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 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.
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,…
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…
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…
In this newsletter … Caves and Karst of the Yorkshire Dales – volume 2 This book has now been reduced in price to £25. It can be ordered online, along with volume 1. There is a 20% discount for BCRA members, and postage is free. Cave & Karst Science 46(3) and CREGJ 108 These publications…
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…
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…
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.
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.
Darkness Below’s roving reporter Peter Burgess provides a flavour of the busy weekend at the 2018 Hidden Earth conference which boasted a wide range of lectures and a busy trade hall – and he even managed to almost stay within his budget! Opening It is the usual custom for the opening ceremony to conclude with…
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…
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…
Hidden Earth are holding a survey salon and competition. The purpose is to promote cave surveying and provide the opportunity for clubs or individuals to display their surveys. In addition to drawn surveys, other surveying-related material can be displayed as part of the salon and competition and could, for example, include 3D models of caves….
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…
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….
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…
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…
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…
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….
Do you fancy working for the British Caving Association? Along with the news that the two of the BCA council are wanting to step down – although it doesn’t mention which two jobs are up for grabs – the BCA’s latest newsletter includes the announcement that a new paid job is to be created…
The latest edition of the BCA newsletter is now available (October 2015). This is the first electronic only newsletter – paper copies will no longer be printed. To get an email version you can sign up on the BCA site – never miss another issue! The newsletter contains quite a few articles, including notice that…
Eurospeleo are tempting us to the Dales next year with Gavin Newman’s film titled Eurospeleo’1. Does the “1” in the title suggest more films may follow? Let’s hope so!
