I have now uploaded the photos from the 3 trips that took place in October – the fresher’s day trip, and the two weekend trips to South Wales. There’s a particularly diverse selection this time around, recording all our various exploits – from our crazy caving games (most notably the construction of our multi-story human ‘tower’ at the Whitewalls caving hut), to some spectacular photos of the Helictite formations in Pant Mawr – not to mention lots of pictures of the stunning Welsh countryside…

I would like to thank J, Ushana, and Henry D for taking these photos, and for making them available so that they can be displayed here. I’m very grateful! You can view the photos by visiting the following links:

• Mendips Day Trip
• South Wales Weekend Trip 1 (Whitewalls)
• South Wales Weekend Trip 2 (Croydon)

P.S. Sadly life has (yet again!) got in the way of the maintenance of this website over the last few weeks… There should be plenty of updates soon though – including lots of new photos, and some brand new content sections. Watch this space!

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.

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!

Interested in joining us? Want to find out more? Why not visit our stall at the Fresher’s Fayre on Thursday? Or come to our presentation in Room 126 of the HUMSS Building at 5pm immediately afterwards…

This Saturday, we’ll be going on a day trip to the nearest caving region (The Mendips, in Somerset), so you can try some caving and see what it’s like. The club will also go on at least 4 longer weekend trips this term – see our trips page for details. Every Monday we get together and find out what’s planned, and there will also be several social events – always entertaining, and sometimes just bizarre!

If you are interested in joining, or would simply like to find out more about the club, take a look at our information page and our FAQs. Or get in touch with Elsie – our president. We look forwards to meeting you!

I am delighted to welcome you to our brand new website! Our old site has served us well over the last 8+ years, however we decided it was time to give it a bit of a lick of paint… So what’s new? In a nutshell:

• Brand new look and feel, whilst remaining true to the spirit of the previous site.
• More ways for club members to participate on and interact with the site. Add comments to any post, page, gallery or photo, and even add new posts to the front page! Find out more »
• Calendar on the top right with links to details of all upcoming club events.
• Better integration with Facebook. Easily share any post or page, and even log into this site with your Facebook username! We’ll be adding additional Facebook integration in the near future…
• Easier to get in touch with committee members and enquire about joining the club, using our new Contact Form!
• And last but not least, the new site is much easier to maintain, which means that it can (at last!) be updated much more frequently!

Of course I’d love your feedback on these changes – got any suggestions for improvements, ideas for the site, or have spotted any errors? Please let me know – either by adding a comment below this post, or by using the new contact form »

Older members will be aware that these changes have been in the works for quite some time. There are plenty of further plans though – over the next few weeks there should be lots more activity… In the meantime, many thanks to Paul Fellows, who set up our original site and devoted a huge amount of time to it; as well as to those of you who helped out with this new one – particularly Jo Meldner and Kat Hooper.

By the way, the old site hasn’t completely vanished off the face of the earth – you can still access it from http://old.rucavers.co.uk

So, here’s to the next 8 years!

Patrick Hathway
Webmaster

We, at the RUCC headquarters, are very proud to present our ever-growing stupidity archive! Here you can find all manner of silly things from the past, present, and future of the club – recorded here for posterity.

There’s undoubtedly some deep inner meaning behind the stuff here, but we’re yet to find it. It would probably deeply disturb us if we did…

Anyway, we welcome stupidity in all its forms, so if you have any bright ideas for this section, please let the webmaster know.

By the way, you can see even more stupid stuff on our old website – eventually it will all find its way here.

Enjoy!

They say that in war the first casualty is the truth. In the sport of caving, it’s always your pants.

We’ve all been in situations where your pants go ‘missing’, but usually you never get to see them again. However, if you’re a caver you actively hope to never see them again. Not any more.

As a service to Reading University Caving Club rucavers.co.uk now hopes to reunite you with those smalls that you thought had gone for good. In a recent clear out of the hut we had to resort to employing special Underwear Decommisioning experts to very carefully go through the hut and render harmless all the unwanted keks that you thought you would never see again.

The thing is, we don’t know who the owners are. So we thought we’d run an exciting new competion – NAME THOSE PANTS! If your pants are shown below, own up in the comments below them, and be presented with a gift you’ll always remember!

Better still, identify someone else’s pants and earn eternal glory within the club, as well as the everlasting hatred of the unfortunate soul who owned them…

This service is brought to by rucavers.co.uk. Note that other caving clubs don’t offer this level of service (and believe me I’ve checked). In the future we also hope to expand to enable people to reclaim even more items that they wished they’d managed to hide better…

So without further ado (cue rustling of pants):

Who would wear a pair of pants like these? Do you like paisley? Or are these ‘less than best’ pants that were scarificed for the good of caving?

Status: Surprisingly (?), these pants haven’t been claimed yet.

Ah, the classic Primark ‘Essential’ gentleman pants. A pant cheaper than a pint, and not lasting all that much longer. Were these purchased especially for caving or are you always this cheap?

Status: Unclaimed at present… Are they yours? Don’t be shy…

Whose pants are these? Looks to me as if they have some life in them yet. Note the cutaway panels for extra ventilation. And what exactly happened down the cave to get them like this? We want to know!

Status: Claimed by Jon W. Apparently they were damaged “from balloon wrestling at CHECC”, by “a crowd of rowdy half naked men in a tent in the middle of yorkshire at 1am”. Don’t ask…