About · Introduction · The Team · Voladores

Anthony William Revell
The Bagshawe Cavern Heir.
It's been mentioned that caving sometimes is in the blood. In Tony's case this couldn't be more obvious, as during our interview he spent about half an hour telling us why he was "almost born in a cave". In 1902 his great grandfather bought a property that had an old lead mine. Located in Bardwell Derbyshire, through time the mine, originally a cave, became a Victorian show cave: The Bagshawe Cavern.

Later on, his grandfather, Bill Revell, and his uncle, Rolland, started exploring the mine and pushing it further and further. In 1977 his father took over the cave, and he was employed full-time exhibiting the cave. Tony's mother, brother and sister went into the cave systematically. The whole Revell family seemed to enjoy the fact of having a cave on their land. When Tony was twelve he met some cave-divers and then he joined the "Orpheus Caving Club". When he was 15 he achieved his first push, when he discovered a new area in Bagshawe Cavern.

The Gouffre Berger was Tony's objective when he was 16, and he went on the first expedition organized by his caving association. After this he decided to join the TSG (Technical Spelological Group), with whom he had the possibility of following lots of expeditions to France, where he spent most of his time. His caving career had taken off.

By the time he was 18, he was involved in about 150 caving trips a year, and suddenly opportunity knocked at the door. Through the CSCA (Combined Services Caving Association) he got the chance to go to the first Cuetzalan Expedition, therefore his first expedition overseas. So he spent December and January 1994 caving for the first time in Cuetzalan.

Finally at the surface, Tony, who has spent almost all the expedition underground or at the Bivi Cave, reckons that the 94 expedition was a great experience, and that part of the strategy on how to "attack the Alpazat Cave" came directly from that former expedition. "For instance the idea of having a bivi cave, or using a phone to communicate in case of thunder. "

The part Tony enjoys most of caving is exploring. He's actually one of the "pushers" of this expedition, and the one who got really close to connecting the San Andres and Alpazat systems.

"I think I really was walking down San Andres for a while, just following the darught, and suddenly I arrived at this maze of passages, and the landscape was a little different. I was going up and down, and I continued like that for almost 500m. I am sure at some point I was on the overlap of both systems, so in theory we managed to make the connection, but of course we need the survey to prove it."

We got really curious, and asked Tony how he manages to find his way back while exploring. "It's easy," he answers in a light tone, "you just follow your footprints back or eventually, in difficult places, you can also draw some arrows to guide you back."

For Tony, caving is a matter of boldness, curiosity and guts, so you "can manage to reach that part where no one has been ever before." Finally he grins, and says: "Caves can be like women: you find a passage, but there's a boulder stopping you to go through, but you can see that there is more way to go. She is teasing you. Then you dig your way out, and it can lead you to success, or to another blocked passage. Eventually the attempt of trying to unblock the cave with explosives can kill you. Just like women." He adds seriously.

After listening to this we can only respect these bold explorers, who risk so much in order to find new passages. Tony is the very best from a family with deep caving traditions, and we're very glad to have him around.