Arriving today at Giants for a trip to Earth leakage, it was busier than i have ever seen it, didnt think we would get parked up (one car), arriving at the entrance there must have been 10 people stood around including kids, wearing nothing but regular clothing, trainers etc, no helmets, hand held cheap lights and nobody who looked like they knew what they were doing, we were quizzed about what the cave was like, i pointed out the lack of gear and helmets to which one replied he had been in and already smacked his head, but we are going back  to try and get to the big chamber, do i know where it is?, i did my best to discourage them.
Once in the cave at Base camp chamber there were similar people wandering around in a variety of gear, no helmets on any of them, the real eye opener was this dick with bear feet who claimed he was connecting with the earth, what about a rock rolling on your toes and then need a rescue i asked, it will be fine he said, what a total prick.
Is this the way things are going?,  i imagine none of them paid the trespass fee, so that puts access to the cave in jeopardy, then there was the graffiti not so long ago, its all getting way out of hand, whats the solution, gate the cave and others like it, creating a whole problem of access for all of us
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According to this forum and the BCA the solution is for them to join a caving club. From your description its sounds like they've got their own. Internet cavers have been around for a long time and are the future. Get used to it.

After we saw you in the Crabwalk and were out changing there was another party in trainers and caps coming down the track as the sun was setting. Did our best to dissuade them but was told "We've been here before". Drove home and left caving kit in the van ready for a callout. What you describe seems to be a standard weekend thing these days and it is getting worse.
DCA have raised this with the landowner and await a reply. We have asked the Rural Crime Team to pop down from time to time and I met one of them down there a few weeks back to show them the cave and the issues we are seeing. Unless the landowner asks us to take some action there is nothing we can do I fear. Cavers are not there to police the site, it is private land after all, but the issues that will continue to be created by growing numbers of ill-prepared visitors will have an impact on us at some point.

Telling them they're all going to die of lung cancer may work?! And that you've all taken anti-radon tablets, so you're fine. Short of that, it seems like a gate is the only solution, and a really big one. With badger cameras capturing every vehicle that arrives. I'm fed up with even thinking about the place to be honest - and the landowner's reluctance to behave like a landowner is compounding the problem. Personally I don't mind that he's losing his ?3 per person - serves him right for being a dilletante, and a rip-off to boot. If he actually cared about the environment he's meant to be stewarding, he'd be chasing these assholes off with a shotgun.

It's interesting though that none of the chumps are trying any of the other caves around there. You can get quite far in P8 in summer without getting your feet wet, or falling off a drop - which suggests Giants is much more widespread on social media as 'easy'.

Cap'n Chris said:

According to this forum and the BCA the solution is for them to join a caving club. From your description its sounds like they've got their own. Internet cavers have been around for a long time and are the future. Get used to it.

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So you agree with this form of caving (if you can call it that) then judging from your reply, where people with no practical knowledge are venturing underground, and in some cases desecrating the cave?

When you say desecrating a cave? Barefoot? Doesn?t sound like these people are hell bent on destruction. I was at yordas last weekend and people were enjoying the underground as I?m sure they are doing quite amicably in giants.

I saw a group of enthusiastic people lined up around the top of garlands 4months ago asking questions, we sent them up various passages around the upper series then sent them to windy knoll. It was great to see people of all backgrounds enjoying the underground environment in their own way. We picked up one half full can of carlsberg and tipped it away for good measure, the guys we saw got into smart BMW?s and drove away, but I?d have any one of them on a club trip

That sounds like about 90% of the extra visitors I've seen this year. It is the other 10% that are the problem.

Sounds like an average weekend on Scafell, Snowden, Ben Nevis etc...

Caving just catching up with the "mountain" environment

?3 is very cheap for a visitor attraction...

adep said:

Cap'n Chris said:

According to this forum and the BCA the solution is for them to join a caving club. From your description its sounds like they've got their own. Internet cavers have been around for a long time and are the future. Get used to it.

Click to expand...

So you agree with this form of caving (if you can call it that) then judging from your reply, where people with no practical knowledge are venturing underground, and in some cases desecrating the cave?

Click to expand...

You or I can disagree with it but that won't alter things. The internet has created all sorts of self-made action heroes and social media narcissism means they need to tell everyone about it, then it picks up momentum. One solution which I put to BCA C&A probably over six years ago was the installation at the limit of daylight penetration of icon signage which listed the equivalent of "play nicely" do/don't actions e.g. no littering, lighting fires, breaking formations etc. BCA and CSCC both dismissed it. You got any bright(er) ideas?

Also note that BCA has spent in excess of a small fortune on trying to establish that the law supports anyone who calls themselves a caver from entering a portfolio of caves and ain't no-one going to stop them. Improved access for all is one of the current big pushes.

In 1971 I was camping at Rowter Farm, on the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme with some school friends, we were doing a project on old Mines (I don't know where the idea came from) someone at the farm told us about Giants Hole, so that evening we jumped over the wall, opposite the end of the Rowter Farm track and found our way to Giants entrance.

Kitted up with bobble hats, bike lamps and plimsolls we rolled our trouser legs up and went in as far as we could, we didn't have a clue what we were doing, a couple of the lights went out and we made a hasty retreat.

Just as we set off back to Rowter Farm a very irate red faced farmer appeared on his tractor and chased us all the way back to the road.

We survived, the curiosity set in, and a couple of us started "caving' on our own until one day we met Tony Buckley, from the South Yorkshire Caving Club on the bus to Castleton.

He dragged us of to some squalid dig in Bradwell and the rest is history.

Reading your post, you don?t actually have any evidence of them doing anything wrong other than in your opinion being underprepared.

You mention graffiti for some reason in the same post, you allege that none of them paid the trespass fee, did you point them in the direction of useful resources like newtocaving website?

JoshW said:

Reading your post, you don%u2019t actually have any evidence of them doing anything wrong other than in your opinion being underprepared.

You mention graffiti for some reason in the same post, you allege that none of them paid the trespass fee, did you point them in the direction of useful resources like newtocaving website?

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What i am saying is i imagine they didnt pay because they most likely didnt know they had too, but this is bound to cause friction with the landowner is it not?.
I am not implying that these particular people have desecrated the cave but it has happened twice recently so it is a growing problem.
As has been said on here, this is the way a lot of people get into caving with a little curiosity that grows into a passion and a hobby, and its great that people are getting out and about, but it is bound to cause problems, as it is in the bothies in scotland where some have been trashed due to party revellers, obviously this is only the minority that behave in this way

Watch it.

You're repeating a few of the anti-CRoW arguments 

What is the solution?

The cave is very accessible, it's on Google maps (and the ordnance survey), it's on social media, and it's one of the most well used caves by instructor led groups (counted 40 children in there last time we were in). There is a sign going up at some point, but short of putting a massive gate on it, or a smaller one inside (at who's expense?) There's nothing you can really do about it.

Putting gates on is a Slippery slope

Today would be a great day to show anyone doubting the danger; ' a wrong day to do Garlands in flip flops. eh?' 

cavemanmike said:

Putting gates on is a Slippery slope

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In what sense? I spend a lot of my time fixing gates on caves and mines, nearly all of which are a good idea. The only reason we have access to places like Mandale Mine at all is because they're gated. Of course, training people to lock them afterwards is more difficult, but this is fundamentally the problem - people. And with regards to 'visitor attractions', most attractions provide more facilities than a shitty 'car-park', and probably declare their earnings too. Just do the maths, if they're all paying.

Barefoot caving is a whole new level of dumb.
I also agree that gating is the way forward, if not only to stop dumb people  getting injured. Although evolution might thank them later.

If you don't gate it WE might thank evolution