Belfry Bulletin Number 221

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Number 221 July 1966 The Belfry Bulletin – Volume Twenty – Number Seven It is the usual practice to ask for nominations for the next year’s committee in the August B.B., but the Committee have decided this year to put this forward so as to allow plenty of time before the nominations close and the actual voting forms are prepared.

Perhaps you are completely satisfied with the committee and the way in which the club is run. Pirhaps you can’t think of anyone else you would like to see “have a go” at any of the jobs which must be carried out each year. If you are not in this state, then it will do no harm to think of who, in your opinion, could make a useful addition to the committee next year. Don’t forget to ask their permission before you nominate them.

When you have done this, send or give a note to Bob Bagshaw, 699 Wells Road, Knowle, Bristol 4, saying that you would like to nominate the following for the 1967 committee. You may nominate as many as you wish. By the way, you might like to be reminded that, according to the club constitution and rules YOU MAY NOT VOTE at the A.G.M. unless you are PAID UP at the time. (Neither may you be elected to the committee). This rule has sometimes been treated liberally inn the past, but anyone who might wish to enforce it would be within their rights, so play safe and make sure that your membership is currently paid up.

“Alfie” _______________________________________________________________________________________ IF YOU CAN HELP to improve the Belfry facilities by lending a hand with repairing the Belfry; building the new showers etc, PLEASE get in touch with Alan Thomas at the Belfry, Club or by writing to Westhaven School, Uphill, Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset. We have the plans passed, and the money allocated but NO OFFERS OF LABOUR. How about it? ______________________________________________________________________________________ Future Meets.

August 6/7 August 13th.

August 14th.

August 27/29

September 18th.

South Wales. Details at club or Belfry.

G.B. This will NOT include the Ladder Dig Series.

Stoke Lane. Meet at cave entrance 11am.

(Bank Holiday) Agen Allwedd. Summertime and Southern Stream Passage.

Camping. Names of all interested to be sent to Dave Irwin, 9 Campden Hill gardens, London W.8. by August 13th in order to obtain permits.

G.B. LADDER DIG SERIES. Meet at cave entrance 11am. This trip is limited to B.E.C. members ONLY. Names to Dave Irwin by September 1st at the latest.

G.B. LADDER DIG SERIES. A circular sent from the U.B.S.S. indicates that the L.D.S. will be open to visits from other clubs by August 31st. The biological programme is taking longer than expected. The circular makes special note of the immense boulder ruckle. Its nature is such that a party must be limited to 6 and it is to be made up of experienced cavers. An interim report is expected with survey in the U.B.S.S. Proceedings (Vol 11, No 1) due out in November 1966. Off prints will be available at low cost. For the B.E.C. trip on September 18th, arrangements are being made to stagger parties in the cave. Photographers will be included on the first trip.

ALAN THOMAS

Is joining a team from the Derbyshire area to explore a pothole in Northern Greece.

The entrance shaft is almost a thousand feet deep! No doubt the Christmas B.B. will be a bumper number including reports from both the Austrian and Greek expeditions. This year, members will have visited Austria, Greece, Morocco and Ireland. Not bad for the “boozy crew!” _______________________________________________________________________________________

There have been some complaints that certain members spend a large amount of their time sitting around the Belfry stove talking about the good old days. We never did that in the good old days!

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B.B. 221/2 July 1966

Digs.

The club is now actually engaged on two digs. Emborough Swallet and Springwood Swallet. Anyone wishing to help, let either Dave Irwin or Alan Thomas know when they will be available. (A chance to sunbathe too!). M.C.G. are digging Sand Passage in August/Longwood and are also continuing their mammoth task at Blackmoor Swallet. From all reports, this Velvet Bottom dig is quite promising. The Wessex are working at the termination of the August Stream Passage and the U.B.S.S. have applied for permission to dig in Read’s Grotto.

