Caving grew in popularity in the 1950s and 60s through participation in caving clubs. There are about 4,000 active cavers in the UK and nearly twenty times that number who attend instructor-led courses each year in caves around the country. In addition, many tourists visit show caves such as Wookey Hole Caves.
Cave diving is a niche technical area of caving practised in the UK since the 1930s. This skill enables cavers to explore water-filled cave passages in Britain, and around the world. In recent years, British cave divers have been called on internationally for cave rescues and recoveries.
Before modern caving developed, John Beaumont wrote detailed descriptions of some Mendip caves in 1681,[1] and in 1780 John Hutton described some of the caves around Ingleborough, which was to popularise caves to those seeking the picturesque.[2][3]
Interest in caving grew rapidly in the 1950s and 60s. Neil Moss was the victim of a famous caving accident after descending a narrow unexplored shaft in Peak Cavern in Derbyshire 1959. This period saw the formation of more clubs, regional councils to manage cave access, and the National Association of Caving in 1968. The 7th International Congress of Speleology of the International Union of Speleology (UIS) was held in the UK in 1977 at which British speleological achievements were presented and discussed.[8][11]Gordon Warwick became a vice president of the UIS, taking a major role at its international conferences.
British cave divers continued to pioneer explorations at Wookey Hole in the Mendips, Keld Head in the Yorkshire Dales and Pozo Azul in Spain. Innovations in techniques and equipment in the 1970s, 1980s and onwards improved safety and made more advanced exploration possible. In 1979, watched by 20 million television viewers, The Underground Eiger showed a world record-breaking cave dive of 6,000 ft (1,800 m) made by Geoff Yeadon and Oliver Statham. Two years later, Martyn Farr established a new world record for underwater cave penetration in the Bahamas.[12]
Because of the long and active history of caving, almost every entrance with surface access in Britain has been fully explored, so the majority of new discoveries take place after months and sometimes years of cave digging. Notable recent discoveries since 1995 include Titan, the largest shaft in Britain, and Ogof Draenen, the second-longest cave in Britain. Fulfilling an idea first proposed in 1968, the Three Counties System, which was first explored in 1898, was proven to be interconnected in 2010–11.
In 2018, there were up to 4,000 regular cavers in the UK and about 70,000 people who went on instructor-led courses into caves in the Yorkshire Dales.[13]
The British Caving Association is the national body for caving in the United Kingdom. There are a number of regional caving organisations in the UK such as the Cambrian Caving Council. Many caving clubs exist, which often run expeditions abroad, for example to particular territories such as Matienzo or Picos.
The British Cave Rescue Council (BCRC) was established in 1967 and is the coordinating body for fifteen cave rescue organisations in the British Isles, including the Cave Rescue Organisation, the Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association and the Irish Cave Rescue Organisation.[15][16] These organisations have around 1,000 volunteer rescuers available with specialised equipment to provide regional police forces with the capabilities to conduct rescues in caves and disused mines in the British Isles. The rescuers are all experienced cavers who have undertaken training in underground rescue techniques and many have additional specialist skills such as casualty care or cave diving.[17]
Many clubs hold extensive libraries recording decades of exploration in terms of surveys and logbooks, as well as newsletters, reports and books detailing the history of cave explorations both within their nearby areas and abroad on expeditions. Other information is in the form of extensive personal archives that have been bequeathed to the community.
Some areas also have extensive databases of diagrams and other survey documents for particular areas.[28] The following libraries are open to club members, some of which are also open to non-members.
British Caving Library – funded by the British Caving Association (BCA) and currently employing a part-time librarian[29]
Cave surveys have historically been kept by the person who drew them (with the measurement data often lost), or deposited in a club library. They are seldom published (except in reduced form in a guidebook) and can be difficult to obtain because there is no central catalogue listing who holds what.
In about 2012 a central repository for survey data and drawn-up surveys was set up by the BCA and now contains a significant amount of UK (and some foreign, from expeditions) survey data.[31]
There are also projects that are attempting to assemble online maps and catalogues from repositories of surveys by overlaying them on satellite imagery:
cavemaps.org – Yorkshire-based
BDCC Mendip map – Bracknell District Caving Club map
Guidebooks
The most widely referenced guidebooks for caving the UK are:
Northern Caves in three volumes, most recent complete edition published 1998, new volume for The Three Counties System and the North-West published 2017
Mendip Underground – A Caver's Guide, published 2013
Caves of the Peak District, published December 2010
The Caves of South Wales, published 1995
Selected Caves of Britain and Ireland, published 1997
^"UK cavers prompt diplomatic row". BBC. 2004-03-25. Retrieved 2019-04-27. Two divers from the Cave Rescue Organisation – one of whom has extensive experience of the Cuetzalan cave system – flew to Mexico from London on Tuesday morning.
^Kremer, William (2016-05-09). "The cave divers who went back for their friends". Retrieved 2019-04-27. Rick Stanton world-renowned for his rescue and recovery work in caves ... done a recovery there in 2006 ... received a request for help from the Norwegian police, and two weeks later, he and two other British divers, John Volanthen and Jason Mallinson, clambered into Steinugleflaget
^"British divers Richard Stanton and John Volanthen at the heart of the Thai cave rescue". The Times. 4 July 2018. Retrieved 22 July 2018. Rick Stanton, 57, and John Volanthen, 47, who are among the best rescue divers in the world, have taken part in similar operations in Ireland, Norway and France. Mr Stanton once helped to save British cavers who had been trapped underground in Mexico for more than a week. "They are two of the best," said Martin Grass, chairman of the Cave Diving Group
