From 13-20 August 2016 the European Speleological Federation meeting (‘Eurospeleo’) is coming to the Yorkshire Dales. The event is being jointly organised by BCA and the Hidden Earth team and, as it will be everything that is normally Hidden Earth but on a much bigger scale, it will replace next year’s Hidden Earth.

Planning has started for a series of speleo camps to take place in Derbyshire, South Wales, the Mendips and Nenthead in the week before and the week after the main meeting.

The event itself will be a week-long festival of caving, hosted at the Dalesbridge Centre near Austwick in the Yorkshire Dales, and is likely to be attended by well in excess of 1,000 cavers over the course of the week from the UK and overseas. This is by some distance the biggest event in the UK caving calendar, and we are keen to encourage everyone to get this date in their diary, promote it within their club or caving circles, and attend for as much of the week as possible.

The event will include a daily lecture programme, bar, on-site catering and entertainment, training courses, a trade hall and conference banquet. Camping will be available on site. Around 30 of the Dales’ most popular caves will be rigged all week to allow them to be enjoyed without encumbrance, and the Craven PC Ltd winch will be in operation all week at Gaping Gill.

These are still early days, and the website content is still being added to but tickets will soon be on sale at, for a short period, a substantial discount. We would like to encourage all cavers to keep an eye on the website, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get the latest news as things progress.