The four major caving areas of the United Kingdom are in North Yorkshire, South Wales, Derbyshire, and Mendips. Minor areas include Devon, North Wales, and Grampian.
Contents
One of the oldest established clubs, Yorkshire Ramblers' Club, was founded in 1892.
Probably the first cave diving explorations in the world took place in Wookey Hole Caves in the 1930s using standard diving dress.
Due to the long and active history of caving, almost every entrance with surface access has been fully explored, so the majority of new discoveries take place underground after months and sometimes years of cave digging.
Notable recent discoveries since 1995 include Titan, the largest shaft in Britain, and Ogof Draenen, the second longest cave in Britain.
Many clubs run expeditions abroad, often to particular territories such as Matienzo or Picos.
Periodicals
Libraries
The following libraries are open to club members, some of which are also open to non-members.
Surveys
Cave surveys have historically been kept by the person who drew them (with the measurement data often lost), or deposited in a club library. They are seldom published (except in reduced form in a guidebook) and can be difficult to obtain because there is no central catalogue listing who holds what.
In about 2012 a central repository for survey data and drawn-up surveys was set up by the BCA and now contains a significant amount of UK (and some foreign, from expeditions) survey data. There are also projects which are attempting to assemble on-line maps and catalogues from repositories of surveys by overlaying them on satellite imagery:
Guidebooks
The most widely referenced guidebooks for caving the UK are: