- Cumbrian Ring book now published
- Reprint of Essential Sources in Cave Science
- Cave Studies Booklets
- Council Election for 2016
- Meetings Dates for 2016
- Volunteer needed to man BCRA stand at ES 2016
- Membership Fees for 2016
- Other news in brief
- New publication - BCRA Annual Review
Phil Murphy’s book, Exploring the Limestone Landscapes of the Cumbrian Ring (Cave Studies Series #20), has now been published, and can be ordered at http://bcra.org.uk/bookshop/order.html, price £5 plus postage, with a 20% discount to BCRA members. This is a revision of the pre-publication draft that was issued at our field meeting back in April.
Reprint of Essential Sources in Cave Science
This booklet (Cave Studies Series #16) was first published in 2006 as an A4-sized booklet. We have now re-printed it in a smaller 'trade paperback' format with, as they say 'minor revisions'. It can be ordered at http://bcra.org.uk/bookshop/order.html?show=cs, price £5 plus postage, with a 20% discount to BCRA members. It is also available as a free download, for BCRA members. (Non members can purchase a login ID for £8/month).
Cave Studies Booklets
We have revised the price of our Cave Studies booklets and started the process of putting some of them online. Most of the earlier booklets are now priced at just £3.00. Numbers 16 to 18 in the series (Essential Sources in Cave Science, Grotte Casteret and Eli Simpson & the BCA) are available as free downloads to BCRA members, and the printed versions are £5.00. See http://bcra.org.uk/bookshop/order.html?show=cs The A5 booklets are now £3.00 plus postage.
Council Election for 2016
- Welcoming Andy Farrant as a trustee
- Welcoming Dave Lowe as President for 2016-2018
- Thanking Dave Judson for his lengthy and valuable service
Meetings Dates for 2016
Public Meetings...
- 14-15 May 2016. BCRA Field Meeting including flood pulse tests at Malham Cove
- June 4-5 2016. BCA AGM and party weekend
- 13-20 August 2016. EuroSpeleo 2016, incl. field meeting to Giggleswick Scar
- Please note: Hidden Earth 2016 is replaced by Eurospeleo 2016. Hidden Earth will return in 2017.
- 22 October 2016. BCRA Cave Science Symposium and BCRA AGM at Oxford
- 23 October 2016. BCRA field meeting to Cotswolds gull caves
- Meeting #165: 28 Feb 2016
- Meeting #166: 26 June 2016
- Meeting #167: 9 October 2016
We (fairly urgently; fairly desperately) need to find someone who is prepared 'be in charge' regarding the BCRA stand at ES 2016 next August. You wont need to man the stand all by yourself, but you will be responsible for co-ordinating your chosen team of helpers.
Membership Fees for 2016
BCA has reduced by £10 the component of its fees that relates to Direct Individual Membership. This is because none of the publications - newsletter, handbook, Speleology - are now provided on paper. This, of course, means that your BCRA membership fee is reduced accordingly. The new fees for 2016 are at http://bcra.org.uk/fees and, in summary are..
£44 for cavers (Includes Cave & Karst Science on paper) £33 for non-cavers and overseas cavers £10 discount, if you do not wish to receive C&KS on paper. £11 total fee for for UK-based undergraduate students
Other news in brief
See this forum, or the recently issued paper newsletter http://bcra.org.uk/news for further details.
- Back-issues of Speleology now online
- Speleology no longer published. As mentioned previously, BCRA Council has decided to cease to produce Speleology because of the difficulty of doing this using largely volunteer, part-time effort. BCRA will now start to investigate how BCRA’s needs could be met in other ways - see note below on 'BCRA Annual Review'
- Cave & Karst Science: Charlie Self’s Layman’s Summaries are now all available online. The C&KS contents listing pages include links to the Summaries
- £3000 donation to GPF. BCRA is pleased to announce that it has approved the donation of £3000 from the surplus of Hidden Earth 2014 to the Ghar Parau Foundation
- Job Vacancies for Publicity Manager, E-book Project Manager, Workshop ‘Initiators’
- Subterranean Biology: Graham Proudlove has placed the Hazelton Database on the BCA archive server
As reported recently, BCRA has ceased to publish Speleology magazine. Instead, Council has decided to replace it with a new publication, to be called the 'BCRA Annual Review'. This will be edited by Dave Lowe (who edits Cave & Karst Science). The first issue will be published in the third quarter of NEXT year, 2016. The Review will be published online as a free download, and will also be available on paper, for a fee, using a print-on-demand process. The thought behind this is that BCRA needs a medium for reporting its activities that can be referenced in papers and articles, as this cannot be achieved in an ephemeral newsletter. By adopting the format of C&KS for the Annual Review we think we can achieve this without the 'overhead' that a publication such as Speleology requires. Precisely what the content will be is still open to discussion and will depend, to a large extent, on what is contributed. As a minimum it will include field meeting reports, officers’ annual reports (currently not produced) and a copy of our annual 'Report and Accounts' to the Charity Commission. The first issue will clear the backlog of meetings reports from the last couple of years.