So what's the news on...

[Bob Smith]

I've just been lurking in the background for ages. This is my first post.

Apart from caving, I'm also into offroad motor sport. The access to Lamb Leer is over an industrial, not agricultural site.
Being industrial it does not have the usual restrictions on the amount of motor sport usage that many farmers have imposed on them. The landowner can earn ?300-?500 per weekend letting the land for this purpose. He'd be lucky to make ?20 from a few cavers. The land access is closed to cavers on safety grounds because of competition motors.
What would you do under the same circumstances?

PS  I've been down Lamb Leer many times in the seventies and eighties.

I'm not sure I see your point, although I agree the land owner can do whatever he wants with regard to access. Are you saying he'd rather make money out of just one group (cavers= not much ?  motorsport = lots of  ? : motorsport wins) or he doesn't want the hassle of cavers on his land? The two can co-exist quite easliy if a bit of common sense is applied.

 

[droid]

Getting angry is understandable but rather pointless.

Thank you droid, I did not consider that...

I often don't, too. :

 

[tony from suffolk]

 

[whitelackington]

I've just been lurking in the background for ages. This is my first post.

Apart from caving, I'm also into offroad motor sport. The access to Lamb Leer is over an industrial, not agricultural site.
Being industrial it does not have the usual restrictions on the amount of motor sport usage that many farmers have imposed on them. The landowner can earn ?300-?500 per weekend letting the land for this purpose. He'd be lucky to make ?20 from a few cavers. The land access is closed to cavers on safety grounds because of competition motors.
What would you do under the same circumstances?

PS  I've been down Lamb Leer many times in the seventies and eighties.

Not sure how an sssi
can be classed as industrial?

http://www.english-nature.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1000245.pdf

 

[droid]

I


am

 

[Les W]

I've just been lurking in the background for ages. This is my first post.

Apart from caving, I'm also into offroad motor sport. The access to Lamb Leer is over an industrial, not agricultural site.
Being industrial it does not have the usual restrictions on the amount of motor sport usage that many farmers have imposed on them. The landowner can earn ?300-?500 per weekend letting the land for this purpose. He'd be lucky to make ?20 from a few cavers. The land access is closed to cavers on safety grounds because of competition motors.
What would you do under the same circumstances?

PS  I've been down Lamb Leer many times in the seventies and eighties.

Not sure how an sssi
can be classed as industrial?

http://www.english-nature.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1000245.pdf

How about because SSSI stands for Site of Special Scientific Interest i.e it has to be of scientific interest and special.
Box mines are an SSSI but are also completely industrial, they wouldn't exist without man. I don't see why the two things would need to be mutually exclusive.

 

[Laurie]

Not sure how an sssi
can be classed as industrial?

http://www.english-nature.org.uk/citation/citation_photo/1000245.pdf

Officially the site is still a mine/quarry and, therefore, still has industrial status.
The landowner himself told me that he'd restricted accessn to Lamb Leer for safety reasons.

 

[graham]

Officially the site is still a mine/quarry and, therefore, still has industrial status.
The landowner himself told me that he'd restricted accessn to Lamb Leer for safety reasons.

The status of the land is not the issue, here. It is purely financial. Back in the day CSCC decided that they did not wish to pay the amount that he was insisting upon because they did not wish to set a precedent for increasing costs. That is all. Successive CSCC Access Officers spent a long time talking with the family but to no avail.

Personally I still think that getting Whitlackington to talk to him is a good thing.

 

[whitelackington]

Hello Graham,
you seem to be leaving one of the letters out of Whitelackington,
I do hope this is just a typographical error, I would hate to imagine you would stoop so low
as to infer my intellectual ability was impaired.

Perhaps Hugh would be the man to talk to the Lamb Leer Land Owner,
I would think he would be slightly more diplomatic than I could.

 

[Elaine]

My cunning plan is to use my 2 beautiful daughters to marry the landowners of access prohibited areas and thereby gaining permission. I am trying to persuade my youngest that the heir to Bristol Plains Farm would be a good suitor.

 

[tony from suffolk]

Well done Elaine, I knew there'd be a simple solution! When's the wedding? I'll send a card. Will there be an access charge? Personally, I don't mind paying a couple of quid for access.

 

[Bob Smith]

Tony, I do hope you mean access to the wedding and not the bride....  :blink:

 

[tony from suffolk]

Oh. Whoops.... :-[

The cave, the cave...

 

[Fulk]

Laurie asks: 'What would you do under the same circumstances?'

Well, last time I checked there were 7 days in a week, so what I hope I'd do ? bearing in my that this guy seems to have nothing against cavers ? is set aside one day a week for cavers, and pocket my ?300?500 each weekend.

 

[estelle]

Well, last time I checked there were 7 days in a week, so what I hope I'd do ? bearing in my that this guy seems to have nothing against cavers ? is set aside one day a week for cavers, and pocket my ?300?500 each weekend.

the only problem i can see with that sort of agreement is that a fair majority of cavers cave mostly on weekends and there always seems to be a few ****holes who will muck about with access procedures and f**k off the landowner.

 

[Fulk]

"there always seems to be a few ****holes who will muck about with access procedures and f**k off the landowner."

So what's stopping these ****holes 'pirating' in the present circumstances?

 

[graham]

"there always seems to be a few ****holes who will muck about with access procedures and f**k off the landowner."

So what's stopping these ****holes 'pirating' in the present circumstances?

Possibly that a load os muck has collected over the gate & any pirate trip would need to spend a while digging it out, which much enhanced chances of getting spotted.

Not that I've been for a look, that is ...  :ang:

 

[Fulk]

No harm in looking.

Well, it's a shame . . . I have a soft spot for LL as my first Mendip cave. Even if the diggers get in, it won't be the same; as I recall, the descent from the platform ? though only 20-odd m ? was quite spectacular, and I guess that another entrance would bypass that ? ?

 

[paul]

The thing I remember most was the so-called "fixed" iron ladder in the entrance. When I visited Lamb Leer in the late seventies with a caving mate, we decided to use the lifeline we had brought for the main pitch on the entrance ladder!

 

[whitelackington]

It's a great pity. I think access has been denied for thirty-five years or so. One wonders how long the current incumbent will be around for. The daft thing is, he could have imposed a modest charge per person for access and made a tidy sum from what is a fairly useless bit of Gruffy Ground.

One also wonders when the last official caving trip took place?