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Update for 2009 Although most of the site at caves.org.uk/excs, and the rest of the page you are reading now, has not been updated for many years, this is one update you should know about... CUCC / EXCS 60th Anniversary
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The rest of this page has not been updated since 2002
The CUCC/EXCS web site can now mostly be found at cucc.survex.com
Scroll down for: CUCC/EXCS Web site info | Origins of EXCS | CUCC 50th Anniversary dinner (September 99) | EXCS Newsletter - will it ever appear?
The CUCC website was, until recently, split over two servers maintained by different people. However, it should now be all accessible via www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/cucc/ and the Cambridge Alumni Groups pages; both of which should take you to cucc.survex.com. There you can find:
Cambridge University Caving Club was formed as an undergraduate club in 1949. In those days, it tended to consist of experienced cavers who had strong affiliations with other caving clubs. However, by 1968 CUCC had more-or-less taken on its modern form where the intake is mainly novices who are trained up to be the experienced cavers of the third year.
The perennial problem of a university club with a high turnover of members is finding sufficient experienced cavers. CUCC draws on its post-graduate members to provide this long-term continuity; and the habit of offering new undergraduates "life" membership for a little less than three times the cost of a single year has led to many graduates continuing to cave with the club. In 1968, a number of cavers came up to Jesus college, and this nucleus with a few others eventually formed the informal "Northern Branch" of CUCC; these post-graduate members came on CUCC trips and helped a good deal with novice training.
Realising that using CUCC tackle for their own trips was a bit of an imposition, a subset of Northern Branch formed themselves into Ex-CS, the Ex-Cambridge Speleologists (though they may have also referred to themselves as Northern Branch) and bought their own tackle. Northern Branch or EXCS formalised its membership in 1975 and held its first annual dinner in 1977, though it was still only a small group of the general northern members. In 1979, former CUCC President Mike Perryman, who was completing a PhD at Cambridge, and Tony Malcolm, a graduate at Fitzwilliam, were the main Cambridge protagonists in 'opening up' EXCS to all graduate members of CUCC. A constitution was drawn up in December 1979 and Andrew Nichols started producing newsletters. Tony became secretary and Simon Farrow was treasurer. The first 'modern' EXCS dinner was at the Hill Inn in July 1980 when that year's graduates (Andy Connolly, Nicky Davies, David Gibson, Simon Kellett) were welcomed, not with open arms but in the cross-fire of a food throwing contest.
EXCS members made the occasional caving trip (the club is CNCC affiliated), had many foreign holidays, cycling, walking in the Lake District and Scotland, some cave explorations in the dales and annual dinners at the rate of several per year. This has been the pattern since, though the emphasis has always been that we are an informal club and it is the members who must do the organising, not a committee.
Following the CUCC annual dinner in 1987, David Gibson started checking the addresses of all CUCC graduate members, primarily so that CUCC could be given an up-to-date address list. This resulted in EXCS representing most of the active CUCC graduates with about 80 members, and in a large turnout to CUCC's 40th anniversary dinner in 1989.
In the mid-1990s EXCS has gradually changed into a much less formal grouping (not that we were ever a formal club). There are several reasons for this - for example, the prevalence of SRT means that there is no longer a need for the club to keep caving tackle. In 1996 David asked Olly Betts if he could set up an Internet mailing list for EXCS members. (see URL listed above). This has resulted in a much more 'last-minute' informal organisation to the club; newsletters have all but ceased production, and we have been enjoying a protracted 'subscriptions holiday'. This is unfortunate in some ways - but if anyone wants to start a regular newsletter production, they are more than welcome!
There are around 70 people on the e-mailing list, many of whom meet regularly for caving, dinners and other social events. Many more EXCS members await the infrequent postal newsletters, and still manage to put in an appearance at the annual dinners. Although we issue paper news-letters only rarely, we do try to issue one before a club dinner.
For links to EXCS pages on the Web, see above.
David Gibson, June 99
based on earlier text of Feb 89,
and snippets from Andy Waddington
As many of you now know, CUCC celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1999. By a stroke of co-incidence, it was the 20th anniversary (or 25th or 30th depending on how you count it) of the formal setting-up of EXCS - the graduate 'old lags' division of CUCC, and also the 75th anniversary of the 'Troglodytes' (the early Cambridge cavers). We organised a re-union dinner to which everyone who has ever been a member of CUCC/EXCS, and their guests, was invited. The pre-dinner newsletter has been removed from the server.
15/02/02. Where's the newsletter?. I expect I'll get around to doing one sometime - we're due another dinner soon. But the reality is that EXCS/CUCC members use the e-mailing list for communications, and nobody seems to have the time or inclination to produce a paper newsletter.
12/12/00. Where's the newsletter?. Oh, I forgot about it. I do intend to sort out the address list soon.
9/2/00. A delayed 'post-dinner' newsletter will be issued by the end of February 2000. This will include a diary of coming events, an up-to-date address list and a full report of the dinner; messages from all the old-lags we managed to contact, and so on
18/10/99. 50th Anniversary dinner: We're planning an afternoon buffet, slide show and SRT competition as well as the dinner, with some informal speeches afterwards in which several key figures from the club will give their impressions of caving over the years. On Sunday morning we plan a slide show.
Look at the list of people who have paid, of you want to arrange transport, child-minding etc.
Look at the list of members to see who, out of all the old members, has said they are interested in the dinner (but this list is not fully up to date).
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This page, http://www.caves.org.uk/excs/index.html was last modified on Fri, 15 Feb 2002 00:00:00 +0000