Cambridge University Caving Club Publications

This area of the site is intended to contain everything published by or about CUCC, since its formation in 1949. This should include all editions of the club journal, latterly known as "Cambridge Underground", as well as reports of CUCC expeditions published elsewhere. This will include details of the club's explorations in the UK, exploratory expeditions to Norway, Greece, Cyprus, Cyrenaica and Ireland, plus many other places, as well as various thought-provoking articles and historical material. Below is a table of links to the contents pages of all issues of Cambridge Underground. All the articles therein can also be accessed through an author index, which also covers articles published elsewhere. An Alphabetical index (by region and by names of caves) is fairly complete and a subject index is in preparation but is currently just a place-holder page.

The Club's Austria expeditions are well documented in a separate part of the site, but where this includes material published on paper, there are full links from this area. We hoped that this material would be complete on the site (and maybe on a special celebratory CD-ROM) in time for the club's fiftieth anniversary in April 1999. However, work to make it possible for multiple people to update the site without undoing each others' work led to something of a hiatus, which we hope is now coming to an end.

Below is the most comprehensive list we have so far of CUCC's "quality" publications (ie. Journals, rather than single-sheet newsletters), mainly provided courtesy of Dave Gibson. The links are to the contents page of each journal the webmaster has got hold of. More will be added over time, with links to those articles on the site. So far the Journals for 1973-1996 are complete, along with most of the 1971 and 1972 editions. Expedition reports are complete from all the journals 1977-present, together with a number of "Classic" articles indexed below, after this main list.

Cambridge Underground

• Volume 1
  • CUCC Newsletter No. 1 February 1962
  • CUCC Journal No. 2 April 1965
  • CUCC Journal No. 3 October 1967
  • CUCC Journal No. 4 March 1969
  • CUCC Journal No. 5 April 1970
• Volume 2
  • CUCC Journal Volume 2 No. 1 1971
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 2 1972
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 3 1973
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 4 1974
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 5 1975
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 6 1976
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 7 1977
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 8 1978
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 9 1979
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 2 No. 10 1980
• Volume 3
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 1 1981
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 2 1982
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 3 1983
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 4 1984
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 5 1985
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 6 1986/7
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 7 1988
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 8 * 1989
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 9 1990
  • Cambridge Underground Volume 3 No. 10 1991
• Volume numbering was declared "quaint but obsolete" here, (but we know that this is volume 4, don't we:-) and publication rate dropped to every second year (or so)
  • Cambridge Underground 1992
  • Cambridge Underground 1994
  • Cambridge Underground 1996
  • Cambridge Underground Vol. 4 no. 4, 1999

A few "Occasional Publications" of one sort or another have been (or will be) produced:

• Official Report (of the 1961 Expedition to Glomfjord, Norway), 17pp, 1962
• CUCC 50th Anniversary Publication, 1999-ish

* Footnote1 : The cover of CU 1989 (Vol. 3 no. 8) actually says Vol. 3 no. 12

* Footnote 2: This is a little behind schedule and may well eventually appear as a 60th anniversary publication.

Some classic articles

• Lime Crime: Dudley and Stephens go Potholding (Andrew Nichols, CU 1971)- in much the same way that "The Ascent of Rum Doodle" depends for its humour on the many accounts of Himalayan mountaineering in the era of Tilman and Shipton, the first part of this article will be more amusing if you have read Dave Brook's account of the exploration of Black Shiver Pot in the ULSA Explorations Journal. The latter part of the article really did come from the law library.
• Getting Tight in Cambridge (Jont Leach, CU 1972)
  When reading this amusing account of open-cast caving activities, one should bear in mind that 1972 was before the advent of Real Ale ...
• Tackle and Technique: Recent Ideas in Caving (Nick Reckert, CU 1972)
  An interesting insight into what was considered "leading edge" in the early seventies when most folk wore wetsuits and SRT was considered unsuited to caving in the UK.
• On Visiting New Caves (Clive Westlake, CU 1972)
  Perhaps as relevant to CUCC today as it was at the time.
• Ten Years Under The Table (or "How I learnt to forget caves and enjoy caving", Jont Leach, CU 1973)
• A Major Discovery (Nick Reckert, 1973) With a character called "Norbert" (to protect his anonymity) to force Yorkshire's most severe entrance canal to reach the Chapel-le-Dale Master Cave ... or not ?
• The Psychology of Cave Diving (Rob Shackleton, CU 1974)
  Essential reading for anyone remotely contemplating taking up this most challenging aspect of Speleology.
• Norb in Wonderpot (Richard Lindop, CU 1975)
• In Praise of Fat Men (Jont Leach, CU 1975)
  A convincingly argued piece whose thesis is that fat cavers are considerably harder than their skinnier counterparts.

Some club history

• Early Years of the CUCC (Brian Heys, CU 1989)
  A look back to the start of the club in 1949 and some of the new cave found in the first few years.
• A History of the Club: 1949 to 1969 (Pete Bowler, CU 1970)
  A narrative account of the club's first two decades, largely based on minutes books and later log books.
• CUCC in the Pyrenees, 1971-5 (Nick Reckert, "in press", 1999)
  An executive summary of CUCC's involvement in the exploration of the Pierre St. Martin, with previously unpublished details of how we actually came to be there.

Now the amount of material represents a substantial proportion of all CUCC have ever published, we're expecting to provide proper indices by cave or place name and by subject area. There is already a full author index and a moderately complete index by region and cave name ... watch this space !