Oxford University Cave Club

See also the Short Version.

Congratulations on volunteering to co-ordinate a meet. You are a Caving Star. This is the stuff that needs doing - feel free to delegate any or all of it, just make sure someone responsible is doing it.

A week / 10 days before the meet

• Actively encourage people to go on the weekend. Start by sending an email to oucc-all-members@maillist.ox.ac.uk and oucc-freshers@maillist.ox.ac.uk . Also give the weekend a mention on the Facebook group and/or WhatsApp.
• Get people to tell you they're coming and their dietary requirements- you need to plan food as well as transport.
• Where possible, get people to pay in advance on the University Stores (there is a Miscellaneous Trip Payments link which is useful for people not travelling from Oxford). For new members you may need to insist on this, we don't know yet if they're the type to come on the weekend then disappear without paying anything. People who are driving and dislike the University Stores can pay for petrol and have the balance settled afterwards instead. However it does help to keep things organised and prevent the weekend getting overbooked if everyone goes through the Stores and then gets the full amount of expenses refunded afterwards. If people are being awkward, some other payment methods are suggested at the bottom of the contacts page .
• If you know in advance that the weekend will be busy e.g. it's a Freshers' trip in Michaelmas term, make sure a minibus is booked at this point. Talk to the Meets Sec: they may have booked one already.
• Get the driver(s) and transport sorted out as soon as you can - see next section.. Do not just assume drivers will appear! We have sometimes had to cancel trips because this vital element was left to too late and we found we had no drivers. Only a few people are qualified to drive a minibus under the University scheme; and commercial rental places  usually have quite stringent licence type and age requirements. A few members have their own cars.

Transport

Depending on the number of people and number of car owners/van drivers, choose from 3 options as outlined below:

1. Use members' cars. Suggest the drivers note how much they spend on petrol so they can reclaim it afterwards.
2. Rent a minibus or MPV from Hotson's Eurodrive, the company the University has a deal with. Drivers need to have passed the University's minibus driving test - several club members now have. You will need to book through the Sports Fed website, not directly with Hotson's. If you can't access the transport booking page, get a current student to help you. Note that a 9 seater MPV is very useful, it generally has enough boot space that all 9 seats can be used. A 7 seater MPV is much less useful, it's just a big car with 2 seats in the boot that will probably need to be removed to fit any caving kit in. On a weekend particularly likely to be busy, a Hotson's minibus may have been pre-booked by the meets sec, find out and if you're not using it, you need to cancel them a.s.a.p. You should do this through Sports Fed but it might be a good idea to contact Hotson's directly as well. (Hotson's officially require 48 hours' notice for cancellations, but to avoid hassles give them as much notice as you possibly can.)
   Note that the pick-up and return place for Eurodrive is at Horspath Industrial Estate, 36 Pony Rd, Oxford OX4 2RD: a fair old way from Oxford centre if you're on a bike!
3. Hire a vehicle outside the red card scheme - this is more expensive than the other two options, but it's a workable solution if you have people who can drive bigger vehicles than they own but don't have a red card. Daily Info has some possibly useful info on car hire places. The earlier you book, the more likely you are to get (a) a car (b) a cheap car - ringing the day before has sometimes worked in the past, but often it doesn't, so leave time. For hire cars the driver almost invariably needs to be over 21 (in fact almost invariably needs to be over 23, but some companies have stricter requirements than others).

When hiring a vehicle, either with or without the red card scheme, check that the driver can get to the hire place before it closes. Some of the hire places have particularly unhelpful opening hours, so if the driver is working, they may need to pick up the vehicle in their lunch break.

