i did and apart from wikipedia, UKcaving, BCA and Try Caving sites which are more global, i found it intriguing thatall clubs and organisations on the 1st page on "caving" were all Mendip area based bar the one link to the Peak District National Park Authority...Bottlebank said:
Decline in caving numbers
- Thread starter TheBitterEnd
- Start date
Bottlebank
New member
That's Google being clever, I suspect. Are you nearer the Mendips, I get mainly northern clubs on first page?estelle said:
TheBitterEnd
Well-known member
No, GCHQ tells the Americans...
hell little caver
New member
Hello
so as chris said I gave a talk about youth things at hidden earth.....
IF you want to help here are my suggestion
1. adopt a caving club.... get you club involved we hope to have all thing in place by the start of 2014 so email me and say the ..... wants to adopt a student club, please rmber that you then have to build the relation ship with them
2. Student caving is actually quite big and as with all thing goes through highs and lows.... CHECC now usaly has around 250-300 people attend.
3. outdoor show yep sounds gd...... IF you want to go run it I will help you as much as I can and BCA dose want to support these thing we used to go in the past when it was at the NEC although I had a large cost and were not sure how many results.......
4. I would love people to send me vidoes of caving to put on the try caving website/ phots description of what caving is like ect
5. Get you club running stuff some club have had massively successful events they have run to encourage new people if you doing this I will try (hopefully cookie will help me to put these on the try caving website.
6. If anybody would like to and web master the try caving website I would b your best friend ever as I am about as useful at we design as I am at spelling.....
Thing to look forward too......
We are in the proses of making try caving poster for people to go put up at local climbing walls, outdoor centre and other place with a QR code on
The try caving leflets need to be reprinted, but we trying to change them so if you have any suggestion on what would attacked you to give it a go I would love too know...
So my email is little_caver@hotmail.com
Hellie
so as chris said I gave a talk about youth things at hidden earth.....
IF you want to help here are my suggestion
1. adopt a caving club.... get you club involved we hope to have all thing in place by the start of 2014 so email me and say the ..... wants to adopt a student club, please rmber that you then have to build the relation ship with them
2. Student caving is actually quite big and as with all thing goes through highs and lows.... CHECC now usaly has around 250-300 people attend.
3. outdoor show yep sounds gd...... IF you want to go run it I will help you as much as I can and BCA dose want to support these thing we used to go in the past when it was at the NEC although I had a large cost and were not sure how many results.......
4. I would love people to send me vidoes of caving to put on the try caving website/ phots description of what caving is like ect
5. Get you club running stuff some club have had massively successful events they have run to encourage new people if you doing this I will try (hopefully cookie will help me to put these on the try caving website.
6. If anybody would like to and web master the try caving website I would b your best friend ever as I am about as useful at we design as I am at spelling.....
Thing to look forward too......
We are in the proses of making try caving poster for people to go put up at local climbing walls, outdoor centre and other place with a QR code on
The try caving leflets need to be reprinted, but we trying to change them so if you have any suggestion on what would attacked you to give it a go I would love too know...
So my email is little_caver@hotmail.com
Hellie
martinm
New member
hell little caver said:6. If anybody would like to and web master the try caving website I would b your best friend ever as I am about as useful at we design as I am at spelling.....
I helped Chris Jewell with this site back in 2007, but not much seems to have changed since 2008. There are no contact details or events that I can see and the site is based on a VERY old version of Joomla. 1.0.n I think, dating from 2006 anyway. Chris was going to move it a BCA server, but don't know whether he did or not.
It really wants moving to Joomla 3.n now, (if BCA still require the site), it wouldn't take too much time then to copy the contents and structure to a new site (a few hours) on the same server even, then maybe drop the event calendar as it's just another thing that needs keeping up to date.
I'd quite happily do the work, but not for free. I'm already DCA webmaster and also keep an eye on the Peak and Northern Cave Monitoring web sites, as I set them up.
Up to BCA really... Regards, DCA Conservation Officer and webmaster.
Chris J
Active member
I find this a odd topic in that most of us were talking about this (and starting to do something about it) 6 years ago. I think its well known that caving has declined since the golden age of exploration in the UK and of course took a real hit with foot and mouth.
In 2007 we began the slow long process to do something about caver numbers. I joined BCA council and halved the average age, BCA created a 'Youth and Development' officer role, we printed try caving leaflets, went to the Outdoor show, set up a website and several other things. The officers role has changed hands twice now and Hellie Brooke is the current one. BCA now has its own artificial cave which was created after we learnt how popular this was at the outdoor show and there are lots of people younger than me on the BCA council!
