With this mission in mind and Eoghan as our guide the 5 of us headed for Noones around 1pm in early July with lunch box and bubble wrap in hand. Fearing rain, we zipped our way down pendulum running out of rope 5m from the bottom, however luckily through combined efforts a spare rope was produced and when all had reached the bottom and dekitted we made our way to High Noones Left and the Dragon’s Graveyard. In an attempt at making life easier we threw a ladder into the muddy chamber and after many attempts Gaelan will attest that placing the ladder horizontally is not advised. This horrible squeeze was no impediment for those of us who do not fall into the ‘long-legged’ category and while waiting for some of the long-legged ones we had a hoke and rearranging session around the boulder choke which produced a couple of small high chambers and a tighter squeeze to bypass the ‘squeeze’. Passing the duck we made our way to the dragon’s resting place. ‘Some’ refused to pay their respects, declaring that the muddy climb leading to the chamber to be too ‘loose’ but ignoring these doom-mongers we made our appointment with the dragon for its scale photoshoot, measuring and selective bone extraction. How Steve spotted this tiny brown skeleton tucked up near the overhanging ceiling in a room of brown is beyond me. It was as delicate as described, the skull collapsed as soon as I look at it but we placed the leg and head bones in optimistically large bubble wrap in the lunch box and made for the pitches, leaving the entire vertebrae insitu in some vague attempt at conservation for the viewing pleasure of the future hoards who would no doubt flock to this place of pilgrimage. We made the surface by 11pm and off to a celebration in Armagh for which we were already many hours late.

I delivered the sad specks of bone to Emily Murray who bottled them up and sent them off to Chris Gleed-Owen of CGO Ecology Ltd in Bournemouth who kindly identified it as……..not a dragon but a Lissotriton helveticus or Lissotriton vulagris or your common house newt. Apparently they are probably not ancient (though he couldn’t be sure) and a frontoparietal or a single vertebra would have been ultimately diagnostic in determining the exact species so incase anyone needs full closure a beautifully articulated vertebrae awaits in the nether regions of High Noones Left, up near the ceiling behind a few chunks of mud. That’ll teach me for having airs of conservation.

I have asked Emily to pass these relics onto a museum (as I didn’t know what to do with them myself) to be catalogued incase they are ever of any use to anyone. Many thanks to Emily Murray and Chris Gleed-Owens for all their time and work.

Róisín.