Hello! I live in suffolk, the flatest most boring place in the world but I love to climb, hill walk, kayak and I want to start caving

I went down gaping gill this summer with the bradford caving club last year and I think its safe to say I have caught the bug!

So- where are my nearest cave systems, whats the best way to get into it seriosly!

Many thanks

I think your nearest caving area would be derbyshire, or the Mendips.

http://www.trycaving.co.uk/ should have all the info you need.

If you dont know anyone who is into caving then joining a club is one of the best ways to make friends and get introduced to the sport proper.

Again the try caving website has a club finder, My club the YSS (www.yssuk.com) is yorkshire based if you like traveling!

I'm sure other folk on here will chip in there half a penny

Good info from Antwan, there.

Antwan said:

joining a club is one of the best ways to make friends and get introduced to the sport proper.

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More correctly, joining a good club ... etc..

Another alternative, especially if you want to do caving to suit your own schedule, on a good caver:leader ratio and therefore managing to do lots of underground stuff (rather than faff, cook breakfast, faff, drink tea, faff and possibly not actually go caving whatsoever) is to engage the services of a qualified leader who will provide all the equipment (often of a very high quality), take you on a tailored trip suitable for your ability/requirements/aspirations and make you feel like you are king for the day, rather than prospective tea-boy.

http://www.caveinstructor.org.uk/instructors

Clearly, being based in Suffolk means you're going to be looking at spending some moolah travelling/staying in a caving region so at the very least you'll want to be guaranteed that you'll get some excellent introductory caving achieved while there so this approach could well be a wise starting point - you can save heaps off your budget by staying at a caving club hut, usually around ?5/night (move around to check out the facilities available at a variety of them to start off with as you may well end up joining one or more of them in the longer run). Some clubs might even be welcoming towards you so you could mix-and-match, doing a club-run trip with borrowed kit on one day of the weekend and a professional trip on the other.

If you hire an instructor you'll also be able to get two trips back-to-back in a single day; this isn't the cheapest way of getting underground but is the most guaranteed. If you inform an instructor that you intend to take up caving as a hobby your introductory trips could also serve a dual purpose insofar as they can be tailored to introduce a training element, providing underpinning knowledge and covering a range of useful topics/techniques as a primer.

With this in mind you could be doing yourself a huge favour if you check out this thread:

http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=13026.msg168027#new

NB: Hiring good quality caving gear for a day is usually around ?15 so a weekend of caving including all gear at ?60/day represents excellent value as it effectively equates to only ?45 for the instruction/day. I think you'd be hard pressed to get better value for money than this present offer so my recommendation would be to book a place.

As others have said, join a club.

But I'd suggest, join a big club rather than a small one. Small clubs may seem friendlier and less intimidating, but larger clubs will find it easier to deal with beginners. And large clubs are friendly too.

You have two options a) join a club near you - they'll regularly travel to caving regions and you might be able to share travel costs. But my guess is that clubs in E Anglia may not be very large.
b) join a large club with its own hut in your nearest caving region, and save on accommodation costs.

Ask some pertinent questions like how many members do you have, and are the numbers increasing year on year? There is usually a good reason for a club's numbers to grow - people join and stay, and the club will probably have a good reputation.

Don't forget to try before you buy; it's hit-and-miss. Some clubs are good and some clubs.....

Joining a club and buying your own caving kit is worthwhile if you're planning on doing lots of caving - however, if you think you might exhaust your interest in caving within, say, six months, then going down the route as described by me earlier would be your better cost option.

Peter has a good point. its could be useful to find out how many active members a club has. 75 members but only 7 active members cos the rest like to sit in the pub and talk about the old days isnt going to help you get started. And a club that already has some beginners could help as well

Hey,

I can't give many details because it is still in planning stage, but keep an eye on this forum as there will be a try caving weekend being run in April in the Mendips which would be a really good way to try out the club running the weekend.

On another note, if you are going to hut for the weekend try to pick a fairly busy weekend if you are going up by yourself, that way there are more people to chat to and you are more likely to have a good time. Huts vary in how busy they are on different weekends.

Good luck and hope you get to go caving lots!

Not sure where you are in Suffolk, but Cambridge has a fairly active caving club known as CCCC. I read their trip reports on this forum and they always seem to be fairly busy on a range of trips throughout the major caving areas.

The Wessex (Mendip based) was super friendly and welcoming to me when I visited there from the US in nov '10. And I was pretty new at that time too, only caving for a few months here in the states. I like their club hut a lot too. Then again we dont have those in the US so i just thought the idea as a whole was awesome. So I can definitely suggest the Wessex as welcoming and friendly to new folks =) They were really accommodating and I got 3 trips on one weekend...although i guess could've been special since it was setup way in advance, but it seemed like a full hut and seemed like lots of trips were running.

But this is just my silly 'merican cents, which is worth less than your pence

Hey guys, thanks for all the info!

It seems my local club (the cccc) wont have me untill im 18. Is this the case with most clubs???

Thanks

Mrzakmacro said:

Hey guys, thanks for all the info!

It seems my local club (the cccc) wont have me untill im 18. Is this the case with most clubs???

Thanks

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The BPC takes under 18s, but they have to have someone 18 or over with them on a trip. How far off 18 are you? I'm just thinking that although we have members all over the country, if you join a club locally, there's the opportunity to get lifts from home when you go caving. Although you could join a club up north, it could well cost an arm and a leg to get up here under your own steam, so could be worth gritting your teeth and waiting for your birthday.

Mrzakmacro said:

Hello! I live in suffolk, the flatest most boring place in the world but I love to climb, hill walk, kayak and I want to start caving

I went down gaping gill this summer with the bradford caving club last year and I think its safe to say I have caught the bug!

So- where are my nearest cave systems, whats the best way to get into it seriosly!

Many thanks

Click to expand...

Hi There.
I live on portland and want to get in to caving as portland has some ok caves ans rifts.
Can anyone help me get in touch with cavers or small caving clubs near to portland.
I have some basic stuff like lights boots hardhat gloves i think all the basics.
I would very much like to know more about portlands caves ect.
My email is    allthingspyro@talktalk.net.
Please help me