what is the most 'young adult' friendly caving club / hut in the UK

Winnat's Caver

Winnat's Caver

Active member
I can only really speak for my own club, but I've always been very happy as part of SUSS. We have an age range of active members from Uni first years to people in their 30s, all of whom get on great! I've learned loads from older members, and the club is very good at quickly teaching SRT etc to beginners. Having lots of younger members also means better and more varied socials. Also very easy to get on committee! We don't have a caving hut, but are only a short drive away from the TSG, who we are quite close to aswell.
 
JoshW

JoshW

Well-known member
stick my oar in for YSS having a good gang of young adults around (depending on your definition of young adult), who get out on trips, and with a good blend of experience and youth.

We have a decent party atmosphere, but not all night partying standard.
 
marsrat

marsrat

Active member
Hi.
Depends if you're more into the drinking all night antics or more into the "hardcore caving" - I find CSS to be a decent mixture. They're very supportive of younger cavers and very friendly - they don't shy away from drinking when given the chance also.
 
thehungrytroglobite

thehungrytroglobite

Well-known member
marsrat said:
Depends if you're more into the drinking all night antics or more into the "hardcore caving"
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most 'young adult' cavers that I know (think, roughly age 20 - 30 with some lee way) are into both. Ie. Lots of partying plus long gruelling caving trips. Very interesting to see that most people on here think you can only do one or the other, rather than both?

Good to know about CSS, I don't know much about them. Last I'd heard their membership was mostly quite old but perhaps that has changed now - I know caving club demographics change all the time
 
marsrat

marsrat

Active member
thehungrytroglobite said:
most 'young adult' cavers that I know (think, roughly age 20 - 30 with some lee way) are into both. Ie. Lots of partying plus long gruelling caving trips. Very interesting to see that most people on here think you can only do one or the other, rather than both?

Good to know about CSS, I don't know much about them. Last I'd heard their membership was mostly quite old but perhaps that has changed now - I know caving club demographics change all the time
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You can definitely do both, but whether it's safe (or you'd be fit enough) to do a 20h trip on 3h of sleep and being extremely hungover is a question in itself. Personally, if I was going on a trip like that and a friend of mine was in that state - I'd just refuse to cave with them. An accident in the far reaches of Daren or Aggy is a death sentence.

CSS hasn't changed much demographically (think I was the youngest member by 25 years); still very welcoming though.They still do an extraordinary amount exploration/digging wise.
 
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Babyhagrid

Babyhagrid

Well-known member
The vast majority of caving clubs in the UK are friendly towards young people. I have Ben made to feel very welcome in most cases.
It is important not to correlate the amount of young people to how welcoming a club is. As a lot of clubs with older members still are welcoming and friendly , even if they do engage less in drunken revelry.
I've found the morgannwg caving club to be very welcoming to me , even if I am younger than the average member by 30ish years.
 
Standard Unit of Tom

Standard Unit of Tom

Active member
Yeah I find that they're all very welcoming there's just sometimes an unwanted vocal minority that ruin the perception of the club and it can definitely stick with the way stories and rumours are passed around the uni students 🤣.

Praise Martyn Grayson and Jess for their work turning the TSGs reputation among students around 🙏
 
andrewmcleod

andrewmcleod

Well-known member
Standard Unit of Tom said:
Yeah I find that they're all very welcoming there's just sometimes an unwanted vocal minority that ruin the perception of the club and it can definitely stick with the way stories and rumours are passed around the uni students 🤣.
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Sometimes works the other way round as well (a few students do something incredibly dumb and some people treat all students the same way).

You can definitely do _some_ partying and _some_ caving at the same time, and when you are 20 and indestructible you can do get away with it a lot more (until people get unlucky, often having set off late in the day, and it all comes crashing down of course ;) ). But you could always cave 'harder' if you've had some sleep. 'Hard' is such a complicated thing anyway...
 
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