Hidden Earth 2024

Hidden Earth is always one of my favourite events of the caving calendar. Not only do you get to catch up with many caving friends and buy new shiny kit from the sellers in the trade hall, but you also get to go virtual caving and find out about all the fantastic exploration going on both in the UK and around the world by UK cavers. It's a great mix of socialising and serious talks about new discoveries and expeditions. You can then create your 'caving bucket list' for at least the next year from all of these. Or perhaps, that's just me.

This year's event was held at the Pavilion in Llangollen. It was a first for this venue and I think it worked very well overall. Camping was very close to the lecture theatres and only a short walk outside of the town itself. 

Hidden Earth campers outside the Pavilion 

The venue was adjacent to a canal, which several of our members made use to paddleboard on in their down time and multiple students jumped into on the Saturday evening. There was also a steam train nearby and cavers could be seen taking a ride on this on their free afternoons. The only downside was the lack of a caver-run bar, which meant prices were slightly higher than expected without the usual range of ales, but this didn't seem to stop people using it, as the bar was busy whenever I was there. All in all, a great spot and the weather wasn't as wet as it was forecasted to be, so a win-win situation. 

Hidden Earth began on Friday evening for me with setting up the South Wales Caving Club stand in the Trade Hall. It was the first time we'd done this since Covid, so a first in around 5 years. Surprisingly, we managed to bring all the display boards and remember how to put them together. The banners and posters all fitted up well enough and we had club merchandise with us to sell. The stand didn't look too shabby by the time we'd finished setting it up, so thanks to all who helped with that! We made a respectable £258 from the sale of merchandise by the end of the weekend and worked out how to use the Sum Up app on our phones for collecting payments and sending them directly to the club account. 

Jane in charge of the club display stand

But that was not all. We have some very talented members at SWCC and multiple members entered the various salons and competitions across the weekend with several going on to to win prizes. 

Keith Edwards won the Fraser Simpson award for innovation in video  Return to Aquamole

Roo Walters won the BCRA Arthur Butcher award for outstanding contribution to cave surveying with his 3D laser scanning projects.

Sarah Garlick won the art salon with her fantastic hand felted bat

Sarah with her creation

Hang in there Nora!

Kai Trusson, Ellie Davies and Jo White were part of the team involved in creating the rigging topo quilted tapestry, which was highly commended. This was an original idea by Kai Trusson and took 7 months with over 650 hours in total to put it together (77 different rigging topos in total). It is 2.30m tall and 1.50m wide. 22 cavers from 20 different caving clubs around the UK were involved in its creation.

Close up of the quilt. Photo by Sarah Garlick 

Ellie, Kai and friends with the quilt underground in Big Chamber Near the Entrance, OFD.
Photo by Clive Westlake 

Martyn Farr won best digital print (photo salon projection class) with his photo of Xe Bang Fai cave, Laos. 

Cerys Williams won the best junior digital print and the second prize as well

Shadow Puppets in OFD. 1st prize Young Photographer (Digital). Cerys Williams

Mushrooms in Porth yr Ogof. Young Photographer 2nd prize. Cerys Williams.

We also had excellent entries in to the photo salon from Helen Nightingale

Helen and her 5 print set

Cave Pearls in Nenthead by Helen

Liam Wright also contributed some fantastic images to both the digital salon and the printed salon.

Liam and his 5 photo set

Gaping Gill, Main Chamber. One of Liam's digital entries in to the photo salon.

Digital entry by Cerys Williams 

Another of Cerys Willam's digital entries

We also had speakers at Hidden Earth. Graham Christian and Gareth Edwards gave a talk entitled How wet is Wales really. Andrew Macleod and Sophie Hodson also spoke about the Dachstein Expedition.

It was a caving extravaganza and it was excellent to see SWCC represented so well.