The Darkness Beckons
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The Darkness Beckons
''The Darkness Beckons'' () is the definitive book on the history of UK cave diving. It was written by Martyn Farr, a major figure in UK diving at a time when many of the original participants were still alive and available for interview. Awards On 10 May 2018 Martyn Farr was advised that the 3rd edition of 'The Darkness Beckons' (published 3 July 2017) had been shortlisted for the 2018 Sports Book Awards in the Illustrated Book of the Year category.Rosemary E Lun'The Darkness Beckons' makes the 2018 Sports Book Awards shortlistX-Ray Magazine See also * Cave Diving Group * Caving in the United Kingdom Recreational caving in the United Kingdom dates back to the mid-19th century. The four major caving areas of the United Kingdom are North Yorkshire, South Wales, Derbyshire, and the Mendips. Minor areas include Devon, North Wales, and the Scottish ... References Underwater diving books Caving mass media {{sport-book-stub ...
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Book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is '' codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a ...
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ...
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Cave Diving
Cave-diving is underwater diving in water-filled caves. It may be done as an extreme sport, a way of exploring flooded caves for scientific investigation, or for the search for and recovery of divers or, as in the 2018 Thai cave rescue, other cave users. The equipment used varies depending on the circumstances, and ranges from breath hold to surface supplied, but almost all cave-diving is done using scuba equipment, often in specialised configurations with redundancies such as sidemount or backmounted twinset. Recreational cave-diving is generally considered to be a type of technical diving due to the lack of a free surface during large parts of the dive, and often involves planned decompression stops. A distinction is made by recreational diver training agencies between cave-diving and cavern-diving, where cavern diving is deemed to be diving in those parts of a cave where the exit to open water can be seen by natural light. An arbitrary distance limit to the open water s ...
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Martyn Farr
Martyn Farr (born Crickhowell, Wales, March 3, 1951) is a leading exploratory cave diver and caver, known for his record-breaking cave dives and the exploration of many miles of previously undiscovered underground passages (e.g. in Ogof y Daren Cilau and Noon's Hole). As an author and photographer he has written many books on the subject of cave diving history and techniques and caving locations. Life and career Farr began caving in 1961 and cave diving in 1971, and within 10 years had established a world record for underwater cave penetration in the Bahamas. He is noted within the cave diving community for his explorations in Wookey Hole in 1977 and 1982, and for completing the first traverse of Llangattock Mountain in Wales in 1986, the execution of which was a televised media event, being the longest and deepest caving through trip in the British Isles. In 1978, Farr discovered also the Pollatoomary cave in the Partry Mountains of the Republic of Ireland. In 2008, his student ...
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Cave Diving Group
The Cave Diving Group (CDG) is a United Kingdom-based diver training organisation specialising in cave diving. The CDG was founded in 1946 by Graham Balcombe, making it the world's oldest continuing diving club. Graham Balcombe and Jack Sheppard pioneered cave diving in the late 1930s, notably at Wookey Hole in Somerset. Passages through caves are often blocked by a submerged section, or sump. Cavers in many countries have tried to pass these barriers in a variety of ways; using the simple "free dive" with a lungful of air or by utilising the available diving technology of the day. Early history of cave diving in the UK Two Post Office engineers, (Francis) Graham Balcombe and (John Arthur) "Jack" Sheppard, who were among the leading climbers and cavers of their era, combined their energies into solving the problem of passing the Swildon's sump. Their pioneering dive on 17 February 1934 used a home-made respirator, designed by Balcombe, that incorporated part of a ladi ...
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Caving In The United Kingdom
Recreational caving in the United Kingdom dates back to the mid-19th century. The four major caving areas of the United Kingdom are North Yorkshire, South Wales, Derbyshire, and the Mendips. Minor areas include Devon, North Wales, and the Scottish Highlands. Caving grew in popularity in the 1950s and 60s through participation in caving clubs. There are about 4,000 active cavers in the UK and nearly twenty times that number who attend instructor-led courses each year in caves around the country. In addition, many tourists visit show caves such as Wookey Hole Caves. Cave diving is a niche technical area of caving practised in the UK since the 1930s. This skill enables cavers to explore water-filled cave passages in Britain, and around the world. In recent years, British cave divers have been called on internationally for cave rescues and recoveries. History Before modern caving developed, John Beaumont wrote detailed descriptions of some Mendip caves in 1681, and in 1780 Jo ...
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