A SHORT HISTORY OF NORWICH CAVING & CLIMBING CLUB

For some time there had been an increasing feeling of alienation between some members of AFRC and the ‘establishment’. We were active members, went on most of the Club trips, attended the meetings, even though they were held in a pub with ‘no proper beer’, The Lamb, now called something or other & Parrot. But there were a number of these members who enjoyed climbing & caving & ‘proper beer’. So after the twice monthly meeting in the Lamb we would nip down to the Golden Star for a proper drink and to discuss the things that interested us, and caving & climbing.

When AFRC had been founded, it was set up to be a vehicle for outdoor activities for those in this region. Roger Mears, who at that time lived in Norwich, suggested climbing as a possibility. Later of course he went on to much greater things. He said he would help encourage this activity. Gary Monaghan, who had some experience of caving, offered to set up a caving group.

Climbers & cavers tend, on average, to be an anarchic, and, when alcohol is involved, a social bunch of people, which did not always go down well with the more staid members of AFRC who tended to come to meetings, listen to the talk and go home. Whereas, the climbers and cavers wanted more beer and for it to be proper beer and to meet up at other times than club evenings in order to partake of – more beer! Oh, and arrange to go on independent meets, go to the railway bridge at Taverham (and later at Ashwelthorpe) to practice, there being only one very poor climbing wall in Norwich, at UEA.

And so it was that after the meeting we retired to Gary’s and Sarah’s house and the decision was taken, by the dozen or so people gathered there, to start our own club. NCCC was born! This was followed shortly afterwards by an inaugural meeting at the Brown Derby pub (later the Pottergate Tavern). Of the current members of the Club, only Malcolm Batley, Mike Skipper, Dave Sergeant, John & Wendy Tidder remain. Though contact is retained with several other original members. Dave Sergeant, a long time caver, helped us by letting us have ladders, ropes and lamps on long term loan, for which we later awarded him Lifetime Membership. Though we never see him these days, it should be remembered that caving would never have got off the ground without his generous help.

Being a group of anarchists, the formation of a club was not easy. We did not really want officers or committee or indoor meetings, (except to drink). But we soon found that if we wanted to have a bank account etc., we had to have these things. Tony Turner was our first Chairman, who promptly got a job in Bradford after a few months so that he could be nearer to the hills and caves. Having got there, he hardly did any more, typical! John Fellows was our next Chairman and remained in office for several years and was an enthusiastic climber, caver and imbiber, remembered by some as the brewer of powerful beer and wine. The wine ‘Gibber Juice’ was very simply a home brew kit from Boots the Chemist but, treated in John’s own manner, produced a harmless little table wine which had the effect of producing torpor and an inability to articulate anything sensible after only seven or eight glasses. He used to brew it from kit to bottle in less than a week and it was said to mature in the glass as you drank it.

We also did some climbing and caving sometimes. Actually quite a lot! By a quirk of the education system, Sandra Muckult came all the way from Lancaster to go to Keswick College for Teacher training. Already a caver, at Red Rose Cave and Pothole Club, she met up with us and arranged for a group of cavers to go to their HQ at Bull Pot Farm. That first trip was a nightmare. Arriving at some ungodly late hour after problems finding the place, we slept on the wet floor of the changing room as we were unwilling to wake any members who might be there in the bedrooms. What wimps we were! Any of their members would have taken great delight in waking us up.

This was the beginning of a long relationship with RRCPC during which several of our members became RRCPC members and we spent many good weekends caving in the Dales both with them and independently. Wendy is still a member of RRCPC as are one or two of our old members. Those who have been to Bull Pot Farm will have both fond and grim memories of the place from the good times of Fireworks and working parties, to getting involved with rescues from the farm.

In the early days of the Club, transport was always a problem. The stupidity of running a caving and climbing club in a geologically challenged place like Norfolk, meant that reliable transport was essential, and few of us had such a luxury. So for many years most Club trips were by hired minibus. Returning from one minibus trip to the Peak, I remember Gary Monaghan commenting that if the price of hire was going to work out at more than the £6 we had each paid for six of us in a twelve seat bus, then he would have to think twice about going on them.

This was OK, as it certainly added to the social aspects of the Club. It took a lot of organising to find enough people to go on a fixed date, then hire the bus and finally get people to turn up. This lead, on occasions, to some disagreements when, a trip fixed, the bus hired, the weather looked like being crap. You still had to turn out because the bus had to be paid for regardless. I remember one occasion when I had hired the bus with only just enough people to make it viable, and the weather was rubbish. So about three people decided that they had very important other things to do. I phoned Mal at about six on the evening, with the bus outside waiting to go and only about five paying travellers. Mal was there in about half an hour flat, packed and ready, just to make the whole weekend work. That sort of spirit was common in the Club, a socially inspired spirit, which enabled things to happen for the benefit of everyone. A spirit I sometimes feel has declined to an extent, with the availability of more personal transport, among other things. But I won’t digress into my theories of the socio-political aspects of running a club.

