have always stayed in, we discovered that the hut was double booked and the person who had confirmed our booking for us was on annual leave. We had no written confirmation to prove we had applied in June. A lot of hectic phone calls and last minute reshuffling later saw us heading to Greenclose of the NPC for a cracking weekend. Freshers headed to Alum and Sell Gill, while I was gifted the weekend off to do some hungover trips with no responsibility. Fireworks were fired in a number of questionable configurations (shooting them out of your mouth is great fun) and some impressive costumes were sported, with Luke Stangroom again pulling the form out of the bag with his scarred, bald head, the product of an assault with a bic razor in an attempt to impersonate Walter White. His costume later morphed into that of Lord Voldemort, as he was seen firing flames from his bare hands whilst screeching into the night (see above drawing by Amy for a full account of the weekend).

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Day trips happen on the weekends when we aren?t away, and have seen us frequent such caves as Notts II, Giants Hole Lower Series and a number of excellent through trips in Easegill Caverns. We are able to get people going on SRT immediately in our training sessions, which happen twice a week in the university climbing wall. This arrangement and the nature of dales caving means that freshers are able to gain SRT proficiency quickly which greatly broadens scope for trips, making leaders lives much easier and more interesting. This weekend I had some freshers rigging in Pool Sink, quite a good milestone for a months caving. We even had one girl, Emma, accompany us for a sporting descent of the Ingleton waterfalls canyon, where large crowds stopped mid-stroll to watch us jumping into pools as if it was some kind of exotic animal exhibit.

Another thing which really creates a strong bond within a club is, of course, the social side, and ULSA is very much a community of like-minded, conscientious people. We run weekly ?soup kitchens?, whereby supermarket bins are raided for produce (the Coops of Settle and Gargrave are good to hit on the way back from the dales, whilst the Meanwood Waitrose is a good close-to-home option) and a large soup is cooked up for everyone to partake in. Training sessions are always followed by a good pub session and a trip back to someone?s house via an off-license to be rowdy and generally a nuisance, and we can often be found at one of Leeds? excellent indoor climbing walls honing our falling off skills or occasionally outside at the crag if it?s nice and sunny. 

To sign off, we are very pleased with this years group of freshers. They are great company, excellent characters and will develop into even better cavers. Roll on a successful year of adventures!
 

Badlad

Administrator
Staff member
(y) Excellent stuff.  Great to read about what you guys get up to and about time you reached a wider caving audience.

Remember all you CHECC clubs - to be eligible for the ?1300 'Grand Prize' you've got to like, comment and share on our facebook page as well as write your story on here.  There are lots of points available to give your club the edge before you get to CHECC and really battle it out over the weekend.

Full rules here - http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=21030.0
 

Goydenman

Well-known member
Great report and good to see ULSA is strong and thriving. On a personal note we value your partnership in the local digs. Cheers
 

nobrotson

Active member
thanks a lot Chris, hopefully the digging continues to yield new discoveries! we really enjoy the sessions with BSD
 

A_Northerner

Active member
Sheffield University Speleological Society

Our Club and Freshers Season 2016


SUSS was founded from the humble beginnings of SCUM; which back then was the unfortunate acronym of the University's Mountaineering society. A splinter group of members who considered themselves cavers before climbers formed the club we know and love as SUSS in 1961. The first decade in the club was a whirlwind of discoveries and publications covering geology, hydrology, biology and new discoveries, primarily in Derbyshire which lies just on the doorstep of Sheffield and allows for easy evening access to many classic trips and potential digs.

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Photo of Caving Games at the first Annual Dinner

In the decades following the Club turned its attention overseas and had expeditions in Ireland, Bulgaria, Tonga, Austria and many other locations. The club has consistently has expeditions in Greece, with numerous trips to Crete and the Vikos Gorge. More recently we've carried out club expeditions to Morocco, and this Summer saw us camping atop a Plateau in South Serbia, scouring the landscape for new caves.



This year's Freshers Season is going extremely well, at the Freshers' Sports Fair we had more sign-ups than any other society (bar men's rugby), which lead to us taking about 50 beginners round the classic Peak Cavern "Galena Circuit" round trip over two very busy days at the TSG! Those that we couldn't fit on the Peak Weekend we took round Giant's Hole and Carlswark on various evening trips.

