Chairmans Report

Greetings Cavers and welcome to yet another Pelobates.                                                                                         

Over the past year there seems to have been something of an upturn in the fortunes of the club. In part this has been due to an influx of new members bringing in new blood. I would like to extend a special welcome to all of our recent joiners.

Whilst the club doesn't record the number of trips undertaken it appears that there has been more underground activity recently than there has been for a few years. This has been largely based in South Wales but there has also been significant member activity in North Wales, Mendip and Devon, with a growing nucleus of primarily family cavers based in Devon. To aid this west country contingent, I am now holding a small supply of ladders and lifelines at my house near Cullompton. These are available for use by any club members caving in the vicinity.

If anyone is organising a `private' caving trip, please do consider throwing it open to the wider membership. It is very easy to get stale when if all of our caving is based in South Wales.

2016 presents a great opportunity for the club to spread it's wings further afield. There will be no Hidden Earth this year, instead the UK is hosting Euro Speleo. This runs from 13-20 August in Yorkshire. Most major caves will be rigged for the week and a number of members have already booked. If you haven't already checked it out then please see www.eurospeleo.uk .

On a more sombre note it is with great sadness that I report the recent death of Colin Grange. Colin was one of the founding members of the club and also one of the trustees for Godre Pentre. He was heavily involved in the original building work when the cottage was first fitted out, particularly with the heating and plumbing. He will be missed and we extend our condolences to his widow Jean and to the rest of his family.

-- Eric Downer

Croydon Caving Club 52nd AGM

The 52nd Annual General Meeting of Croydon Caving Club will be held at 19:45 on Saturday 27th February 2016 in Ystradfellte Village Hall, Ystradfellte, CF44 9JE, South Wales.

The full text of the AGM notice, along with the agenda for the meeting, last year's minutes and the current club constitution can be found here: http://www.croydoncavingclub.org.uk/minutes

-- James Thorne

Cottage Wardens Report

2015 was another successful year for the cottage.                                                                            

Several improvement projects were completed, the main one was to re roof the rear of the cottage.  The work was undertaken by some of the members (and others).

The current proposal for 2016 is that we complete the front roofing, replace the water pipe and consider shed replacement options.

-- Chris Crowley

Equipment

We have purchased 44M of Cordes Courant Equirial 10mm.  Also, our thanks to Ray Walker who has donated an oversuit plus waterproofs and tacklesacks to the club.  These have already been used on a trip in OFD.

-- Neil Montgomery

Website Report

Site visitors continue to steadily climb, now between 4000 and 6000 visitors per month.  We get links from Try-caving, BCRA Caving Library, UK Caving and Adit Now, as well as more bizzare sites like Ascension Earth, David Icke and Pizza-Tycoon.

Common searches include Merstham Mines,  Matienzo, Sex life of the Belgians, Captain Blood's hideout and Porth yr Ogof

We've had quite a few problems with our Gradwell hosting and Google groups, over the past year, so i'm looking to move to a virtual host which will be faster and means we can run our own mailing list.

-- Pete