Total length of caves in the National Park

[Badlad]

Hi all

Can anyone help out here. It does need to be a referenced figure not just a guess or back of a fag packet calculation. I wondered if this was referenced in Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales anywhere, or whether Sam or Beardy had this in Northern Caves. A total length of caves in the northern area would do for a start if that was available anywhere.

We do have figures for number of cave entrances (over 6m long or deep) and numbers of caves on CRoW access land. A figure such as total length of cave passages would go a small way to help keep a focus on the importance of caves and caving to the National Park. There are records of length of footpaths and that sort of thing so this ties in with that.

Cheers

 

[JJ]

For reference there are 2,637 km of rights of way (footpaths, bridleways, byways open to all traffic,
and restricted byways) in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. (Source - YDNPA 2023). In addition, there are around 120 km of unsurfaced, unclassified roads for example the Turbary Road in Kingsdale.

 

[Pitlamp]

Several years ago there was a situation when the BCA insurers wanted to know how much cave there was in the UK. (Don't ask me why!) The work of coming up with sub totals for each area was distributed among a number of people. From memory I think the total for the Dales (then) was around 500 miles.

But . . . all based on distant memory.

 

[cavingbiker]

Hi Badlad, not sure if this helps from Caves & Karst of the Yorkshire Dales pg 117. Vol 1.

 

[Pitlamp]

That's jogged my memory; I'm sure there was an article about this in Descent at the time.
Might be worth a look on the Descent search facility.

 

[Badlad]

That's a useful start. Thank you

 

[mikem]

Attributed to John cordingley: Our Caving Capacity [UK passage lengths and caver numbers].(167), Aug 2002, p32

Only others mentioning length were:
Tim Allen: The True Length Unravelled [length of the Three Counties System](224), Feb 2012, pp24-5
& The Longest Cave [length of Ease Gill System]
(240), Oct 2014, p36-9,