Here’s the full transcript of motivational speaker Chris Jewells‘s chat with Jane Farnham of Great British Speakers:
00:00:07:49 – 00:00:17:09
Jane Farnham
So. Hi, I’m Jane Farnham of Great British Speakers, and I’m here today chatting to one of the preeminent cavers in the UK, motivational speaker Chris Jewell. Hi, Chris. Good morning to you.
00:00:17:42 – 00:00:18:14
Chris Jewell
Good morning.
00:00:19:12 – 00:00:25:55
Jane Farnham
Thanks for doing this today. Tell us a little bit about your life aside from caving before we get stuck right in.
00:00:26:11 – 00:00:46:37
Chris Jewell
So, well, when I’m not caving or cave diving. I’m working, I work as an I.T. consultant. So I’m actually very much part of that kind of corporate world. And yeah, my my life kind of revolves around spending my spare time going caving, cave diving, going on diving expeditions to explore nice new caves and when I’m not doing that, I’m working in I.T.
00:00:46:37 – 00:00:54:39
Chris Jewell
I live down in Somerset, so right on my doorstep, are some fantastic caves for me to go practice my hobbies in.
00:00:54:54 – 00:01:08:31
Jane Farnham
Wow. Okay, so talking about caving, obviously. How did you get into that? Because I know lots of us start diving and then, you know, maybe do a reck or, but cave diving…talk me through it.
00:01:09:18 – 00:01:36:37
Chris Jewell
Yeah. So actually I started caving, dive craving as a sport at university. So a lot of people get into the sport of caving through university or university caving clubs, really important route for people into the sport. Absolutely hooked on on kind of visiting caves and exploring caves. And I was lucky to be part of some cave expeditions, some exploration expeditions to Austria in 2002. I’ve been caving actually for 20 years now.
00:01:37:15 – 00:02:01:11
Chris Jewell
So, you know, 20, 20 years as of this October. But my love of caving then led me to cave diving. And cave diving is generally, inside of the UK, a niche within the sport of caving. Cave diving is how cavers typically pass through flooded sections of cave to go on and explore cave, you know, the further reaches of caves.
00:02:01:12 – 00:02:06:09
Chris Jewell
So I think diving is often a tool to further exploration goals.
00:02:07:39 – 00:02:18:17
Jane Farnham
Wow, sends shivers up my spine, the thought of diving into dark water at any time. So tell me about the cave rescue organization that you’re involved with and how does that fit into your work life balance?
00:02:18:52 – 00:02:44:00
Chris Jewell
Yeah, So there’s been a volunteer search and rescue organization in the UK since, since the 1960s. It’s very much about cavers rescuing cavers, so it’s all volunteer searchers, like a lot of the search and rescue in the UK is there are teams spread all over the UK. Wherever there are caves there will be a cave rescue team who go out and help cavers who are in trouble.
00:02:44:36 – 00:03:05:54
Chris Jewell
So sometimes those rescues can be kind of small, straightforward, and sometimes they can be large, really high profile rescues that involve large numbers of volunteers and take multiple days. We know we saw a large rescue relatively recently in, in South Wales, which had hundreds of people involved from teams all over the UK taking part to, manage to bring a caver out.
00:03:07:22 – 00:03:30:03
Chris Jewell
And effectively everybody is a volunteer, gives up their free time and asks their employer very nicely if they’re able to to go and be deployed should something happen. And thankfully all of our employers are generally pretty understanding and appreciative of the fact that people, volunteers and you know, when someone’s life is at stake, it’s the right thing to do is to give it your time to take on render assistance.
00:03:31:17 – 00:03:44:27
Jane Farnham
So, it’s very admirable. Now, you were involved, if anybody didn’t know, in one of the most high profile cave rescues ever undertaken. So give me a bit of background into that and how you happened to be there and the situation itself.
00:03:45:16 – 00:04:19:30
Chris Jewell
Yeah, absolutely. So in 2018, 12 boys and their football coach were trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand. The Thai authorities realized they needed outside assistance and because of some individuals already in Thailand who knew the UK cave organizations very well, the UK Cave Rescue Organization was contacted. Two of our divers were deployed straight away. And then as events unfolded out in Thailand, it became clear that we needed to send additional personnel.
00:04:19:46 – 00:04:38:43
Chris Jewell
I’m actually the diving officer for the British Cave Rescue Council, so I was in touch with the first two members of our team when they were deployed to Thailand. But to be on standby should they need extra help in the rescue. So when it reached that point, I flew out there to be part of the, part of the rescue team.
00:04:39:25 – 00:05:09:12
Chris Jewell
And, you know, it really was an unprecedented situation. There were, in terms of that many people trapped in a cave of this nature, a flooded cave, a flooded cave with a huge distance between the entrance to the cave and, and the point at which the boys were stuck. So there’s something like a kilometer and a half of underwater passage or flooded passage, I should say that we had to negotiate, 50% the time we’re swimming on the surface of an underground river, but 50% the time we were completely submerged.
00:05:09:12 – 00:05:32:07
Chris Jewell
So the sort of distances involved and the difficulty was completely unprecedented. To have that many people in a situation like this was, yeah, you know, completely unheard of. So we had to deploy and come up with some very novel solutions for a way to bring those boys out. And you know what I think is a rescue, which at the time and still still today still captures everybody’s imagination.