The week before a meet

• As soon as you have a rough idea of who's going from Oxford, try to plan transport for Oxford people (see above). People coming from elsewhere tend to sort themselves out. This is usually the hardest part of organising the weekend, so get on with it when you can.
• Think about leaders. Is the ratio of novices to experienced cavers OK? If it's an SRT weekend, do you have enough people who can rig and/or supervise people who need supervision with their SRT? If not, try sending individual emails to experienced cavers to see if they can be persuaded to join in. It might also be worth doing this if visiting a cave with complex routefinding and no-one who knows the way, but in this case printing off and laminating some surveys and route descriptions might be sufficient.
• More encouragement for people to come on the weekend. Vocal advertisement on the Wednesday night and a few emails/phone calls to individual members tends to do the trick. (Some people actually need poking to go caving, apparently. I know it's pathetic, but c'est la vie.)
• If new people are on the weekend, make sure they have filled in the personal details form.
• Send an email telling people coming on the weekend when & where to meet for transport from Oxford (often 6pm Friday at the hut, but whatever) and anything else they need to know. If new or newish people are on the weekend, include a list of what they need to bring.
• Delegate food-buying, if you're not doing it yourself (see below).
• Find out from your incredibly friendly local Meets Sec what the arrangements for accommodation keys are.
• Also get any permits from the Meets Sec. If you can remember to take them with you too, so much the better - you're one up on me :-)
• Note the postcode of the hut so people can find directions to it if they don't know where they're going.

Thursday / Friday

"Home Agent", Names and Personal Details:

Get copies of the personal details of all those coming on the trip. If you have access to the database, this is most easily done by cut&paste copying the details for each person coming on the trip into a seperate spreadsheet. If you don't have access, ask the Secretary , Meets Sec or Treasurer to provide details of those signed up. These data are sensitive, and your records of them must be deleted asap after the trip is home and safe. If you find soemone hasn't submitted their details yet, chase them up.

It is a good idea to find a "Home Agent" - someone responsible, and who is an experienced caver, who is not coming on the trip ,who can act as a call-out if needed, and a point of contact if anything goes wrong. Steve Roberts is normally happy to do this, but if he is not available, find someone else trustworthy. Send the Home Agent the personal details info of those coming on the trip, and details of where you are staying, any vehicle registration numbers, caves likely to be done, and anything else they might find useful if the worst happens. Some details might need updating with them on Friday or Saturday.

Trip Registration with OUSF

Let the Meet Sec know and you or they must register the trip with Sports Fed. The procedure for doing this changes pretty often, see if you can find something suitable on the Sports Fed website. If not, email the OUSF Safety Officer, currently David White [david.white@sport.ox.ac.uk] giving the location and contact details for the trip together with the names of everyone going on the trip, with colleges for current students and next of kin details for people not at University. It is not expected that this name list be 100% accurate, a best effort will suffice. This is useful for the University in the event of an incident. David White prefers this information in a spreadsheet, ask for an empty spreadsheet from the Meets Sec if you don't have one already.

Buy Food.

First check the food box in the hut - use whatever you can from there, especially semi-perishables, before buying more stuff. The Hut Has Spices (and usually some marge, tea, coffee, sugar, cooking oil, pasta, often other stuff too). Club policy is normally to be relatively skinflintish on shared food (some of us don't have incomes, and people with money can treat themselves individually!) - so mainly go for Value brands etc. You can buy free range eggs though, chickens do not need to be abused in the name of caving. Also, rock-bottom price sausages can be pretty nasty, or so I'm told; so go up a grade?

You'll normally need 2 breakfasts, 1 evening meal, and choccy bars for caving.

Tips on what food to buy - ignore this if you know what you're doing

• Breakfast is English fried, i.e. toast / bacon / eggs / sausages / mushrooms / baked beans; it has to be big as has to power several hours caving with no lunch. I generally go with 2 sausages, 1.5 eggs, 1 hash brown, 1/3 tin of beans, 1/5 carton of orange juice per person per day, plus one slice of bacon per meat eater per day and lots of mushrooms. For veggie sausaages, the frozen ones are usually cheaper and just as good. There's about 15 hash browns per bag. I know 1.5 eggs sounds weird, but 1 is a bit stingy and 2 leads to lots left over. Generally round upwards unless the difference is very small, so we're tending towards too much food rather than too little. I find bread only tends to get eaten if there's not enough of the other stuff, I normally just get one loaf unless it's a really big weekend with ~20 people or something, then I get two (and still end up begging people to take bread home).
• Evening meal - "caver slop" (= pasta and a suitable mixture of vegetables and e.g tinned chickpeas, often including tinned tomatoes), or (better) use your imagination/recipe book. Making the main evening meal veggie saves hassle. Quantities are a bit harder to judge for dinner since it's not the same each time, but per person 100g of pasta/rice, 1/2 tin of beans/chickpeas if that's the main protein source, 1/3 box of passata, vegetables that look like a sensible amount (including at least 1/2 an onion per person, usually more like 1 per person) should work. For example, 1 onion, 1 pepper, 1 medium carrot, 1/3 of a courgette per person, but try not to make it the same every time. Plus a big block of cheese unless the dinner is supposed to be curry or something.
• Snacks: Also get a carton or 2 of milk for tea, some chocolate bars for caving (if there are vegans, Fry's chocolate or granola bars should work), and perhaps some cheap snacks to discourage eating the caving chocolate above ground- bourbon biscuits and satsumas or something of that nature.

