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You are here » Home » societies » Sports Clubs » Fell Club » How Fell Works

How Fell Works

• Fell Site Redirect • Trips and Socials • How Fell Works • Miracle House • Links •

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Your insider's guide

Here's where you can find out more info on:

FAQs regarding trips (see also Trips and Socials)
Safety issues
Walkleading
Minibus driving
Submitting photos to the website
Fell's Union Council representation

If there's anything else you think it would be useful to have information about on the site then please e-mail Ruth so it can go up.

Trips - FAQs

This section has been included to address many of the questions people have about how decisions are made. If you have any further questions please contact the committee - we are a nice bunch and will try to help!

Why do some members seem to get on trips without signing up?

The only people who don’t sign up by procedure are the committee. This is for two reasons:

committee are essential to ensure the trip is run properly – forms, food, people, hut issues, gear, etc. require organisation before, DURING and after the trip. There are a lot of things to think about, so several committee members are needed to keep on top of things, esp. on the bigger trips! Any problems need to be dealt with by someone who is informed and responsible for making decisions for the group, and committee members need to be constantly on the lookout for the welfare of everyone on the trip. Running a trip is a very different experience to going away as a regular member! There are also a lot of safety issues – the old Union Safety Officer described Fell as potentially the most dangerous club in the Union. There are numerous safety procedures for trips required by the Union, and committee members provide a significant role working with walkleaders to make sure they are followed
running the club is considerably more complicated than it looks from the outside! Committee members dedicate a huge amount of time and effort to make sure trips run smoothly and deserve their place on the trips that they have organised (and yes, committee does pay to go too!).

Walkleaders are generally well-known to the committee as they are often the most enthusiastic members. If we know only four walkleaders can make a trip, and we need four walkleaders to run it, there’s no point in making them sign up as the trip can’t run without them anyway (the same with drivers).

Why is someone who signed up after me on the list going on the trip when I'm not?

This will either be because they are needed (see above), they are being assessed for future walkleading or most likely due to attempts to give everyone a fair chance to go on a trip. Deciding on the trip list is a difficult trade-off between who has made an effort to sign up early, who has made an effort to sign up for previous trips but only made the reserve list and who has already been on a lot of trips (or on hardly any/none). The committee DOES NOT, ever, prioritise people coming on trips through personal preference – we are trying hard to make it fair and keep people happy. If you have any questions about why you have or have not made it onto the trip list then please don’t grumble behind our backs! Drop one of the committee a line instead.

Why does the club have limited gear to lend - surely it should provide for everyone or we should all have to pay for gear?

Requests for essential gear nearly always come from novices who haven't done fell walking before (hence want to try it before forking out on gear) or international students who are limited by the amount of their own stuff they can bring to Norwich from home. By having a few spares we're reducing the likelihood of people being excluded from participating.

Safety Issues

"The BMC [British Mountaineering Council] recognises that climbing and mountaineering are activities with a danger of personal injury or death.

Participants in these activities should be aware of and accept these risks and be responsible for their own actions and involvement."

Fell Club does its best to ensure the safety of its members through use of Union-approved walkleaders, Union first aid training, minibus driver training and provision of survival bags, extra maps & compasses and emergency ropes on trips. We always provide easier walking options to cater for all levels of ability within our membership, and walkleaders give descriptions of their chosen routes (including an indication of difficulty) before we go out.

It is important that all of our members recognise that they are adults freely participating in a potentially dangerous sport. However, we do cater even for novices and it is very unlikely that you will experience any safety problems provided you choose to walk within your ability and take sensible safety precautions. More experienced members of the group, esp. the committee and your walkleaders, can help advise you on safety issues.

All of Fell's mountain activities are discussed with the Union Safety Officer Ian Welch. If you have any concerns about safety, please contact one of the committee .

Walk Leaders

When we go a-roaming in the mountains we rely on the trusty guidance of our walk leaders. Walk leaders are more experienced Fell members who have been approved to take out groups by the Union Safety Officer. This is normally done either on our annual Walkleader Training weekend or on trips when Union Safety Officer Ian can join us to look at potential new leaders in action.

We have two grades of walk leaders: A and B, with A leaders being the most competant group leaders. Each group that goes out walking needs have two leaders, one of whom must be an A.

If you're interested in being a walk leader please drop Tom a line.

Minibus Drivers

We need plenty of these in order to get us safely from A to B! If you're interested in driving for the Union you must be over 21 and have a clean driving licence which you've held for at least two years.