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Keen freshers ready to go underground!                              Peak offers many challenges for beginners

Our first full weekend away was to the NPC's hut in the Dales, where our freshers learned plenty of caving games and visited some classic horizontal Dales trips including Old Ing -> Dismal Hill, Long Churns/Dollytubs, Calf Holes and Mistral. We managed to get everyone underground before midday on both Saturday and Sunday which is good going for student cavers!

The next weekend was at the TSG for Halloween, a yearly tradition when we visit our Scottish friends from GUPA who make the lengthy journey down to Derbyshire for some costumed fun around Castleton, with a bit of caving either side. This weekend also saw us taking some of the final photos for the Club's 2017 Naked Calendar, we dragged a load of Christmas Decorations into Hillocks Mine, set up a very festive scene and posed (tastefully) for a December group photo, featuring several freshers who were only on their 2nd or 3rd trip, we think they'll stick.

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Post-caving photo by the Dismal Hill shaft

During the week (apart from Thursday, which is strictly Pub and Digging night) we have evening trips most nights, keeping our freshers on their toes with trips down some of Derbyshire's nearby caves. Thanks to generous SUSS Alumnus Mark Wright we have access to the MWT Rope Access Training tower in Rotherham, which we hold regular training sessions at. This allows freshers to hone SRT, and leaders to practice various rescue scenarios. Once a fresher has been signed off as SRT Competent it opens up a whole new world of caves in Derbyshire, including trips down Oxlow, Nettle Pot, Winnat's Head and Eldon Hole - all of which are just 40 mins drive from the club's kit store in Sheffield.

Our latest weekend was to the SWCC's hut, along with MUSC. The freshers were impressed with the size and grandeur of Welsh Caves, a stark contrast to the Peak District! All three entrances to Ogof Ffynnon Ddu were explored, along with an OFD1-to-Top trip on the Sunday and a Saturday trip down the Dales-esque Pwll Dwfn, high above Dan-yr-Ogof.

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You can take the freshers out of Derbyshire...
but they'll still seek the grottiest parts of OFDII to crawl through!

Overall the freshers season is going swimmingly for SUSS, we have more freshers than we have had in previous years, but we're still managing to get each and every one of them trained and underground regularly, with every weekend away being (rather unfortunately) booked to full hut capacity. We've got our freshers ready and pumped for the CHECC forum, bring on the Mendips!
 

Ash

New member
University of Bristol Speleological Society

Our club and fresher?s season 2016


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The history of the U.B.S.S. ought to begin in 1919 when the society was founded, but, as might be expected, this is only half the story. The direct predecessor was known as the Bristol Spel?ological Research Society and was formed in the spring of 1912. Its objective was to study caves in a more scientific manner than had previously been thought necessary.

The original objectives of the U.B.S.S. were "the discovery of caves and the examination of their contents". However other objectives have been added - all contributing to the present varied nature of the society - which include: archaeological excavations, the development of our own museum and library (the Stables), the holding of lectures, and the establishment of our hut (which started out as a ladies cricket pavilion) out in Burrington. Since its foundation, the Society has endured many moves, including one during the war when both the library and the museum were destroyed by incendiary bombs.

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Our clubs achieved quite a bit over the years. Since 1919 we have been publishing 'Proceedings', a scientific journal with a world-wide circulation covering all aspects of cave and karst, including geomorphology, cave biology, prehistory and the history of cave studies. We dug open GB Cave in 1939, were the first to explore and survey Little Neath River Cave in South Wales in 1967, as well as documenting the caves of Ireland in our annual expeditions, publishing ?The Caves of County Clare?. A new edition is currently being compiled, due to be published for our centenary in 2019.

Some of our ?famous? alumni members include Bob Churcher (our current president), Andrew Atkinson (Possibly the Hardest caver), Simon Hadfield (The king of faff), Charlie Self (renowned for his work on non-karst caves and speleothem development), Graham Mullan (the editor of our Proceedings), and more.

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But enough with the history, and moving on to our fresher?s season which started with lots of interest and a great turn out at our fresher?s fair stall. Hats off to Tom who spent the day dressed up in full caving gear and looked very hot and bothered by the end! We then had our annual free chilli night at our weekly pub ? The Coach and Horses, signing up lots of people for their first caving trips.

We ran two fresher weekends staying at our hut in the Mendips this year, alongside multiple mid-week caving trips. This took us on adventures to Swildons, Eastwater, Goatchurch, Sidcot, and more, involving sporting steamways, fun crawls and challenging squeeze. A fortnight later we were in South Wales for a weekend of stomping O.F.D. passage, as well as trips to caves such as Craig Y Ffynnon to view some rather impressive formations.