Yes the website needs updating. It looked good in 2008/09 but thats the problem with websites and I think Hellie is on the case with that one. Going to shows is expensive (even when they give you the pitch free) plus it takes a lot of organisation. I imagine we'll go to more shows and DCA has been a regular a Cliff Hanger in Sheffield.
We've also seen caving receiving regular good press coverage and raise its profile over this period. In short I think we've come along way since the low point of the foot and mouth period. Yes numbers may be nothing like they were in the Golden age of caving in the UK but we don't need numbers for numbers sake, we need a sustainable number of cavers with young people involved.
I'm now doing my bit with the adopt a uni club (BEC has adopted Reading and Exeter) if others do similar I'm sure we can keep people in the sport. I've seen it several times, when experienced get involved with university clubs the results can be very good. When I started at Southampton Joel Corrigan and Mad Phil inspired a generation of university cavers.
In summary there will always be work to do in this area but plenty of work has been done and is going on right now and I know Hellie would love lots of help!
In 2007 we began the slow long process to do something about caver numbers. I joined BCA council and halved the average age, BCA created a 'Youth and Development' officer role, we printed try caving leaflets, went to the Outdoor show, set up a website and several other things. The officers role has changed hands twice now and Hellie Brooke is the current one. BCA now has its own artificial cave which was created after we learnt how popular this was at the outdoor show and there are lots of people younger than me on the BCA council!
Yes the website needs updating. It looked good in 2008/09 but thats the problem with websites and I think Hellie is on the case with that one. Going to shows is expensive (even when they give you the pitch free) plus it takes a lot of organisation. I imagine we'll go to more shows and DCA has been a regular a Cliff Hanger in Sheffield.
We've also seen caving receiving regular good press coverage and raise its profile over this period. In short I think we've come along way since the low point of the foot and mouth period. Yes numbers may be nothing like they were in the Golden age of caving in the UK but we don't need numbers for numbers sake, we need a sustainable number of cavers with young people involved.
I'm now doing my bit with the adopt a uni club (BEC has adopted Reading and Exeter) if others do similar I'm sure we can keep people in the sport. I've seen it several times, when experienced get involved with university clubs the results can be very good. When I started at Southampton Joel Corrigan and Mad Phil inspired a generation of university cavers.
In summary there will always be work to do in this area but plenty of work has been done and is going on right now and I know Hellie would love lots of help!
TheBitterEnd
Well-known member
Chris J said:
I don't see that it's an "odd topic" to discuss, I merely asked if there were any statistics to back up the claim that caving numbers have declined since "the golden age". "Everyone" used to "know" that smoking was OK it took some statistics to figure out that it wasn't.
The evidence that there was a "golden age" with many more cavers than now seems to be that Bernies was full and there were queues at the pitch heads. May be there are more people actually underground rather than in Bernies and I know I have queued in recent years at some popular pitch heads.
bograt
Active member
graham said:
Definition of "Golden Age", I think everyone has their own, for me it was post WW2 to mid '60's, just before I started
Re; Breakfasts, a similar situation arose in Derbyshire with the retirement of Bill from Stoney Middleton Cafe ("Lovers Leap"), but I understand "Yonderman" at Wardlow Mires is doing its best to redress the situation!
caverbabe
New member
Gollum said:I know loads of climbers who have come over to the dark side. Thankfully I don't know of any cavers who have defected to the other side
I have...and it feels good...and it made my caving WAY better by learning some climbing competencies....although I do still pretend to cave once in a while now....
TheBitterEnd
Well-known member
Just so long as you don't take up unicycling!
Bob Mehew
Well-known member
TheBitterEnd said:
sorry I have been away and not been able to contribute. I did wonder about collecting such stats some while ago. BCA's membership data base lists individuals uniquely as well as clubs. Identifying people uniquely is important because many of us know cavers who are members of 2, 3, 4 or more clubs. NCA had a list of unique clubs but not individuals. BCRA when it ran insurance pre 2004 did not uniquely list individuals so a fair number of individuals were double, triple and more counted. That is why you can't really do much with that data. I think the only way you will get a handle on part of the picture is to go to a range of clubs across different regions and ask for their membership numbers over the years. But that will miss those who cave without any membership, a group which is thought to have grown considerably since the 60s.