The first Club organised trip abroad for the Club was in 1982. Eleven of us packed ourselves into a twelve-seater minibus, which had a roof rack to take the excessive amount of gear that we took with us. The trip was a combined caving and climbing trip to France. Ailefroid, in the Dauphiné Alps was the initial destination where we all stayed for a few days. Then one group went off to the Vercour, caving for a week or so returning to Ailfroide to meet up for the return trip. Several other people arrived by car independently during the trip including a car full of Red Rose members, The Gang of Four, who a few members will remember and who wreaked havoc in their own special, car wrecking, wine swilling way. When we left the camp site, in spite of taking returnable wine bottles back for the deposit, we left a heap of bottles about four feet high and eight feet in diameter. A good time was had by all – as far as I can remember!

Over the years, many similar trips have gone abroad either by minibus (with fewer passengers, we learned our lesson about fitting 11 bodies plus excess baggage into twelve seats), or by car. In fact I would say that seldom has a year passed without at least one continental trip by Club members.

It was on one weekend trip to the Dales in 1984 that a minibus, with a number of members on board, crashed near Dereham on the way out, and one of the party, John Bradbury, was thrown out and died later from head injuries. None of the others was seriously hurt though greatly shocked. Many of the earlier members of the Club will have good memories of John who was always great company whether on a climbing route or in the pub. A memorial oak tree was planted in the Plantation, at the foot of Stanage Edge with a placque made for us by Bill, the Warden of North Lees campsite, and the tree is visited by some of us whenever we are there.

Over the years we have had a few members who have gone on to greater things as a result, at least in part, of becoming NCCC members. One of the first perhaps, was Rob Franklin. I can remember a young rather wan looking lad of about 15 asking if we could teach him to climb as he was going on an International Scout expedition to Mount Kenya. He later took up both climbing and caving and gained an interest in photography, especially in caves. He later worked for a year with Sid Perou, a maker of caving and climbing films, then took a job with the BBC who trained him as a diver. He now works as freelance cameraman doing work on subjects as varied as caving, climbing, diving and microlighting, and we have seen his name on the credits of many television films.

Another was Sean who started caving with us and when he left Norwich for a teaching post in London, soon became Chairman of Chelsea Speleological Society, a respected caving club with activities especially in South Wales. A visit to the bottom of the Gouffre Berger, at one time the world’s deepest cave came while he was with Chelsea. Sean was well known for his glasses which always seemed to have a safety pin holding them together and his track suit trousers and threadbare red duvet are remembered as so different to the next person who started caving with us. John Wilkinson a most unlikely looking member for NCCC In a very smart suit and business-like glasses, he came to the Golden Star one evening and drank "Coke". We had to have a special meeting to see if we could allow such a person to become a member, but his money was as good as anyone else’s so we let him in. He too, later, became a Chelsea Chairman and was quite prominent in cave exploration in S.Wales for several years after he left us.

Every year since our inception, I believe, we have had a Christmas Dinner. These started at a restaurant in Tombland where one member, Ollie, worked. We soon had 50 people attending these events and had to move to bigger premises. This took us to a variety of places, none entirely satisfactory for our rather boisterous Dinners, so we started doing our own catering for the annual event at the British Telecom Social Club until they closed it down. Not because of us! This set the trend though, and we continued the self-catering style at the St Andrews Tavern, our Thursday meeting place for many years. This has worked very well and Ollie, Helen and Robin must be thanked for their work in preparing these meals at various times over the years. Thanks going, of course, to the many people who have helped them, peeling small mountains of spuds, and Brussels sprouts and in one or two of the years, plucking numbers of chickens and/or pheasants. Most recently, the 1998 Dinner was a Christmas Take-away at The King’s Arms, our current Thursday meeting place.

I should mention at this point, the close connection we have had with Colin Keatley of originally the White Lion, our meeting place for many years until he sold it. Then The Fat Cat our current Monday evening meet. Also to his brother in law John Craft and Nicki first of all at St Andrews Tavern and now at The King’s Arms our regular Thursday meet. They have all been so very helpful in the running of NCCC by firstly supplying fine beers and welcoming pubs to meet in and then for their enabling us to have our Christmas Dinners by the kind use of their kitchen facilities. We have recently returned some of this gratitude by going into the dray business, supplying Heskett Newmarket ales to both pubs.

Of course, over the years, we have had a great number of trips to many places at home and abroad and caves and climbs too numerous to list have been visited. Members who have started with us have become very experienced climbers and cavers.

Over the last 21 years, and as Chairman for nine of them, I have seen the Club have its ups and downs, with numbers varying wildly. Sometimes the climbing side has flourished and caving has languished. Then somebody turns up who has enthusiasm for one or the other sport (or both) and things change around. Membership has gone up and down but we are still here pursuing an unlikely field of activity for this part of the world and the sight of an NCCC sweatshirt has amused people in many hilly or holey parts of the country. And I for one hope it does so for many years to come.