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Plus, we have our weekly pub social evenings every tuesday, most recently having a pie night. Someone once said that the best way to attract students is to offer free food, and pie night went down very successfully in that regard.

On Bonfire weekend we had a big party out at our hut in the Mendips, with spit roast lamb over an open fire, a firkin of beer, and a rather daring firework display. We invited some of the CUCC along for the weekend, some of our members having joined them expo-ing in Austria over summer. There was plenty of merriment and caving games and some of us even managed to get underground the following day!

Also, since the start of term we have been running training sessions every week in preparation for upcoming trips up to Yorkshire and Derbyshire. We probably have the most unusual training venue in the country ? the stairwell of the student union building, which we?ve used for nearly 40 years! Students can be seen practising ladder climbing and SRT there, often causing confusion to visitors to the building!

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Overall our fresher?s season has been excellent with lots of interest in caving! It could have been better, we haven?t retained as many people as we would like, but we have gathered a decent, committed group of new members who will help move our club forwards. A contingent of our keenest members, old and new, are very much looking forward to CHECC this year.
 

pjh5000

New member
Reading University Caving Club has been around in one form or another since 1968. We're a small bunch of friendly, enthusiastic cavers - though we do have a somewhat legendary (if well deserved) reputation for faff!

Our most successful year (at least in terms of membership) was back in 2008, where under the leadership of Andy Kuszyk, we attracted 50 paid up members! Moreover, many (most?) of these members remained with us after graduation, and were an integral part of the running of the club for several years - and indeed, a lot of them are still active cavers to this day!

Over the years we've had several other members who've played a very active part within the sport of caving - for example Henry Dawson, Henry Patton, John Kitching, Andy Rumming, Duncan Butler, Jo Hardy and James Bouchard (one of the people who was heavily involved in setting up CHECC initially).

However, in more recent years, our club has faced some huge challenges. A combination of factors - e.g. a failure to attract many new members, the gradual (if inevitable) drifting away of some key older members, and issues with the distribution of work amongst the committee - led to a crisis during the previous (i.e. 2015-2016) academic year.

During that year, the club came extremely close to folding, and our Student's Union were making loud murmurs about shutting us down. Some issues with our new tackle store didn't help matters either... Thankfully, literally in the last couple of days before a crucial Student's Union budget meeting, we just barely managed to scrape the 15 paid members required for our club to be allowed to continue (albeit on a reduced budget)...!

So in short, we knew that Autumn 2016 really would be a 'make or break' term for us - so we decided to pull out all the stops!! Perhaps inevitably we weren't quite as organised as we fondly imagined ourselves to be, so we had a bit of a scramble to get everything ready in time for the Fresher's Fayre - however I'm delighted to report that this term has been a massive success so far, and our club's future now seems secure again! :)



On the weekend before Fresher's Fayre, we organised a training weekend for committee members, so we could remind ourselves about the things we were a bit rusty on - as well as learn a few new techniques as well. Among other things, we covered the importance of good safety briefings, leader responsibilities, dealing with incidents such as hypothermia, common cave hazards, ladder belaying, assisted rope hauls, making makeshift harnesses out of slings, etc.


   
For freshers fayre itself, we put a lot of effort into getting as many people to help out as we could, and we put up a lot of posters around campus a couple of days beforehand (particularly in departments that might attract cavers such as Geology and Archaeology). We got some bright red shirts to make us all as visible as possible, as well as a large prominent banner above our stall (which was conveniently located next to the entrance of the marquee), 1000 glossy printed colour handouts, and a big computer screen with a slideshow of club photos (some of which were taken during the recent Eurospeleo event - it was quite nice to point at some photos of the spectacular Dihedral entrance shaft for Gaping Gill, then casually mention to freshers that we'd been at the top of this just a few weeks ago...!).



Added to that, we had various other fun gimmicks at the fresher's fayre, such as our Squeeze Machine, free sweets, a 'guess the number of krabs in the helmet to win a free trip' competition, people dressed up in caving gear, etc, etc. We also slashed the membership fee for students down to ?10 - as low as we could go, whilst still breaking even.

