Here's an interview I recorded with Andy Tharratt, one of the ULSA cavers who explored the Penyghent Living Dead Extensions in the 1980s.
https://youtu.be/5otOucYKZTg

Hi Andy, the YouTube link for this is now broken. Can we listen to these anywhere else?

Andy hasn't logged in for almost a year now...

BCRA Library? Don?t know if they host a separate copy or just a link to Andy Chapman?s YouTube channel.

All the links on BCL website seem to have gone too

Andy had a few audio files on YouTube which should really have been in the British Caving Library audio archive but for some reason, as I was informed, they were not acceptable. This to me seems ridiculous and will not encourage people to get out there capturing stuff before it disappears forever.

The Andy Tharratt Living Dead Extensions interview would seem to be a perfect example.

It would be interesting to find out why they are not in the archive.

Looks I?ve been deleted from the BCRA Audio Archive - despite paying my subs. Never mind, a couple of beers, get into rant mode and switch on the recorder. ?And there I was,.....?.

psychocrawler said:

Looks I?ve been deleted from the BCRA Audio Archive - despite paying my subs. Never mind, a couple of beers, get into rant mode and switch on the recorder. ?And there I was,.....?.

Click to expand...

We could bring it into the ?ronavirus 21st century and live stream it via Zoom or similar...

Bedtimes stories with Uncle Tharratt

Start with this one:

http://caving-library.org.uk/audio/audiofiles/AndyTharatt-1.mp3

Found it in the BCRA Audio Archive. No longer on the ?interviewee?list but still available via the catalogue search function.

Those were the days...

Assume this is the right chap to contact:
http://www.jumpsuits.randomstuff.org.uk/jumpsuits_team.html

Awesome cheers. I just emailed him anyway

Then this one:

http://caving-library.org.uk/audio/audiofiles/MalcolmBass-2.mp3

I knew this would happen....

Me and Andy did a lot of interviews together a number of years ago - some of which are on the BCRA audio archive. For some reason, many of these interviews were rejected and the person looking after the archive refused to publish them - some of them were a little "wooden", but contained really valuable stories and history on Dales caving history, available nowhere else. The final straw was the person looking after the website stating he was "reviewing whether or not to continue working on the British Caving Library website" - I offered to take over and do the work on the website myself, but received no reply. All interviews that we made together after this went unpublished.

I became very disillusioned with the whole thing as the point was to store this history for the long term, so I gave up. I was pretty gutted as i felt it was a really useful and important thing to do, but unsustainable in the long run. However Andy continued and started publishing on Youtube and posting the links on UKC - which was admirable. As expected, these seem to of disappeared (probably because they got few views), so this history is lost - its a real shame.

Andy has now moved away from the caving scene, so I doubt he'll be on here in the foreseeable future. I'll send him a quick message and see if he's still got the original files.

B

Benfool said:

Me and Andy did a lot of interviews together a number of years ago - some of which are on the BCRA audio archive. For some reason, many of these interviews were rejected and the person looking after the archive refused to publish them - some of them were a little "wooden", but contained really valuable stories and history on Dales caving history, available nowhere else. The final straw was the person looking after the website stating he was "reviewing whether or not to continue working on the British Caving Library website" - I offered to take over and do the work on the website myself, but received no reply. All interviews that we made together after this went unpublished.

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That person would be me. As I said at the time, I was being pushed on the disc space issue - for some reason, web space on the BCRA servers was at a premium, and I was in the difficult situation of having to be selective. Your offer to take over the role was passed on to the Library Coordinator - it certainly wasn't up to me to accept or decline your offer, as I no longer had a role. I had relinquished responsibility for the BCRA Library website, the Audio Archives, and the BCRA Online Archive. I have since taken back responsibility for the latter.

I am sorry if I upset you - I was probably not at my best because of stressful difficulties I was experiencing that were forcing me to re-consider my role with the BCRA Library that I won't bore you with.

mikem said:

All the links on BCL website seem to have gone too

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The links do seem to have gone missing from the Audio Archive pages but two interviews by Andy Chapman with Malcolm Bass and one with Andy Tharratt are still available - via two clicks - from the BCL Catalogue - http://caving-library.org.uk/catalogue/BCL/code/php/library.php?action=search&lib=&type=audio&search=any&search_string=penyghent

Malcolm Bass first interview:

http://caving-library.org.uk/audio/audiofiles/MalcolmBass-1.mp3

The BCRA Audio Archive is a favourite destination of mine.