JOURNALS The next edition of the British caver will be available in August 1966. Price 10/9 from Gerard Platten, Rotherfield, New Milton, Hants. The S.M.C.C. Journal (Ser 4 No 1) June 1966 is now available and includes Bob Craig’s report of a discovery in St. Catherine’s II and B.M. Ellis’s “Some Caves of North Wales” detailing location and description of each one. This publication is available from Bryan Ellis. _______________________________________________________________________________________ The restarting of Emborough – a favourite for many years of the Editor’s – had led him to one of his (luckily now rare) outbursts of dubious rhyming….

Come on and dig in Emborough, It’s deep, it’s wide. It’s big!

I doubt if you’ll remember a More entertaining dig.

In August or December, a Good dig will keep you fit.

So DIG WITH WIG in Emborough And shovel out the grit! …..which, on being shown to the rival dig proprietor, Alan Thomas, caused him to coin a slogan…..

“Maesbury – the YOUNG man’s dig!” _______________________________________________________________________________________ According to the signature on this letter to the Editor, we have a distinguished correspondent – who appears to be one up (as older members will remember) on His Grace the Duke of Mendip…

To the Editor, The Belfry Bulletin.

Dear Sir, There are a number of complaints that I would like you to bring to the attention of members. First, I received no B.B. during the month of May. This was presumably due to the gross inefficiency of the producers or distributors. I found this particular irksome as some months ago, I was asked to help staple the magazine. If people are going to undertake a job, why can’t they do it without running to others for help?

The flush toilets at the Belfry are not yet completed. Some time ago, I actually offered to help whilst I was waiting for my lift home (which was, of course late) and the Belfry Engineer declined my offer because it said it was not convenient.

A caving meet I attended recently left much to be desired. The transport with which I was provided was unreliable. We were expected to leave in the morning before I had my breakfast. I did not like the cave we visited and I am sure that the Caving Secretary could have chosen a more interesting cave. Also, if he had picked the weekend before, the weather would have been much better.

B.B. 221/3 July 1966

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Why do we all have to have the same food at the Barbecue? Surely the organisers could take orders in advance and cook people what they want? I thought it was a good idea to have chicken this year and was able to get there early and so had three pieces, but I understand that some people who came later had none.

This was bad organising. I must finally stress that I am only trying to offer constructive criticism in the hope that those who are supposed to be running the club may benefit.

Yours faithfully, St. Cuthbert. …and a card sent to the Belfry from Alan Jackman: Dear Fellow members, Just a few lines to say that I will be out here in Bahrain for the next two years, but hope to be back caving around May 1968. I hope to be going on a trip to the Lebanon in about three month’s time and I would be very glad to hear from anyone in the club who has been climbing or caving there.

Happy Caving, Alan Jackman.

c/o M.C.U. R.A.F. Muharraq B.F.P.O. 63.

…a chance for any globe-trotting members to pass on useful gen! _______________________________________________________________________________________

WHITSUN IN YORKSHIRE

by Kevin J. Barnes The Saturday morning of Whitsun witnessed the gathering of B.E.C. members as they arose from deep slumber at the Skirwith Farm camp site. It was such a glorious day that the party packed equipment into rucksacks and prepared to walk to Long Kin West on the South-western side of Newby Moss.

With Phil (I’ve been there before) Kingston in the lead, we set out. Two hours later, we had not located it until Roy Bennett saw some cavers in the distance. We arrived at the hole to find a party coming out. After some time lying in the sun, we laddered the two hundred and seventy foot pitch.

The difficulty came in deciding who should be the first to descend. The lot finally fell to Roy, who descended followed by Phil, myself and Norman Petty – who was insistent that it was his twenty first birthday. The rest of the party acted as support group on the surface. About seventy feet down the pitch was a ledge but the rest of the pitch – except for a minute ledge two hundred feet down – was a sheer drop.

Everyone was able to climb up easily, times ranging from eleven to fifteen minutes. When the ladder was pulled out and laid across the Yorkshire Moors, the length of it was wonderfully impressive.