One new thing we did this year which helped a lot, was to create a simple web-based form which fed into a Google Spreadsheet, allowing freshers to sign up to our mailing list and Facebook group. This meant we were easily able to sign people up using tablets, phones, laptops etc - allowing us to walk around the fayre and mingle with the freshers, rather than ending up with a massive bottleneck around our stall - which has in the past resulted in freshers getting bored and walking off... This led to us getting more than double the number of mailing list sign-ups than we achieved last year!

After the fayre itself, we held a presentation with more details about our club and about the activity of caving in general - the room was packed; a very good sign! We held a follow-up presentation the following week, for anyone who missed the first one, which was also quite well attended. After the presentation we went to the nearest Wetherspoon's in town, and a few freshers came and got to know us (now there's a scary thought!).



Then on the following Sunday we went on a day trip to the Mendips, where we explored Swildon's Hole, Waterwheel, and Sludge Pit - followed by a meal and a few drinks at the local pub. The trip was heavily oversubscribed (to the extent we had to turn some people away, and encourage them to come on a weekend trip instead), and our retention rate was good.

Since then, we've organised a weekend trip to Wales, and two weekend trips to the Mendips, staying with the BEC - our partner club. These trips went extremely well, and we've seen nearly all the freshers again since!

Perhaps more importantly though, this term we've really emphasised the social side of the club, and have run a wide range of socials. For our normal weekly pub meets, this year we decided to spice things up a little, and go to a different pub in town each week! This has helped maintain interest in the pub nights. By the end of the night we've generally ended up at either the Purple Turtle or our old favourite, Up the Junction. Here we've engaged in some energetic dancing to our tunes on the Jukebox (you see, we're practising for CHECC ;) !), while gradually getting intoxicated with drinks eagerly supplied by Tony, the friendliest barman in the world...!



As well as this, we ran a caveman pub crawl, and a movie night where we watched the Descent (N.B. by loudly talking over the scary bits, and by gently encouraging the freshers to consume alcoholic beverages every time the film got something caving-related incorrect, I think we managed to turn it from a horror movie into a semi-educational film about caving!).



That said, we did also think it was very important to organise socials which accommodated *everyone* - not just those who are naturally drawn to caving and/or drinking. So we organised some more gentle socials as well, for example a trip to the Hellfire Showcaves (where we came up with some 'interesting' theories about what the man-made caves were actually used for - my personal favourite was a sex dungeon filled with prostitutes, who were subsequently reincarnated as ladybirds - though the rest of the trip was really very innocent!), to the Thorpe Park Fright Night, and a visit to experience the cultural delights (particularly the museums, architecture, etc) of Oxford.



As a direct result of these less 'hardcore' socials, we managed to recruit and retain at least a couple of extra people who we might otherwise have struggled to attract - and now we can convince them to try 'real' caving! Overall, our socials have added a real sense of cohesion and helped bonds to form - several freshers have commented we're the most welcoming club they've joined - which we believe is likely to result in our freshers remaining as members for the much longer term, as well as being an active part of the next generation of cavers...

One thing I have found particularly remarkable is just how different the atmosphere in the pub feels now - in just a few short months we've gone from gloomy discussions about the future of the club (and indeed, whether it was even worth running pub nights at all), to a happy vibrant atmosphere, where we excitedly discuss all our crazy plans - just as it always used to be!

It's a long time since our club last took part in any expedition caving, however we now have tentative plans for a trip to Ireland next Easter (fingers crossed!), and if that goes well, we may organise a 'real' expedition the following year. We now have (at least!) 30 enthusiastic paid up members - i.e. double the membership we barely achieved by the *end* of the last academic year. In short, I am now confident that the club will go from strength to strength, and thrive for many years into the future! :)
 

CavingPig

New member
Cambridge University Caving Club was founded in 1949, and has spent the subsequent 67 years continuing to propagate an unhealthy love for tight, dark and moist cavities among the impressionable students of our venerable educational institution.

Here in Cambridge, we are admittedly somewhat further from the caves than a lot of the bigger clubs, but we try not to let that hold us back. Despite our lower overall numbers, we have a well-attended pub meet every Tuesday at the Elm Tree, regular free SRT training sessions, and weekends away around once a fortnight during term time (even more if people are feeling keen). We have a caving library should you wish to brush up on your research, and we run a range of other socials throughout the year, such as formal hall, bouldering, curry, and a trip to Royston Cave ? a manmade cave less than 15 minutes away from Cambridge by train. We have an annual dinner as well, which usually takes place in March. Instead of black tie, attendees are encouraged to don the weirdest costumes they can think of before sitting down to eat in a 726-year-old candlelit hall.