Friday

Group gear - pick this up from the hut. Depending on what trips you're doing, you'll need a mixture of ropes / ladders / spreaders / wires / tapes / hangers / maillons / tackle bags. You always have too much, except when you think "we always have too much" and go minimalist - take lots!

Personal Gear: If any novices are coming, they'll need gear. Make sure each novice has a helmet with light, undersuit, oversuit, belt, wellies, SRT kit if applicable, and a bag to keep it in. There are even some club kneepads and wetsocks now. If there aren't enough SRT kits it may be possible to borrow some from club members. Also check that everyone has a sleeping bag; there are actually quite a lot of club sleeping bags now but they're no use if they stay in Oxford. Finally try to get across the point that they should keep track of their gear and look after it as if it was their own. Adding a bit of masking tape with their name on it to their kit bag might help. Pick up a gate key from Sports Fed so we can get back in on Sunday evening.

Personal details list: make sure it's up to date, that you take a copy with you in a form you can access even if there is no wifi or phone signal, and that the "Home Agent "has the current version.

On the weekend itself

• Make sure any trips with anyone with no caving experience get treated as special novice trips - i.e. there is a designated experienced "leader"; see "guidelines for novices on novice trips" and "guidelines for leaders on novice trips".
• Make sure any novices & inexperienced cavers get suitable (& good!) trips.
• Make sure each caving trip has call-out arrangements, and not just with other caving teams.
• Do a safety and conservation talk for those on their first trip.
• After caving, show novices where the drying room is and how to use a spin dryer.
• Cancel any call-outs.
• Make sure the accommodation is left very clean and tidy - **this is important**, keeps people sweet and will make sure we don't have any future hassles getting places to stay. Also apparently it is polite, or some similarly alien concept. Also make sure the keys go back to the right place when you leave.
• If the hut fees have not been paid upfront, pay them on the weekend.
• Remind people who have spent money on petrol, food, hut fees etc to email you and/or the treasurer with what they have spent so it can be reimbursed. If relevant, email the treasurer a summary of weekend finances. You can include info such as what you spent, who paid for the main costs of the weekend, whether anyone paid in a non-standard way, and whether there's anything else about finances that's unusual/ needs sorting out.

If there is an Incident or accident

• If something goes wrong (party overdue, road accident, whatever) let the Home Agent know,no  matter what time it is, and seek their advice.
• Either you or the Home agent  must contact the University Security Services on 01865 272944  - they are open 24/7.
• Keep the Home Agent and the Security Services informed as the situation progresses.
• After the trip returns, submit an incident report to the Sports Federation at https://oxforduni-remoteforms.info-exchange.com/Incident

If you can't contact your Home Agent: Ring 999, ask for Police and when the Police answer, get transferred if needed to the local force for your region and then ask them to alert Cave Rescue.

Useful phone numbers

Northern Dales
Bull Pot Farm phone: 015242 71837
Greenclose: unlucky - no phone!

Mendip
The Belfry phone: 01749 672126
MCG hut phone: 01761 462797
MNRC hut phone: 01761 241 609
Wessex hut phone: 01749 672310

Wales
SWCC hut phone: 01639 730613
WSG cottage phone: 01685 811080
Whitewalls phone: 01873 811510

Steve Roberts (OUCC President): 01865 432888; 07810 542598; steve.roberts@seh.ox.ac.uk

David White (Safety Officer, OU Sports Federation):: 01865 611478: 07780 693388: david.white@sport.ox.ac.uk

University Security Services:  01865 272944; ouss.administration@admin.ox.ac.uk. 

ENJOY!