00:05:32:07 – 00:05:53:33
Chris Jewell
It’s still an inspirational story and it still, I think, touches everybody’s, it pulls everybody’s heart strings, if you like. You know, it involves, you know, these you know, the innocent children, the boys that were stuck in the cave. And of course, any, any parent will instantly feel the draw of that story to kind of understand the significance of these boys lives that were in jeopardy.
00:05:54:09 – 00:06:03:43
Chris Jewell
And then, you know, it involves caves and flooded caves, which for a lot of people are people’s kind of worst nightmare. And, and of course, we had a miraculous and incredible outcome. We managed to get all the boys out alive.
00:06:04:51 – 00:06:13:35
Jane Farnham
It’s amazing. Absolutely remarkable story. I mean, so just remind me, they, they were, they had gone into a dry cave and then the cave flooded, is that correct?
00:06:13:58 – 00:06:35:15
Chris Jewell
That’s correct. Yeah. They went into a dry cave. It was on the boys birthdays, the, the cave started flooding. There’s been lots of rain in Thailand on that particular day. So in Thailand, there’s a monsoon season. And this was right in the transition between the dry season and the monsoon season. And, you know, unluckily for them, they were there right at the end of that dry season.
00:06:35:15 – 00:07:00:50
Chris Jewell
The monsoon rains came a few weeks early. And when the rains come very, very high in that part of Thailand, the large catchment area, the large mountains behind the cave take an awful lot of water and they funnel it down to the cave and the cave can react and flood quite quickly. And so their route out of the cave was entirely blocked by rising floodwater, you know, so they turned around, tried to leave the cave, found the water had come up and they retreated deeper into the cave.
00:07:01:06 – 00:07:03:32
Chris Jewell
So they found a safe place to, to wait the floods out.
00:07:04:44 – 00:07:17:16
Jane Farnham
Wow. Well, a remarkable achievement from all of you involved. Now, how did you move from, you know, your life as an I.T. consultant and a cave diver and part of the rescue team into speaking?
00:07:18:57 – 00:07:41:04
Chris Jewell
So this is speaking something I’ve always enjoyed doing. So for many years I’ve given presentations and lectures on the cave exploration projects that I’ve been part of. But obviously the rescues are giving an extra, an extra story for me to talk about. Some extra attributes and aspects of caving and cave exploration, which resonate with a lot of, a lot of audiences.
00:07:41:04 – 00:08:06:57
Chris Jewell
You know, I always believed that caving and cave diving demonstrates some wonderful examples of teamwork and collaboration, innovation, and the rescues are really an extension of all of those skills that we were able to affect this incredible rescue, not because we trained for many, many years for cave rescues, but because we spent many, many years going on caving and cave diving expeditions and we were involved in cave cave exploration.
00:08:07:39 – 00:08:39:50
Chris Jewell
So, yeah, so used to working as a team, collaborating, innovating, problem solving, being very resilient, lots and lots of aspects to our personalities and to the kind of the thing we do as a hobby, which lends itself very, very well to the people outside the world of caving and cave diving . I mean, I think there are an awful lot of lessons in what we do in caving, cave diving, and lessons and what we have to do in that rescue, which resonate and which transfer out, you know, into sort of day to day life and certainly to organizations and businesses.
00:08:40:17 – 00:09:00:39
Chris Jewell
So the opportunity to tell the story of the rescue and pick up all those wonderful takeaways, give people all those great themes and ideas which, you know, which work in terms of businesses and organizations, but also tell what is, I think, a really inspirational story. And certainly whenever I give a presentation, you know, people come up to me and they say, that was fantastic.
00:09:00:39 – 00:09:09:59
Chris Jewell
That was a great story. That was really uplifting. But you’ve also given me some great ideas. You’ve given me some fantastic things to think about in terms of the way in which I approach a situation.
00:09:10:39 – 00:09:27:30
Jane Farnham
So there’s lots of takeaways for the audience in terms of resilience and motivation and inspiration to apply to, to their own lives. But finally, let me just ask you, what gives you that, when you when you’re talking about your experiences and you’re speaking to audiences, what gives you the biggest buzz about speaking?
00:09:28:37 – 00:09:49:58
Chris Jewell
So, so I guess partly I quite like a bit performing and a little bit actually, I’ve learned something over the last fews years. I do actually enjoy performing. I do enjoy being up there on the stage or virtually telling a story. So I quite like, I quite like that aspect to it. But actually, you know, it’s also the, the buzz and engagement I get back from the audience.
00:09:50:20 – 00:10:13:24
Chris Jewell
So if I do a good job and hopefully I do, then the audience gets a lot out of it. There’s a real buzz there, it’s certainly usually a complete silence when everybody’s, you know, hanging on every word I say in terms of telling the particular story. And then, you know, afterwards all the questions that come in. And typically when I do it, when I do a talk and we talk, we run out of time for, for answering questions.
00:10:13:24 – 00:10:31:33
Chris Jewell
Right? So there’s so many aspects to this rescue that are interesting. There’s so many questions that people have. And I find all those questions coming in at the end really fantastic. They had an awful lot to add to the to the process is great to hear everybody being so interested in what we did and taking so much from the story.
00:10:31:57 – 00:10:36:39
Jane Farnham
Well, Chris, it’s been absolutely inspiring chatting to you. Thank you so much for your time today.
00:10:37:24 – 00:10:39:28
Chris Jewell
No problem. It’s lovely speaking to you, Jane.
00:10:40:10 – 00:10:50:45
Jane Farnham
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Chris Jewell Thai caves rescue diver inspirational motivational speaker at Great British Speakers