Club membership is a mere tenner a year, with insurance separately as that varies depending on whether or not you're still a student, and the club has quite a few alumni still hanging around to help out. Membership covers the club's BCA membership fee and our costs for the fresher's fair and the squash. We currently have around 30 paid-up, active members, of which 11 are brand-new freshers.

Famous members of the club include the Golden Shaft Award for the biggest pitch discovered during the course of the year (currently jointly held by Elaine, Michael and Elliott (the latter from UBSS - we like a bit of inter-club mingling) for "Mike's Massive Shaft of Tremendous Girth" aka "Purple Lupin Shaft" in Austria, see below), Michael Perryman, who has overseen the science side of things for a number of European Space Agency missions, and Olly Betts & Wookey, who invented Survex (ubiquitous cave surveying software. In fact, Elaine was once chatting to some cavers in Switzerland who got extremely excited that she knew the people who wrote Survex, so that definitely counts as international fame).

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Survex

CUCC has its very own, very successful expedition, which takes place in the heart of Austria on the Loser Plateau. This year we celebrated its 40th anniversary by pushing our largest cave system out there to over 120 km, joining the ranks of the 20 longest caves worldwide. Club members also attended expeditions in Switzerland and Ireland (that I know of!) in the past year, and we also sent a good contingent north to Eurospeleo, where we all had a fab time, drank far too much beer and managed not to miss any call-outs.

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The main reasons we go to Austria: beer and funny clothing

Like many clubs, we tend to struggle a bit with numbers and always feel that recruitment at the fresher's fair could have gone better. That said, over the two days our enthusiastic stall-runners got 135 mailing list signups, and a small but keen contingent of enthusiastic newcomers have now taken their first steps into the darkness below. Our meets are a set rate of ?35 if you have all your own kit, and a couple of quid more if you need to hire gear. The club rents everything a caving newbie might require, right down to relatively hole-free furries, which are often even clean! The majority of the fee goes on transport, and spreading it like this means that we can keep costs down on trips to "more expensive" (for us) locations like South Wales and Yorkshire.

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Soggy Fresher, Pool Sink and Drain Cave

We ran a pre-term trip to Yorkshire, where two keen PhD novices beat the fresher rush and explored Ireby Fell Cavern, Pool Sink and Drain Cave (at Bullpot Farm) with the rest of us getting in some rigging practice, including a first pull-through trip for all five present. Our fresher's season proper kicked off with a well-attended squash (fresher's meeting with free beer) during the first week of term, followed by a trip over to Wales that weekend, where only one fresher fell down a (small!) hole in OFD. Next up was a well-attended trip to Derbyshire, with two teams (including 6 freshers) enjoying the delights of Giant's and Knowles Mine. They weren't deterred by the low-airspace duck and were soon asking when they could try sumps! Three freshers got this opportunity the following fortnight when we joined UBSS for Bonfire Night, and 11 members of CUCC visited Swildon's as far as Sump 2, Sidcot, Goatchurch, Eastwater and GB. Everyone was back in time to enjoy a whole spit-roast lamb, plenty of beer and a fireworks show, before a range of lesser-spotted caving games took place (suspended sock wrestling, ladder traversing, apples on strings...) And we still have novices signing up for their first trip! One new member is looking forward to her first taste of underground shenanigans this very weekend at CHECC. As the end of term looms, we're looking north to Yorkshire where we'll start to put those SRT training sessions to good use - bring on the rebelays!

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Caving helps you make new friends
 

MarkS

Moderator
CavingPig said:
Thank you MarkS :) - what was the problem so I can do it properly next time?

I believe you need to link to the url of the actual image, rather than just the Flickr page. For example,

Code:
[IMG]https://www.flickr.com/photos/57715470@N08/30391312313/[/IMG]

will not work, whereas,

Code:
[IMG]https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5524/30391312313_ffc93f94b3.jpg[/IMG]

will show the image.


Clicking the download icon at the bottom right of the first link lets you select "View all sizes". Then you can select the size you want, right click on the image, then select "copy image address" to get the link to the image itself, which I used in the second example. I hope that makes sense!

Anyway, back to the topic. I'm enjoying these posts!
 

UniOfNottsCaving

New member
Nottingham University Caving Club
Our Club and Our 2016 Fresher Season!


