After a long break, Hidden Earth will be held again this Autumn. Hidden Earth, the UK’s major caving event has been missing from the calendar since 2019 when it was held at Glyndwr University, in Wrexham. The 2020 event was cancelled owing to the plague then ravishing these shores and since then there have been…
The British Caving Association eAGM is being held at 10.30am on Sunday 11 June 2023 on Zoom. Details of how to join the meeting or watch the livestream can be found on the BCA website. In addition, the BCA is looking for volunteers to help run the organisation. BCA chair Russell Myers has the following…
Following the British Caving Association’s AGM on Saturday, BCA members can now vote in the online ballot, open until 23.59 on Sunday 26th June 2022. Full instructions on how to case your vote can be found on the BCA website. If you missed the AGM but want to watch this before casting your vote, this…
The British Caving Association (BCA) and the British Cave Research Association (BCRA) have issued their own open letters after widespread condemnation of the statement by the International Union of Speleology (UIS) on the Russian war against Ukraine. And Ukrainian cave explorer and cave scientist Dr Alexander Klimchouk has been made an honorary member of the…
The deadline for nominations and proposals for BCA’s upcoming AGM is fast approaching as BCA Chair Russell Myers explains:
The BCA’s Youth and Development team have announced the availability of two grants of £500 to help groups of young cavers attend the 19th International Congress of Speleology being held this year in Savoie Mont Blanc, France. Applications are invited from groups of three or more young cavers who meet the following criteria: the groups…
The first ever contested election for the post of chair of the British Caving Association resulted in a win for acting chair and former BCA secretary, Russell Myers. In response to comments by contender Rostam Namaghi on the UKcaving forum, Russell has the following message to cavers …
The results of the ballots following the recent AGM have now been announced and the results of the elections are as follows: Chair: the winning candidate is Russell Myers Secretary: the winning candidate is Allan Richardson Training Officer the winning candidate is Steve Gray Individual Member representatives: the winning candidates are Nigel Atkins and…
The British Caving Association AGM is being held by Zoom (as it was last year) on 10th October 2021. There is now a link on the BCA website which enables BCA members to sign up to participate in the AGM by video-link. BCA is not able to circulate all its members directly by email because…
This year there are two candidates to be the next BCA Chair: the incumbent, Russell Myers, who stepped up from his previous role as Secretary when Phil Rowsell resigned last year, and Rostam Namaghi, who currently serves as Publicity and Information Officer. Both have been involved in caving and the association for many years. This…
The results are in! No, we don’t mean the results of the US elections, we mean the results of the 2020 BCA AGM voting and ballot. Before the BCA’s recent online AGM it was announced that all elections and subsequent ballot on proposals and constitutional amendments would be dealt with by electronic voting after the…
At 6pm on Saturday 1st November BCA’s webservers were taken offline for essential maintenance by their web hosting provider. This included the voting website for the online ballot, and so BCA have extended the voting deadline by 24 hours to midnight tonight, Sunday 1st November (23:59, 01/11/2020). BCA will also delay the results release by…
The BCA AGM is fast approaching and acting Chair Phil Rowsell has written to all members encouraging participation in the first online AGM.
The BCA AGM is taking place on Sunday 11th October from 10.30 am on Zoom. The details of how to register to attend and speak can be found on the BCA website. In addition, the AGM will be livestreamed on the BCA Facebook page and anyone can watch this. However, if you would like to…
A new date has now been scheduled for the BCA’s delayed annual general meeting – 11th October 2020. It was originally scheduled to take place on 14th June, but was postponed because of the serious impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of ongoing restrictions in force on organising physical meetings, this meeting will be via…
Les Williams has resigned as BCA chair with immediate effect. Phil Rowsell has been co-opted into the role and joins Howard Jones as Treasurer and Russell Myers as acting Secretary on the BCA Executive. Les has worked with both BCA and its predecessor NCA in a variety of roles over a long period. He will,…
BCA have issued a new coronavirus update for cavers: BCA notes that travel restrictions across England, Scotland and Wales will, by the 6th July be removed. It is also noted that the various governments have introduced different limits on the numbers of people who may congregate as a ‘gathering’. BCA now considers that the risk…
The British Caving Association (BCA) and the Speleological Union of Ireland (SUI) have issued more advice about how to make a safe return to caving. BCA secretary Russell Myers has sent the following: BCA notes that both the Scottish and Welsh governments have indicated a possible relaxation of their 5 mile local travel restriction scheduled…
