The British Caving Association

How do I get information on Sally's Rift?

What is a Gull cave?

I have a reference to an UBSS report

Self C.A. 1995 The relationship between the gull cave Sally's Rift and the development of the River Avon east of Bath UBSS proceedings Vol 20 (2) pp 91 - 108

How can I get a copy of this report?

Does this document its location?

Does it contain a survey? It will save me some time.

I searched the UBSS web site and found abstracts for the mentioned reference and another earlier article..

I am about to order the proceedings from UBSS.. contacting UBSs librarian..

Also the abstracts give me some slight understanding of what a gull cave is! The UBSS abstracts have aroused my curiosityabout the whole area.

Wierd term though..

Seems to be is a "mass movement cave" involving some geological faulting or slippage ..

Still don't know what a gull structure is, but given that caves are often created on lines of weaknesses created by faults (e.g swildons) .. I am a little perplexed by the distinction..

hmm As you can see a very slight understanding..

Any cave gurus out there? Who can write plain English.
Cave science articles do not count.

IIRC gull caves or gull fissures are lizzens, or lissens and equate geologically with unfilled neptunian dykes, created by localised mass movement/fracturing. Although as I have no academic geological background other than A-level geomorphology it would be very handy to have a geologist's input on this one. I also believe gull caves or fissures are generally too confined to be termed proper caves.

Canda@CSCC wrote:I also believe gull caves or fissures are generally too confined to be termed proper caves.

Depends on what you mean by "proper caves"

Gulls are mass movement caves formed when massively bedded, jointed rocks effectively slide on thinner weaker beds of clay or similar. The resulting fissures are normally covered with incompetent beds or even just soil and grass, but, as they are underground they are caves, although not necessarily karstic.
Some gulls eg. Portland, Bath, etc. are formed in Limestone, so apart from the tectonic part of the cave there are also solutional parts as well, further complicating the issue.

Hope this helps.

A "proper cave" is something akin to GG, OFD, Peak Cavern, Otter Hole or Swildon's Cavern. Although I can see where this thread is going and I realise I made an error by using a divisive expression! Apologies offered.

BTW I forgot you were a geologist, Les!

Thanks Les

For an understandable explanation and yes you surprised me.

respect

Dave

Dave

The simplest thing to do is read Charlie's papers from UBSS Proc. he does give a good account of what gull caves are in one of them. We have published a couple of papers on Sally's & Charlie & Tony Boycott have written a complete description of all the gull caves in the Cotswolds. parts 1 & 2 have been published & part 3 will be published later this year.

Glad to see that the searchable index to Proceedings (including abstracts) is proving its worth. Visitors to the website www.ubss.org.uk will see that we are steadily increasing the "serious useful content" bits. We have just made the Irish Caves Database fully searchable for one thing. Other additions and improvements are in the pipeline.

Yes Graham

The searchable references plus abstracts are great.

One slight surprise was that Google did not find them..and I only found them when I persisted and tried searching on the UBSS site itself.

Perhaps because no one yet references them from another web page(including the BCA).. although someone more web-savvy then me might
know how to make them available..

I did tell your librarian about the issue..

How about scanning in the articles and making them available online.. sheet feed scanners are quite cheap these days..

DaveGrosvenor wrote:Yes Graham
How about scanning in the articles and making them available online.. sheet feed scanners are quite cheap these days..

And I have access to one!

However, while we still publish on paper (and there are many cogent reasons for doing this) I'll want to cover the costs by selling off back issues.

Eventually, out of print stuff will probably be made available this way - but who, then will pay for our web hosting?

BCA Web Services will do you a good deal

Thank you, but I doubt that it would be that much better than the one we have now. It certainly wouldn't be free.