Hello everyone! So here?s our entry to the Grand Prize of this years CHECC. Over the last few years (well, certainly in the caving lifetime of all the current committee) we may have struggled BUT it looks as if we?re nearing the end of the crawl, we can smell a change in the air and feel the draft, we seem to have entered the chamber of a stable club. With it comes pretties and plenty of untouched mud (we like mud =]) but there?s no time to stop and admire, there?s more to explore and bloody hell it?s going to be arduous, but fun, to keep it going! Let?s get started! Hope you enjoy!

History ? The Little We Know

So as the heading suggests, we don?t know much about the history of our club. The University of Nottingham archives date the club back to the 1940s. We are referenced in a BEC newsletter in 1947 as ?Nottingham University Cavers?. Since our institution didn?t get University status until a year later we therefore generally consider our founding year as 1948!

A quick search on the British Caving Library revealed that during the 60s and 70s we appear to have gone on numerous expeditions to Picos de Europa in Spain.

According to a drunken conversation I had with a man at Eurospeleo we also had something to do with discovery/exploaration of Notts Pot, Yorkshire. Would explain the name I suppose!!

We won CHECC Ultimate Club in 2011?!

We have a fair bit of memorabilia in our Club Stores. Notably lots of signs, a door, a brick, a Trip Schedule from the 70s and some historical surveys!

Unfortunately that?s about all the history about our club the current members know of. If anyone knows anymore please feel free to get in touch!

This Freshers? Season


This freshers? season has been really busy for us, the committee especially! It feels like some of us may have actually spent more time doing things with the caving club than actually studying!

Our stall at fresher?s fair was exceedingly popular, with Jacob yelling out to every person that passed telling them to try caving ? we even managed to convince some people who claimed they were claustrophobic with the aid of some nice big pictures of Titan and Gaping Gill! The week after we held a talk which went into more detail about us and what we do, we managed to attract over 30 people to that ? a record turnout for an event since I?ve been in the club!


Next up was our Freshers? day trips the first weekend in October, where we took approximately 25 caving newbies into Peak Cavern to get wet and covered in mud. Despite being warned that Peak Cavern may not be the best cave due to the wetness, everyone seemed to enjoy it ? whether it was the initial plunge at Muddy Ducks, the big stompy passages or getting covered in mud at Gelena. While not caving we looked after the Freshers? at the TSG playing caving games (yes we started the practice early ? you better be prepared to face our pros!), sharing stories and eating lots of food.

With hardly a rest between came our SRT taster session on the new shiny climbing wall at the new Sports Centre at the university, where we massively underestimated both how many Freshers? would come and how many people we?d need to help lead and supervise. Everyone got to have a go climbing a ladder and doing a fairly low traverse and a lucky few got to have a go at some SRT. Every Tuesday since we?ve had training sessions with a more manageable amount of people and we?ve now trained about 20 people, with one fresher looking to start rigging and derigging next term.

We?ve had two weekend trips so far this term, the first to South Wales and the next to Yorkshire. For the first we explored OFD, doing the round trip in OFD1 and general sightseeing in OFD2. Everything was sorted going incredibly smoothly as we set (we?d got this running a trip malarkey down). Then we arrived to an empty hut to release we hadn?t got the code to getting. A quickly sprint across the fields to the neighboring hut and we are in.  The rest of the weekend went smoothly with every underground by lunchtime on the Saturday. Sunday saw the Freshers? been less than keen to have their first experience of caving while hung over. Although everyone that made it underground enjoyed themselves.

With the Wales trip selling out before we announced it official, the training been reserved for those coming to Yorkshire and a steady stream of inquiries about join the club we decide it was necessary to run an extra day trip to Derbyshire.
This was slotted in between the two weekend trips. Jacob ran a trip to Bagshawe Cavern where we managed to get as far as the sumps while Alex took a group on the Giants Round! E

In the last few years we had struggled to train people in SRT but due to the new climbing wall we had enough people trained to run an SRT trip to Yorkshire. In total we had 15 people going. With only 3 people having done SRT in a cave before this was going to be a challenge. We found a few extra people to help out and were able to get everyone do SRT!!! Some even twice.  Considering it took the whole of last year to get me (Briony) to do this, it was a big achievement!!
Photo: Tanguy Racine of Imperial College Caving Club

So that?s that! Hope you?ve enjoyed reading about us! We look forward to seeing you all this weekend.

Jacob, Jay and Briony  ::)

I can't seem to upload images!!! They're all saved on my laptop as opposed to being online!!
 
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