(Note this may not be the same as other minibus driving criteria you may have encountered because the Union is registered as a charity and so has different requirements.)

If you want to be a driver please let Tom or Joe know.

Photos

If you want to submit photos for the Fell photo pages, here's what to do...

Resize the photo so it's not huge, a size of 130KB is about right, be sensible people!
E-mail them to Ruth and I'll put them up (though please don't send a huge batch in one e-mail or it'll just crash my inbox!). Accompanying captions welcome.

You can also send compressed photo files if you know how to do this.

In theory you're supposed to be able to put photos up yourself, but in practice it just leaves little "x" boxes everywhere (and no photos!) so please e-mail.

Fell's Union Council Representation

Your Union Council rep in the autumn semester was Ruth Cole - see reports below. The position of Fell's Union Council Rep is currently vacant.

Union Council 18th October

Appointed Council Chair for the year and lots of people to represent students on many many university committees. Avant Garde Arts soc's constitution got approved.

Council passed a motion condemning the undemocratic manner in which the £25 Sports Association Membership Fee was introduced over the summer by the management committee (that's the Union Sabbatical (full-time) officers from last year). The new Exec were mandated to produce a report on how to make the Union more democratic over the summer for Council before Christmas.

A proposal to create an additional Part-time Officer (Ethical Issues Officer) was approved. Because this is a constitutional amendment it required a 2/3 majority vote to change, and will require approval by the University Council later in the year.

Very likely that there will be motions galore regarding the £25 SA fee at the next Union Council. Let me know if you have any views on this, or any other issues you'd like brought up!

Union Council 3rd November

Sorry I missed this, had an interview on the other side of the country! Basic gist from the minutes (if I've missed anything that you know about, please say!):

The £25 Sports Association Membership Fee was revoked and a working group set up to look into the funding problems that caused it in the first place. It's too late to change anything this year (you will still need to pay £25 to join clubs) but it means that the £25 fee to join clubs will be removed next year unless council approves a possible recommendation by the working group that it be reinstated.

A motion condemning the new multi-storey car park proposals was passed.

Union Council 24th November

A resolution was passed on Fairtrade Fortnight, increasing Union support for the weeks' events by broadening the remit of the current Fairtrade Steering Group.

A resolution was passed to allow the National Blood Service to use the LCR for blood donor sessions twice a year without danger of having the Union cancel their booking due to new events being put on instead (e.g. gig set-ups).

A resolution to go to NUS conference* on defending civil liberties resulted in fierce debate and a fair bit of political party swiping, which irritated council members so much that nearly as many people abstained from the vote as actually voted for it, despite it being approved (that's what it looked like from where I was sitting, anyway!). The motion basically criticised the government's proposals for dealing with terrorism on the basis that they were an infringement on civil liberties.

The meeting was adjourned part way through a discussion on whether the Concrete editor should become an elected position because several members left the meeting and we no longer had sufficient members left for a meeting (constitutional stuff).

*Motions to NUS conference are taken forward to be debated as to whether or not they will become national NUS policy.

Union Council Special Meeting 1st December

Must confess I missed this one, due to the meeting being called at very late notice and having shedloads of work. This is the gist from the minutes:

Two more resolutions were passed to go to NUS National Conference. One proposed that the NUS lobby to remove the "ultra vires" law which prevents Union spending on issues that don't directly affect students, e.g. non-student-specific campaigns. The second resolution was basically a continuation of support for anti-fees campaigning done by the NUS.

Union Council 8th December

This was the budget meeting - we had a look through the Union's finances and budget for the forthcoming year. It was noted that, although we have over £10 million turn-over each year, the Union's actual profit has not been sufficient to cover all costs and money borrowed at the moment. That basically means that we get a lot of money but we also spend a lot (on clubs/socs, advice centre, etc.) so we owe a fair bit and money's still pretty tight.

A resolution was passed condemning the First bus service for its poor service, with minor points of action.

A resolution was passed to revoke last year's clubs/socs representation motion. This means that clubs and socs will no longer have their budgets frozen if they do not provide a rep for Union Council. It was passed because forced representation and absence has caused meetings to collapse due to lack of % voting members present.

The night ended with a furious hour long debate about whether smoking should be banned throughout Union House - this motion was eventually rejected, despite recognition of the health benefits, due to potentially devestating financial implications for the Union and the services it provides students.

A call of "no confidence" in the council's chair was defeated.

Note: Due to a petition collected, the issue of whether the Concrete Editor should be elected will now go to a cross-campus policy ballot next semester.