On Sunday, the Bennett’s set out for G.G. to test the Bradford Club’s winching. The winch turned out to be the nearer to free fall than jumping off the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The remainder, Dave Irwin, Tony Meadon, John Manchip, Phil and myself carried on to Grange Rigg. The entrance was fairly narrow and luckily the pot was nearly dry. The crawls were interesting, varying from flat out over large stones to a knee wrecker along the opposite ledges of a high rift – the Anemolite Crawl. The pitches are six in all and are of fifty, ten, fifteen, thirty five, fifteen and twenty feet respectively and usually consisted of a short drop on to a ledge followed by the rest of the pitch. We descended the last pitch and entered a chamber, but we were unable to find the terminal sump. The trip in all took four and half hours.

The only other interesting point was the walk back. Dave and myself walked down to Clapham and along the road, while the others went across the moor. The former trip took three hours and is graded S.S.

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B.B. 221/4 July 1966

Cave Photography

[ 2 ]

After the article last month, I was asked by one or two members to be a little more specific about cameras. Another members suggested that perhaps my facts were a trifle out of date and said that the camera position was better that the impression I had given. All of this is very good, and I am sure that if other (and better!) cave photographers keep pointing out this sort of thing, we shall between us write a much more useful series of articles.

I have done quite a bit of looking up ‘gen’ on cameras since last month. There is an enormous range and it would be quite out of the question to quote more than a few of them so I have taken some examples along the lines laid out in the previous article. Thus, none of the cameras to be mentioned are equipped with exposure meters – these cannot register on the available lighting one has in a cave (carbide lamps etc.).

In the cheap class, the Kodak Instamatic range are simple ‘snapshots’ cameras but are useful from the caving point of view by having built in provision for ‘flashcubes’ which are assemblies of four flashbulbs with their own reflectors. The Instamatic 104 comes for £6/12/5. A slightly more expensive simple camera with built in flashgun is the Zeiss Ikomatic F at £10/5/6 or the Voightlander Bessy K at £14/19/4 although this is rather expensive for the type of camera. All these take Kodak quick loading cassettes, which give a slightly smaller picture than 35mm normal frame seize, being 28mm square.

For slightly more, you can still get the Werra I (now called the Werra I de Luxe). This East German camera gives you a Tessar lens, M & M flash and built in delayed action (useful for including yourself in groups etc.) for £19/18/- the author has a Werra I for some years now and can testify that it is practically cave-proof. It, and all the next group are 35mm cameras. Slightly cheaper (at £13/13/11) is the Silette F which has a built in flashgun.

Apart from some recently introduced Russian cameras (the Fed is the only one actually known to the author) the cheapest cameras having interchangeable lenses is probably the Werra III de luxe at £32, although you can get a single lens reflex with interchangeable lenses cheaper than this (the Exa 1A for £22).

With a few exceptions, single lens 35mm reflex cameras with interchangeable lenses then run on to the £70 £80 class, all of which are very good cameras (they should be at that price!). An interesting variant from the usual run is the Exacta Varex II B which has a 26 speed shutter which can controlled exposures down to 12 secs. and has a ‘T’ setting as well as the more usual ‘B’. Finally in the 35mm class, for the enthusiast, the fixed lens Nikonos might be worth looking at, as it is sealed against mud, sand, and is completely waterproof and guaranteed to work at any temperature between -4oF and +104oF! Twin lens reflexes of the ‘Rollei’ type start at about £30 and go upwards. Whatever camera you get, it is a good idea to collect as much information on the available range before making a final choice and, whenever possible, finding someone who has used the camera you have in mind – as some cameras have built in snags which are never mentioned in the advertisement blurb. A common fault of this type is faulty flash switches and/or sticky shutters under cave conditions.

S.J. Collins. _______________________________________________________________________________________ Don’t forget that the A.G.M. and Dinner will be on Saturday 1st October. If you are entering for Photoessay Competition – time is beginning to run out!!!

Have YOU any particular ideas you want to do at or after the Dinner this year? Why not let a Committee member know if you have? It’s not quite as much fun as grumbling afterwards, but much more constructive!