In the UK, the British Caving Association (BCA) has issued clubs with some guidance on cleaning tackle. As yet it’s not known how – if at all – the latest easing in lockdown restrictions affects caving or whether this is still classed as a ‘non-essential’ activity. Keep an eye on the BCA website for the…
Following the recent resignation of Matt Ewles as Secretary of the British Caving Association, we are very pleased to inform our readers that a keen interim replacement has stepped forward and has asked us to introduce him. Matt has received much praise for his efforts recently to introduce changes to the BCA, and will be…
Recently cavers across the UK, as members of the British Caving Association, will have been aware of changes to the way the association is governed, which were approved following a ballot of all members. Inevitably, radical changes to any organisation such as the BCA, require sensible management and implementation, and an awareness of any unforeseen…
The BCA Newsletter 37 – February 2020 is now available. Editor David Rose has put out a bumper edition which is both visually attractive, thanks to laying out work by Matt Ewles and Gary Douthwaite, and packed full of BCA news and other features. There are two main feature articles – a piece by Andy…
If you’ve received an email from Matt Ewles, BCA secretary, entitled BCA Ballot – Vote Now, you may have been a little surprised at the lack of information about the changes. So what are we being asked to vote for? Previous ballots have been criticised with claims that BCA failed to supply members with sufficient…
We have been asked by Matt Ewles, the BCA Secretary to publish the following statement from BCA Council:
The Annual General Meeting of the British Caving Association is being held in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales caving area this year – at the Village Hall in Chapel Lane, Horton in Ribblesdale. It will begin at 10:30am on Sunday 9 June. It can be expected to last around three hours. There will be…
BCA Newsletter no 37 for January 2019 is now available. Editor David Rose has produced a bumper issue starting with a few words from him as well as from BCA chair, Les Williams, who recently represented the BCA at a reception in London in the Speaker’s residence in the Houses of Parliament to honour the…
Third year PR students at UWE Bristol were asked to come up with ideas for raising the profile and diversity of the British Caving Association (BCA) in the wake of the Thai rescue. Darkness Below editor and UBSS member Linda Wilson reports back on the second week of presentations and is surprised to hear that…
Third year PR students at UWE Bristol were asked to come up with ideas for raising the profile and diversity of the BCA in the wake of the Thai rescue story. BCA newsletter editor David Rose reports back on the opening presentations.
High Birkwith Farm is now under new ownership and potentially this could cause problems for access to Calf Holes, Browgill, Old Ing, Birkwith, Dismal Hill and other smaller caves in an area used quite heavily for novice trips by clubs and outdoor groups. One caver who has met the new owner explained that that he…
Last night the latest BCA newsletter should have popped into your inbox, but the chances are it didn’t. Despite earlier appeals here and elsewhere only 8% of the BCA membership are currently signed up to receive the newsletter by email – some 520 members. The good news is caving clubs are doing rather better, with 170 so far signed up. If you didn’t receive it and would like to in future read on.
When Rick Stanton and John Volanthen surfaced in Chamber 3 of Tham Luang Cave on day 6 of the rescue to find four people waiting for them they first thought they’d somehow found the boys of the trapped Wild Boar team. In fact they’d discovered four lost Thai rescuers who had been trapped by the rising floodwaters. In the chaos of the early days of the rescue the absence of the men had been unreported and so had not been noticed by the Thai authorities and or the outside world. What followed was a dramatic and unparalleled “snatch” rescue mission perfectly conceived and executed as they dived the four men through three sumps to safety.
The Darkness Below team will be out in force at Hidden Earth 2018 in less than two weeks time, and we’d love to meet as many of you as possible and get your feedback on the site, and of course we may try and persuade you to help us with contributions in the future! Over…
The BCA Cave Surveying Group have just announced an Intermediate Therion training course. The scope of this training course is to improve the skills of people who ideally as a minimum have attended a CSG Paperless Surveying training course or are currently using Therion for their mapping projects. The course is not aimed at people…
This article first appeared in the South Wales Caving Club newsletter for April 2018 and is reprinted here with kind permission from the author Gary Vaughan and the South Wales Caving Club. Gary wishes it to be known that the views expressed in this article represent his own personal views and not necessarily the…
Following recent reports of the opening of a new entrance to Ogof Draenen and the statement from the Trustees of the Pwll Dhu Cave Management Committee, additional information has been received from Cadw who have confirmed that the hole that was excavated to open a new entrance to Ogof Draenen has been dug through, and…
To celebrate 50 years of pioneering British cave exploration and scientific research, renowned explorers of the subterranean world will come together to share their discoveries and experiences during 4 days at the Royal Geographical Society, London.
