Reading University Caving Club

Socials

Trips for next term!

Greetings!

Apologies for the delayed announcement: We’ve got a whole lot of goodies and treats planned for the coming term!

We’ll be kicking off Freshers’ Week with a massive poster/flyer campaign, for which any designs you can rustle up would be much appreciated. Freshers Fayre itself is on Thursday the 4th of October, and we shall be out in force publicising the club and trying to persuade as many new people as possible that it’s an awesome thing to spend your free time doing! After the Fayre has closed, we’ll be doing a presentation somewhere on campus to give a more detailed description of who we are and what we do, followed by a walk down to the Back of Beyond for a celebratory curry (I think there’ll be another presentation on Monday for those who can’t make it on Thursday). Our ridiculously ambitious schedule of trips is as follows:

Oct 7th – Freshers’ day trip to the Mendips

 

Oct 12-14th – First weekend trip to South Wales – staying at the South Wales Caivng Club (We’re sharing with Aberystwyth University, which should be a laugh!)

 

Oct 19-21st – Second weekend trip to South Wales – staying at Whitewalls

 

Nov 2-4th – Priddy fireworks trip – staying at the Cerberus

 

Nov 9-11th – CHECC Forum! – Held in the Mendips this year (at Yoxter Farm); we’ll be trying to win the ‘Most Awesome Caving Club’ trophy for Reading!

 

Nov 30th – Dec 2nd – Weekend trip to Yorkshire – staying at the BPC (To get an early start with SRT training!)

 

The day trip will be a brief introduction to the sport of caving, while the weekend trips offer a more complete caving-club experience, with breakfasts, dinner and fun included!
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AGM Results!

Hello everybody!

Two Mondays ago, we held our AGM at the venerable and accommodating Sweeny & Todd’s Pie Shop, meaning that we now have a new committee! The elections were hotly contested; a great day for caving democracy! The night thereafter, unfortunately, seems a little hazy.
Here are the new committee for the year 2012/13:
President – Chrissie Picken
Secretary – May Alexander
Treasurer – Kat Hooper
Tacklemaster – Yiorgos Gadanakis
Webmaster – Ben Wilson and Christopher Holt
Social Secretary – Georgina Redgate
Permit (& Survey) Officer – Alex Manthorpe
Training Officer – J Bouchard
Cake Secretary – Anna Rabbett and Mesh Yalvac

Permit Officer is a new one, to ease the Secretary’s job with a view to getting us to certain places called ‘caves’, and will also take responsibility for the club library. Training Officer is so we have an official-sounding title to describe what J does. We realised that we’d rather have two Cake Secretaries than one, and I’m looking forward to working with Ben as Co-Webmaster throughout the year ahead.

Things are  looking interesting for next term. I think J’s doing a small trip over the May Day Bank Holiday (get in touch with him for information), while most of us are revising hard at the Beer Festival. The next big trip will be over the Jubilee Weekend, to Yorkshire.
More news to come!

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Pub Golf Tonight

Golf Club photo

This evening (i.e. Monday 17th) we have the first major social of the term to look forwards to!

The theme is ‘Pub Golf’. This is a competition which is just like a classic game of golf, except that it has several important differences:

Firstly, it doesn’t involve any golf balls, clubs or holes (at least, not in the conventional sense…). And secondly as time passes, the scoring seems to become considerably less important… So in other words, it’s not like golf at all, but it’s still great fun! The basic idea is to go from pub to pub to see who can drink certain drinks in the lowest number of sips – the aim is to get below ‘par’. Full rules will be explained at the event itself.

So overall, this event promises to be great fun! Starting at the College Arms, Wokingham Road at 8:30pm, or alternatively you can meet us at the Palmer Building on Campus at 8pm. Look forwards to seeing you!

Note: Photo by kulicki. Released under CC BY 2.0.

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Some Important Upcoming Dates

It was great to see so many of you at the freshers fayre yesterday!

Below is a round-up of some of the most important dates for events that are happening very soon this term…

  • This Saturday we’re going on a day trip to The Mendips, in Somerset. For those of you who have signed up, we are meeting at 8:30am for a 9am departure, meeting outside the Sports Park (gym) on campus – see building 39 on this map [pdf file]. We’ll depart from the adjacent Athletics Pavilion car park (Building 43). More Details »
  • On Monday (10th October), we are running through our presentation for new members again, in case you missed it yesterday. Meeting at 7pm in HUMSS Room 126 (Building 1). Or if you prefer, you can meet us at 8-8:30pm outside the Palmer Building (Building 26). We’ll then take you to our regular Monday evening meeting spot – the College Arms pub on Wokingham Road. You can find out more about us, get to meet some of the older members, and sign up for trips. It should be a really fun night out! More Details »
  • On the weekends of 14th-16th October and 21st-23rd October we’ll be heading to South Wales. You can sign up for these trips on Monday at the pub, or online… More Details »
  • We’re also planning a big ‘Pub Golf’ social – this will be taking place very soon! More details will be provided shortly…

If you have any questions or would like to know more, please contact our president Elsie or our secretary Chris. It’s going to be a fantastic term – I’m looking forwards to meeting everyone at these events!

