CHECC 21 Qualifying Entries

[thehungrytroglobite]

Please write a short paragraph here, about what your club has been up to this year!

It is necessary for at least one person from each club to post an entry in order to qualify for all of the other CHECC comps and prizes...

 

[thehungrytroglobite]

More info from the welcome pack:
For those clubs who entered last year we're interested to hear what you've been up (down) to these since the last forum - what did you manage to do in the year that wasn?t, successes/difficulties with recruiting, funding, training, trips, expeditions? For those clubs new to The Grand Prize, tell us about your club - history, famous alumni, current activities, training, expeditions etc, etc. One entry per club and posted by 10pm, Saturday 27th November.

 

[Custards]

Jake Watson ACC (shadow president)
I?ll be dammed if I don?t have my dam presidency, I was made pres during the pandemic and the hope was that we wouldn?t be in the lockdown for long, I was being prepared for being the pres the year before but I wasn?t prepared for the year that it was.
All in all we managed to get enough new members to form a committee to help the club survive another year having only managed to do one OFD2 shatter pillar trip
Begin this year and I?m still hanging around in Aberystwyth (no one escapes aber) so I?m helping out the new committee (all the joys of being committee but no SU paper work), the plan this year is to help raise the skill level of the club that has taken a hit over the years (a pandemic was never going to help).
Freshers fair:
We get a quite a good turn out of people coming up and asking us about our club? they thought we were climbing, however we did manage a fair number of people with actual interest.

Caving:
The planned caves:
OFD2 -> shatter pillar
Aggy ? music room
LL
???
What we actually did
OFD2 ?> shatter pillar x2 (we had enough initial interest that we took 1 group and then another 2 the next week)
Ogof pasg ?-> ogof foel fawr (this trip was spontantious as one of our alumni was passing by it on their visit to aber so asked if we wanted to do it, it was a small trip consisting of only the alumni, myself and one of our freshers, their write of the trip was particularly mean to me and my crawling ability )
Aggy -> music room  (we realised we didn?t have a lot of time left until the calander dead line so playing music in the music room it was, our pour freshers were subjected to an array of ex-president arses and possibly more)
Pant Mawr[freshers first SRT trip] (this is the only trip this year I?ve not been on, I?ve been told every enjoyed themselves and is their favourite cave so far despite the biting cold walk to the pot)

Misc:
Other than caving we?ve been trying to plan less drinking socials and get more training sessions in where we can (id like to say a special thanks to our various alumni that our still around helping out)
I?d like to try and continue to build a good skills base in our new freshers so next on the list is survey reading skills followed by belaying
Something that would be nice to do would be book some time at the beginning of a geography lecture to speak about the club and see if we can gain any additional interest from that
In closing I?d like to thank everyone at CHECC for being a great help to support caving clubs during the pandemic and proving opportunities like CHECC to help exchange skill to various clubs

 

[StarburstCLA]

Our tale last left off with NUCC, fresh from their victory as Ultimate Caving Club of the Year 2019 crowning the last spot on the fabled check shield in Dolygaer. Then, there was the soggiest ass of a caving winter, cancelling trips repeatedly. During this time, NUCC were also certainly NOT involved in (though also not the direct recipients of) the longest possible haul rescue in the UK that Christmas, and another in Yorkshire in a matter of months. Spirits surprisingly undampened the club jollied on then?? the planet went and ended for a while. Which was more of a spirit dampener.
 
Some club members who happened to pretty much live in a cave were off for jaunts, some made use of their own home grown climbing walls others grumbled continuously for the next 18 months. Club cave cake baking competitions, online quizzes, squeze videos and much joy just about kept the show on the road waiting for the real thing. In 2020 Few freshers were coaxed in due to much union freshers fair bungling and little could be done in the way of trips. A few jaunts to Matlock and a brilliant trip to Eldon but little to no training, no weekends away bar a small camping excursion to Wales and with nothing but a healthy bank balance to show, it was all a bit forlorn as I hung up my hat as president.

But boy has it picked up this year, I handed over to a brilliant team who have come out of the gates like a rocket and nailed the year so far. We?ve reliably pulled in more freshers than we can fit on any of our trips, possibly twice as many, the latent agoraphobia induced by the pandemic has given us an amazing crop of new talent. Freshers? trips into the Devils Arse, caving games galore, songs on the bus, socials every week with pumpkin carving, bonfires, homemade fireworks, and the blessed pub to name a few.
Bar a few mishaps?. One where the treasurer managed to break himself OUTSIDE a cave and another as a few of committee disappeared as a lot of unrelated superheroes in capes dashed of to OFD for a rescue.
We?ve made it to Peaks, Mendip, South Wales and Yorkshire completing the first term tour with CHECC. Good GOD is it good to be back.

