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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.
The weather wasn't first class, but the atmosphere and talks were. For those of you yet to visit it, Hidden Earth is an annual conference on caving. Whilst this might sound boring, it isn't in the least. The talks range from expedition reports, to regional round-ups and videos alongside a caver-run bar, stomp and a caving and SRT obstacle course. In short, it means you can cave around the world from your seat in the auditorium and gain a good idea of where you would like to visit. Fantastic! You also get to meet up with cavers from all over the UK. Hidden Earth is always ably organised by Les and Wendy Williams along with a whole host of helpers from Mendip and other caving clubs across the UK. The conference venue alternates between being in the North and the South. This year it was the turn of the South and Hidden Earth was in Churchill.
We camped on the sports field of the school. It is always interesting to wake up on Saturday morning in a sea of tents in Mendip and then head through a throng of people to listen to a talk on a distant corner of the world such as Mexico, Mulu, the Philippines, Meghalaya or Australia. It's great. I love it.
The campsite at Churchill Academy
SWCC was particularly well-represented there this year. There were plenty of us attending to listen to talks and meet up with friends (nice to see Barbara and Alan at their first HE). But there were also many members with a more deep involvement who helped with the organisation, gave talks, or entered the competitions.
The trade and exhibition hall.
Antonia and Claire on the SWCC club stand
Jo White gave a talk on the Yorkshire Dales Cave Monitoring Project to an attentive audience.
Jo giving her talk to a packed room
We also had plenty of competition entrants. Arwen had 2 entries in the cartoon competition and received a merit for one of those.
Arwen with her winning cartoon - she was awarded a merit.
Jess Burkey won the cartoon competition with her poster on the joys of being a cave model.
Jess' winning entry in the cartoon competition
Jo entered the photo competition for the first time with several photos, including a portfolio of Dachstein ones. It was the photo of a delicate ice formation which won her the prize for best newcomer.
Jo's entries in to the photo competition; including her winning ice formation one
And then there was the video salon which was co-ordinated by Andy and Antonia Freem. This year's winning entry was Keith Edwards' Opening AV presentation, which you can watch here:
Not forgetting Jo White's excellent performance in the SRT events in the SpeleoOlympics. Where she was the fastest lady on the SRT obstacle course and also earned the prize for the best woman in the SRT competitions. Well done everyone!
Thank you to all the Hidden Earth team who organised the event. Your efforts are greatly appreciated.
With tough competition from many excellent photos it was pleasing to see Mark Burkey, Jo White and Duncan Hornby win awards across various categories in the Hidden Earth 2017 photo competitions, here they are!
A special mention goes to Mark Burkey who was awarded the prestigious Giles Barker award, which is the 2nd year in a row this has been won by the SWCC!
It was another excellent year for SWCC at Hidden Earth. It began very well for us with Andy and Antonia Freem providing the opening AV entitled The Recipe for Good Caving. This went down very well with all the conference delegates and created a good atmosphere for the rest of the weekend. Andy and Antonia also showed two more videos at the conference - The Geology of OFD and The Journey to Circus Maximus (Ogof Draenen). Both were well received.
Andy and Antonia's AV presentation about to play to a full house.
Our club stand was ably co-ordinated by Chloe Francis, Andy and Antonia Freem, Harvey Lomas and Pete Hobson. So successful was this, that it won the prize for the best club stand at the end of the weekend gaining SWCC an additional 30m of rope as a prize.
Chloe, Claire, Pete, Andy and Antonia on the stand
Club merchandise for the stand was arranged by Jo and Chloe. There was considerable disappointment when the BRAND NEW OFD 'Huffs' were not delivered on time and were stuck at the UPS depot in Avonmouth around 45 minutes drive away. Undeterred by this, Chloe saved the day by deciding to drive there and collect them in person.
The Huffs arrive thanks to Chloe!
It was a good job she did so as these proved to be a definite hit with
cavers at the conference and around 25 were sold during the time we were
there! So, SWCC members, take note. These huffs are now limited
editions, so you had better hurry and buy yours before they are gone (available in the SWCC merchandise cupboard at £9.00 each).
The huffs - the original wearable cave survey - are available in either Top Entrance or Cwm Dwr design.
The new colour survey also went down a storm at the conference and more than 30 copies were sold. The stand was continually full of cavers coming up close to the survey to point out where they had been and try and work out how to get to where they wanted to go next (usually Northern Lights, so perhaps that's a new route idea for the next batch of Huffs). The full colour new surveys are now also available at SWCC (priced at £15). The survey was the result of the determined hard work of Brian Clipstone and Andy and Dave Dobson. It won the Best Displayed Survey competition at Hidden Earth last year. It had pride of place on the stand this year and survey sales went incredibly well across the weekend. Martin Hoff also had a distinction for his entries in to the Photo Salon.
Two of our youngest members were also present at the weekend, Harri Brown and Sebastian Wire. Both are a little over one year old and, believe it or not, have not actually met yet, as they managed to miss each other by moments on the weekend.
Lizzy and Sebastian and Adrian and Harri looking happy and contented at Hidden Earth.
SWCC meal at the Hunter's
Then there were the many successes of our four joint Dudley/SWCC members Mark and Jess Burkey, Keith Edwards and Brendan Marris. The photo on the poster for Hidden Earth and on the front of the programme was by Brendan Marris. They also won the t-shirt design competition.
Brendan's cover photo of the Missile Silo in Illusion Pot and Keith at the SWCC stand modelling the winning Dudley t-shirt design.
Even more photographic success followed for them. Keith won the video salon competition with this entry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxu780mKtkw Mark Burkey won the Premier Trophy for the best panel of 5 photos. Mark also won the Best Photo in Show and the Fun Shot. Brendan also won the best Colour Print.
Chloe admiring entries in the photographic competition
Mark's winning shot of Garland's Pot and his winning fun shot (captioned 'If you push hard enough, I'm sure you'll get through!)
To top it all off, Claire's conference badge was plucked out in the lucky dip and she won free entry to Hidden Earth 2017.
So, although the following sign could be spotted in the exhibition hall on the Sunday (it may have had something to do with a certain rugby match result...) SWCC certainly proved that Welsh caves, and those who enjoy visiting them, are a central part of the modern British caving scene.
Sign spotted after the Welsh rugby victory!
SWCC attendees: Nicky Bailey, Adrian Brown, Kate Brown, Mark Burkey, Jess Burkey, Bill Buxton, John Cliffe, Gareth Davies, Steff Davies, Keith Edwards, Chloe Francis, Andy Freem, Antonia Freem, Andy Harp, Jennie Hill, Pete Hobson, Martin Hoff, Duncan Hornby, Harvey Lomas, Brendan Marris, Miri Pihlaja, Allan Richardson, Margaret Richardson, John Roe, Claire Vivian, Lizzy Wire.