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Events This Term

Somehow or other it appears that we have managed to organise LOADS of events for the coming term, even before it’s started! I can’t help feeling something must be wrong here – has the club ever been this organised before?! We’ve got plenty of trips to look forwards to, as well as a number of socials in the works – pub crawls, parties, a trip to Go Ape! (TBC), etc, etc. Thanks to the committee for planning all this 🙂

Anyway, I have updated the calender on the top right of every page to display all the events that we’re planning at the moment. Feel free to navigate through this calendar, and click on the days that are highlighted in yellow to view full details of the events that are happening on those days. I’ve also updated the Trips page to include details of all upcoming trips.

Note: it’s worth bearing in mind that some of these events and dates are provisional, so remember to check this site for further details nearer the time… If you are interested in attending any event, please feel free to get in touch!

It looks like we’ve got a brilliant term ahead of us!

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Meeting at the College Arms

College ArmsThe Reading University Caving Club meets every Tuesday during term time from around 8pm at the College Arms, Wokingham Road, Reading (see this Map). It’s the best place to get all the latest gossip about what things are being planned in the club, as well as to sign up for trips, and simply to have an enjoyable night out! Sometimes we end up walking down the road to the nearby Up The Junction pub later on in the night…

We’re an incredibly friendly and welcoming bunch, and we always like to see new people on Tuesdays! No matter what the time of year, whether you’re a new or older member, or are not even a part of the club at all! If you’d like to join the club we can help with that as well, but there’s definitely no pressure! So please do come and meet us – it’s always fun…

If you’d like more information on how to find us, or would like to arrange for someone to meet you somewhere beforehand, please get in touch with our social secretary or president, who will be very happy to help!

We’ll look forward to seeing you!

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Henley Pub Crawl – the aftermath!

Swimming in The Thames

On Monday, we completed our annual 9 mile pub crawl to Henley. The weather wasn’t quite as good as normal, but somehow or other this didn’t detract from the event – if anything, it added atmosphere… The theme this year was ‘Harry Potter’, and among other diversions we had fun attempting to unmask the Dark Wizard from our midst…

Sadly, I only had a chance to complete the final stretch of the walk between Shiplake and Henley, but seemed to have picked one of the best sections of the route! Miraculously the others arrived at almost exactly the same time as my train – a huge coincidence considering that Shiplake is the only convenient station along the route!

We had our customary swim in the Thames (see photo above), and arrived in Henley just as it got dark. After celebrating our arrival at the local Weatherspoon’s, we then headed back to Reading, and ended up having a rather wild House Party at Elsie, Alice and Penny’s place 🙂

I’m already looking forwards to next year’s Henley Pub Crawl…

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Tribute to Jenn

The Tribute to Jenn

The Tribute to Jenn

Mesh (our president during the last year) prepared this fantastic tribute to Jenn, which we presented to her during our most recent Monday evening gathering, as she prepared to leave Britain for the USA… Click on the image to see a full-sized version.

Jenn: you’ve been a huge part of this club over the past year, and we’ll all miss you a lot! Best of luck for all your future endeavours – and if you find yourself in Britain some time in the future, you know where to find us 😉

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Beerfest 2011!

Yesterday we went on our annual club expedition to the Reading Beer Festival. As always, the weather was absolutely perfect – and so it was a fantastic chance for us to relax outside, socialise, and sample more than enough of the array of beers, ales, ciders, perries, and wines etc on offer…

We ended up crawling away quite late at night and turned up at the Global Cafe – where we had a lot of fun dancing to the live music.

Not sure if any photos were taken – if they were, they’ll end up on this site. A fantastic event as always – roll on next year!

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New Committee for 2011/12!

On Monday 21st March 2011 we held our AGM at Sweeney & Todds pie shop, where our new committee for the 2011/12 academic year was elected.

Here are the details of who was elected to each position:

President: Elsie Brooks
Secretary: Chris Holt
Treasurer: Alice Dale
Social Secretary: Kathryn Hooper
Tackle Master: Florence Goodwin
Webmaster: Patrick Hathway

And last but not least, we have a new very important position:

Cake Secretary (!) : Chrissie Picken

This was one of the most eventful AGMs that the club has had in many years – indeed, I think I’m right in saying that virtually every position was seriously contested by at least two candidates!! I’m sure this is a very healthy sign for the club.

So congratulations to everyone who was elected – I think we’ve got an amazing year ahead of us!

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