NUCC Love,
Benedict Claxton Stevens, Ex-President, Once and Future Treasurer
And the entire Club and Committee
#NotACult

 

[JamesC]

The Exeter University Speleology Society has managed to rise phoenix-like once again this year beginning the year with four committee members and a single returning member. The committee were than able to with the help of our excellent alumni to attract a good number of budding new cavers into the club.

The year began with approximately 24 hours of freshers trips to our local cave Pridhamsleigh cavern with freshers leaving comments such as" cant get enough mud!" and "loved the thrill of may slip and die" in our Red Book. The club then departed to the Mendips for two weekend trips the first to the Shepton Mallet, which saw the keener freshers brave the Swildon's hole sump 1. The club also ventured into as Goatchurch cavern, Eastwater cavern and Hunters Lodge Inn sink.

On the second Mendips trip the club ventured into Sidcot swallet and G.B. as well as another trip into Goatchurch. We stayed at the Belfry caving hut where the treasurer and president demonstrated the two different approaches to evenings on caving trips: one deciding to go to sleep at a reasonable time in order to be awake and ready for the next days caving and the other consuming a substantial quantity of rum and spending the night on the hallway floor, after trying and failing to locate Rose Cottage.

From there the club has continued to travel to more and more caves including Dog hole, Baker%u2019s pit and OFD II, with the club supporting several of our alumni in a historically large cave rescue of another caver in the latter. Freshers have also been learning the ropes at biweekly SRT sessions and the club will be venturing into some SRT caves in the near future.

 

[PLWorth]

Following a pandemic year where we failed to even become insured to cave. A and E has hit ignored all the silly climbing and hillwalking and risen to the true caving club we should be. Starting in North Wales, we went for a kayak, in croesor mine and then...6 weekend trips to our local Pridhamsleigh. Not including the scoping mission where the caving sec, trip sec and myself failed to realise we were in dog hole whilst looking for it.4 trips to Mendip. With two members of the Wessex in the club this is a given. Highlights included freshers exiting the driest sump 1 we've ever seen in Swildons. Finally we also brushed up on our social skills hanging with Nottingham in the SWCC. Aggy was memorable as we got a sneak peak into Abers calender contribution . In the evening all the classics where packed out, from Pot sling to squeeze machine, in preparation for......CHECC currently on our way and stoked.

Pete Worth - Adventure and Expo, Plymouth

 

[HarryofReading]

Reading university is somehow still alive. After a virtual freshers and the rare 4 person day trip to Mendips we managed to get 1 fresher, an actual new member.. who then dropped out of the university. By pure chance we had a committee all entering their third year, who begrudgingly agreed to stay on, our meeger membership tripled during our AGM because no one bothered to by membership before they needed to vote , probably to reopen nominations.

This year's freshers fayre came around and we got prime realestate, right in front of the entrance to the whole thing. We proceeded to block the entire thing so no one could get passed without passing through a labyrinth of cavers handing out leaflets and telling them cavings rly cool and not like at all tight, dark and wet. We handed out over 700 leaflets, signed 100 people up to our mailing list and fully booked all three of our freshers trips, thank you Paul Fairman for taking us down Surrey mines for one of them. Now we have a great bunch of cavers this year and currently 36 members.

 

[Mealy]

We (Bangor) started/revived a caving club in a less than ideal climate. I would equate this to trying to grow a forest underground.
But somewhat miraculously, with immense help from many sources, it's really come together.

Things we've done this past year:

- joined Newcastle on 5 blissful days in Yorkshire in July. We mostly spent this naked caving.
The "Welly game" was born.. if you see a Bangor student drinking wine out of their welly it is because they have done something dumb.
- started running weekly trips and equating ourselves with our local mines & caves. Admittedly having our socials on Tuesday nights and then *attempting* to get underground Wednesday doesn't always work out for us.
- one away trip this semester to TSG where we discovered our freshers really like the sock wrestling and are actually quite violent (sorry tsg members). SUSS helped us out with training some members & helping leading trips
- found a really lovely tree to play on in the park. So we've been able to start having SRTree sessions.

We've had a few difficulties...

Our SU doesn't want us to exist so we've not managed to become affiliated with our actual university (hence the rename from BUCC to BSCC) which makes recruiting new members difficult. Currently, most of the BSCC committee also sit on the mountain walking committee so we just steel their freshers.

Rostams shrine... Rostam helped us out with getting kit from the BCA so we named the kit store that we don't have "Rostams Shrine" At this point it's more of a fragmented concept involving numerous peoples bedrooms. The ropes are currently living in my shower, I take them out to shower.

We've got sponsorship from The Harp inn who are kindly buying us some safety kit.

So it turns out it wasn't just wishful thinking, you can start a caving club in a pandemic having done very little caving yourself.