Reading University Caving Club

anticipation of great things…

Welcome For New Cavers!
Welcome For New Cavers!

Welcome For New Cavers!

Interested in joining us? Want to find out more? Why not visit our stall at the Fresher’s Fayre on Thursday 21st September (from 11am to 4pm)? Or come along to our presentation on Monday 25th September at 6:30pm in Palmer Building Room G04.

On the evening of Monday 2nd October [TBC], we hope to run a taster trip to the Reading Chalk Mines. On this trip, you can try a little underground exploration and see what it’s like. The club will also go on some longer weekend trips this term – see our trips page for details. Every week or two, we get together at a local pub, and we will also be arranging a number of other entertaining social events this term.

Follow us on Instagram or Join our Facebook group if you would like to stay up to date on all our planned events. Or if you have any questions about our club, get in touch with Charles – our president.

We look forward to meeting you!

Patrick Announcements, Events No Comments
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Start as you mean to go on!

Great news!

This Sunday, we took 12 newcomers to the Mendips to try out a spot of caving. One of them, Kenny, had a Go-Pro camera and chest harness mount for it, and this totally badass video is the result!

I think it really captures the ‘Nature’s Jungle-Gym’ aspect of the sport. Anyway, of the 9 newcomers who went down Swildon’s hole, only one didn’t make it to the sump, and she got pretty damn close! The group that went down GB had a great time too, apparently.

So, a successful day-trip, and a successful start to the term! If you’re thinking, ‘Good Heavens, that looks like a jolly good romp! What a pity I missed these wonderful people at the Freshers Fayre!’, then don’t fret; you can still join us in our exploring activities and social shenanigans. Just put your email address on our Mailing List, or Join us on Facebook, or pop along to The College Arms on a Monday night after 9pm! We’ve got plenty of weekend trips coming up; here’s a small selection:

Oct 12-14th – First weekend trip to South Wales – staying at the South Wales Caving Club (We’re sharing with Aberystwyth University, which should be a laugh!) (Also we’ve been given lots of FREE BEER which was left over from Amanda’s wedding!)

Oct 19-21st – Second weekend trip to South Wales – staying at Whitewalls, on Llangattock.
Nov 2-4th – Priddy fireworks trip – staying at the Cerberus. We’ll make an evening jaunt (in fancy-dress) to the annual fireworks display on Priddy Green, which is held in aid of the Mendip Cave Rescue Organisation.
Anyway, I need to stop writing blog posts and catch a train home, so hopefully we’ll see you soon!
Christopher Announcements, General, Photos, Trips No Comments
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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!
Christopher Announcements, Events, General, Socials, Trips No Comments
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Finally!

IMG_2436-P50

Welcome, to all you denizens of the Internet, and especially any soon-to-be students of the University of Reading!

After many moons of delay, faff and excuses, I am at long last uploading the enormous backlog of photos from all our trips this year. At the moment it looks like we haven’t done anything since October, but I assure you we’ve been very busy indeed, just a little lazy in the post-production stages!

Anyway, check back this afternoon to see what we’ve been up to all year.

Christopher

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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!

Patrick Announcements, Socials, Trips No Comments
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Welcome to Our New and Improved Website

RU Cavers logo

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

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And another term begins…

Cavers_group_shot_1 Welcome back everyone – we’ve a term full of amazing caving, socials and all kinds of other things to look forwards to!

This term, a trip to Wales and 2 trips to Yorkshire are planned; details of these are on the trips page… SRT training for the Yorkshire trips begins on Tuesday, so it’s a good idea to turn up to the pub tonight if you’re interested!

In other news, I’ve FINALLY got round to adding the photos from the Mendips trip last term – view them here.

Many thanks to Lucy, Jon W, and J for taking all these pictures – there are quite a few, so I hope you all enjoy them!

Photos from CHECC and the socials last term will also hopefully appear here shortly.

P.S. Newer cavers will notice the homepage is a bit different this term – the website is now in ‘standard’ mode, and will continue to be until around the end of summer.

Patrick General No Comments
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