My friend Tony Boycott, who has died aged 73, was a GP and experienced caver. He used his medical knowledge to become a caving doctor, helping those in trouble underground.
A member of Mendip Cave Rescue in Somerset, he attended many emergencies, including a two-day retrieval in 1981 of a caver with a compound leg fracture from a narrow passage in Agen Allwedd, one of the longest systems in Wales.
Over the years Tony travelled widely – to Greece, Romania, Thailand, Sulawesi and Madagascar. He was also a medical officer and support diver to one of the series of expeditions to the Blue Holes of the Bahamas, and on an expedition to Morocco in the 1980s he dived in the Middle Atlas mountains.
Born in London, Tony was the son off Brian, a research physiologist, and his wife, Marjorie (nee Burchell). After a secondary education at Emanuel school in Battersea, south-west London, he went to the University of Bristol in 1969, initially to study biochemistry and then medicine. He joined the university’s Speleological Society in his first year, and remained a member for the rest of his life.
Tony started cave diving in 1970, beginning with White Lady cave in south Wales. He rapidly became aware of the risks when a fellow medical student drowned exploring Porth yr Ogof cave in Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) the following year.
I was introduced to Tony in late 1975 by my (now) wife, Angie, when he arrived in Tehidy hospital, Cornwall, to start his working life as a house doctor. Together we caved and dived for the next 40 years.
After a series of hospital jobs in Swindon, Tony moved back to Bristol, joining the Malago surgery in Bedminster as a GP and eventually becoming the senior partner. When he found that his busy work schedule was beginning to affect his caving activities he switched to working as a locum in Bristol, which provided more time to pursue his hobby.
In the 90s Tony and his fellow Mendip cavers began the first of many repeat visits to the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya, where they discovered hundreds of miles of hitherto unknown caves.
Wherever he went, Tony searched for new caves by digging and using explosives, skills that made him much in demand all over the Mendips and further afield. In 1975 he was able to find a previously unknown extension of the Cnoc nan Uamh cave system in Sutherland and in 2012 he contributed to the discovery of the Frozen Deep near Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, the largest underground chamber in the UK.
In later life he settled in Kilshanny in County Clare, Ireland, near to a cave system that he loved and which he had visited many times over the years.
