Welcome to CUCC's archive pages ! For up to the minute information on club activities both in and out of Cambridge, see the CUCC (student) website. The site you are now browsing is the much more extensive archive site maintained mainly by ExCS (Ex-Cambridge Speleologists). We aim to archive their information from year to year, but inevitably the student site is just that bit more current than this one. However, this site contains just about everything there is to know about CUCC over the last half century and includes several main areas, each with their own set of indices to serve the needs of different users. Expeditions Norway (1956-63) Cyrenaica (Libya, 1959) Greece (1962) Cyprus (1969) Pyrenees (1971-1975) (index under development) Austria (1976-1999) Intro Main index (by topic) Cave Index (by number) Area index (leads to cave indices by area) Chronology (index by year) (under development) Published reports (indexed by year) Publications Cambridge Underground (index by issue) Author Index (covers publications elsewhere too) Subject Index (not yet built) Location/Cave index (not yet built) Club Info (including ExCS) Info by year 1949-1999 (under development) Committee members 1949-1999 Newsletters 1996-1999 Meets lists 1996-1999 Ex-Cambridge Speleologists

The site is large for a caving club site (over 1100 pages plus many images, over 25000 internal links) but we hope that the various indices added in 1999 will make it easier to find what you need and not miss out on anything we've worked to make available. There are a number of icons which appear on many of the pages to aid navigation:

For a full explanation, click the roadsign/info button. The "CUCC" button will always bring you back to this page.

We try hard to support any web browser, and not to be unfriendly to users with slow links, small screens or text-only browsers. There is a "Use any browser" page, with links to the campaign at anybrowser.org

Website Contact:
 mailbox name "WebMaster" on site "pennine.demon.co.uk"
Note that this address really is for stuff about the web site - for people to contact in Cambridge (about caving meets, meetings, etc.), see the current CUCC info pages:

CUCC current info

The main CUCC site (black page background) is run by the club committee and has up-to-date info on the club, meets, committee, newsletters, etc. These URLs were correct at the time the Archive site CD was built (and indeed, will be kept up to date on the archive website itself).

CUCC Home Page
Newcomer's Guide to CUCC
A pictorial introduction to caving with CUCC
Current meets list
CUCC Contacts

CUCC Archive

This is a brief description of the site content, all of which can be read through the links cited above. If you are new to CUCC, perhaps the place to start is with a brief description of the club as it is today, with a bit of the history of how we came to be so.

Expeditions

Back in the mists of time, the club staged expeditions to Norway (Rana, S. Svartisen 1956; Rana 1957, Rana, Pikhaugene, Glomvatn 1958); Cyrenaica (Libya, 1959), Norway again (Glomfjord in 1961), The Pindus Mountains of Greece in 1962. There were other trips, perhaps not qualifying as "expeditions", to Norway again (Rana in 1963), Cyprus (1969) and Czechoslovakia (1969). We have some of the write-ups of these trips (follow the links), but others are still outstanding. David Heap a member of the 1961 Norway trips, and Trevor Faulkner, also a CUCC member, both continued with expeditions to Norway with other groups for many years.

In the late sixties, there was some exploratory activity in Ireland, but all we have now from those trips is the club song, which had its genesis in August 1968 and was first published in the club journal for 1970. It has twice been printed since, with more verses being added.

In the early seventies, the club visited the Pierre St. Martin area for several years, achieving some new exploration of its own and being involved in explorations by French groups. Material relating to these trips is now being put on the site in the form of the Cambridge Underground journal articles. A review article has been written by Nick Reckert for the club's 50th Anniversary Special edition of CU (not yet in print).

Northern Branch first visited Austria in 1976 after becoming a little disillusioned with some of the politics surrounding expeditions to the PSM. This first trip was something of a reccy, but 1977 saw increased numbers, definite objectives and the first undergraduates from CUCC. From 1978, the annual expedition has become largely a CUCC undergraduate-organised affair, but with many ExCS still taking part. The bulk of these pages describe our work in Austria which is still continuing.

Cambridge Underground

The Journal of CUCC and ExCS is not now published every year, which should further improve its renowned quality. It contains many articles about the club and its activities as well as the expedition reports reproduced on the web site and various pieces of a technical or amusing nature. Quite a number of the recent editions are still in print and available through the CUCC Contacts.

CUCC had its fiftieth anniversary in April 1999, and we hope to be republishing web versions of all past publications, along with previously unpublished historical material. Much of this stuff is already on the web site, particularly material relating the UK exploration, expedition caving and thought-provoking articles still relevant today.

About the site: Cambridge Underground for 1996 has an article describing how this web site came to be created. I hope to be adding an update to this article to the site shortly.