We have been asked by the Trustees of Pwll Du Cave Management Group to publish the following statement, which is also being published today in Descent. PDMCG have also confirmed that the Twll Du entrance is within the site of an ancient monument as we suggested in our previous article. The Trustees have informed us that Cadw are…
The British Caving Association Newsletter for November 2017 is now available on the BCA website. David Rose has now taken on the job of newsletter editor and the editorial introduces him and his background. He hopes to use the newsletter to stimulate debate and make BCA more accessible to cavers. In the Chairman’s Piece, Andy…
If you’ve been watching carefully you’ll have noticed over the last couple of months that the BCA have set up a Facebook page, and have begun to announce news via it. Judging by the number of “Likes” the page has received though not many of us have been watching too carefully! If you haven’t…
The BCA Chairman Andy Eavis has announced the ballot result today via the BCA’s Facebook page. In summary all four proposals have been approved by the ballot of members. Andy states that it had been planned to announce the results at the BCA council meeting on Saturday 7th October, however the executive decided it…
We’ve been approached today by Ashford Price and asked to publish the following statement. Ashford Price owns land in South Wales under which a number of well known caves can be found, and is also a BCA individual member. The statement makes clear that the BCA’s actions and the ballot underway now does risk…
If like many cavers in the UK, and some abroad, you have just received an eight page ballot paper either by post or email and are wondering what to do next we thought we’d try and help with a little extra information and background, which hopefully will assist some readers to make a more…
The British Caving Association are about to conduct a postal and email ballot of all members and in advance of this have emailed those members whose email addresses they have permission to use in attempt to verify as many addresses as possible. Emails to members which bounce will allow them to issue those members…
The British Caving Association Newsletter for July 2017 is available on the BCA website. The newsletter contains a report of the 2017 AGM and Party Weekend held in Castleton in June, which involved both alcohol and caving as well as BCA business! The draft minutes of the AGM are now available on the BCA website….
The BCA AGM was held on Sunday 11th June, with a raft of constitutional matters on the agenda. Darkness Below has received the following summary from BCA Legal and Insurance Office Bob Mehew: I have been asked by several people as to the outcome of the vote relating to Section 4.6 of the Constitution. The…
Descent 255 is on its way! Make sure your subscription is up to date so you don’t miss out on all the latest caving and mining news from around the regions! The new issue will have a story on the HOG Assault, the tale of how the Peak District has given up yet another of…
It had never really occurred to me that caving instruction could be so enjoyable and simple to arrange. In the summer of 2016, I attended a meeting of the Council of Southern Caving Clubs, to represent my club, the Wealden Cave and Mine Society. This is a very rare event for the club – the…
Following the one day closure of showcaves to cavers by the Association of British and Irish Showcaves as a protest against BCA’s CroW campaign, subsequent discussions between both bodies have led to the following joint statement which Darkness Below has been asked to publish:
EuroSpeleo have asked us to remind everyone that the last call for Salon Competition entries is now 1st August (not 23rd July as shown on their web site) which is fast approaching. The Art Salon has several prizes, for paper and digital work. The Photo Salon offers prizes in categories including colour, monochrome, digital, best…
For many years, a small group of enthusiastic individuals have been having a lot of fun breaking caving rope, and all in a good cause, too! Their aim has been to develop an instrumented rope test rig to simulate what happens when a caver falls while attached to a rope. In their own words: “Occasionally…
Since last year the BCA newsletter has only been distributed by email and BCA online are again appealing to cavers via Club Secretaries to help with building their database of members email addresses and getting permission to email members. BCA is a separate organisation to your club so even if your club has passed on your email address…
The latest edition of the British Caving Association’s Newsletter for July 2016 is now available. The contents include: a message from the Chairman, Andy Eavis, about the recent AGM which has information on the newly appointed officers and other council members; details of Council meetings for the rest of the year and information on some…
After several years of work by the Conservation & Access Committee, BCA has now published its Minimal Impact Caving Guidelines. This takes the form of a clear, easy to read ten page booklet, with high-quality photos throughout to compliment the text. The new guidelines provide a step by step guide to how to go caving…
Statement from the Association of British and Irish Showcaves. The Association of British and Irish Showcaves ( ABIS ) is the lead body representing all the showcaves in Britain and Ireland. At their recent AGM in Ireland it was unanimously agreed that any alteration to the existing interpretation of the Countryside and Rights of Way…
The issue of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 continues to divide the caving community. As we reported early in January, Tim Allen has been lobbying MPs on behalf of the BCA, in the hope of getting DEFRA to change their interpretation of the law, even taking two on a visit to Gaping…
The latest edition of the British Caving Association’s Newsletter for February 2016 is now available. The contents include: news about the Eurospeleo 2016 congress; funding for cave conservation in the north; a major reorganisation of the British Caving Library; information on a project concerning anchors for use in North Wales Slate mines; the publication of…
More Press coverage A publicised visit by two Members of Parliament to Gaping Ghyll was reported here a few days ago. The press release was greeted with much enthusiasm by those cavers keen to see caving accepted as a permitted activity on Open Access land. Two local newspapers have also published the story, The Craven…
The current Secretary of the British Caving Association, Damian Weare, will not be seeking re-election at this year’s AGM in June, due to other commitments. Those who have worked with Damian over the years will appreciate he will be a hard act to follow, having served UK cavers and caving clubs very efficiently for some time….
The landowners who own access to the UK’s second longest cave, Ogof Draenan, have made it clear that they won’t be bullied by threats of legal action made by cavers Stuart France and Nigel Rogers In a post on UK Caving yesterday the landowners who between them own the land on which the entrances to Drws Cefn…
We reported on 24 November 2015 about the legal action threatened by cavers Stuart France and Nigel Rogers against Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and the landowner concerning their claim to have access rights to Drws Cefn under the CRoW legislation. In the latest development in this long-running issue, their solicitors have now been sent a…
