Al Kennedy, Aileen Brown and Stephen McCullagh
Time 2.5 hours
On the Friday night I was talking to Jock about various Fermanagh related things when he mentioned that I was going to have a lucky trip on the Sunday. This was news to me. I mean, Aileen had invited me to go on one of her regular digging trips in the Burren and from reading previous trip reports, I figured that these trips usually involved pulling boulders out until you ended up 1-meter higher than you started. So I really wasn’t expecting anything.
On the Sunday morning, Aileen picked me up from my new house just outside Blacklion . We drove to the Burren carpark where we met up with Al. He was already out of his Duster and busily prepping some digging gear. My conversation with Jock came up, but neither Aileen nor Al were as positive about our chances, vaguely describing the digface as a hole where a few rocks could be heard rolling and bouncing off into the distance.
We pottered down a gravel path, stepped off into a newly afforested area and followed a lightly trampled route through the trees until we reached the top of the doline. I volunteered to go down first. Al produced a metal ladder from the undergrowth to facilitate the climb down the greasy mud-lined wall. Stepping off at the bottom I instantly became confused. I had thought the dig was still within the daylight zone, but it was clear that the way on was down through the slot in the floor towards an obvious drop-off. I shouted up to Al asking whether we needed to rig further down. He answered in a confused voice that the dig was where I was standing. Al came down the ladder and looked at the hole; after a few seconds he mumbled “it looks a bit bigger than the last time I was here”. Obviously, things had changed. To my eyes, the way on was big enough and looked safe enough to enter, however after a brief negotiation, “we” decided that “maybe” the entrance still needed a bit of shoring.
I climbed partway down the dripping wet hole to assess options. Most of the slope that led to the narrow entrance was comprised of large sandstone boulders interspersed with some limestone fragments all propped up with a solid limestone base. Nothing looked too dodgy, but in the spirit of making things a bit more permanent, we installed a couple of scaf bars to support an expertly constructed ginged dry stone wall. The combination of both acted as a barrier for the small stones that could potentially fall down the pitch. Once certified as complete, I had a quick look down the beckoning hole. In the dull light of my poorly charged light, I could see a pitch dropping off into darkness, with shadows lower down.
Al took his turn in the hole. In his keenness he forgot to put on his hood and promptly got a cold shower down the back of his neck. This didn’t temper his enthusiasm and he climbed further down. Below him was a chert lined pit maybe 12 m deep. He called up for a ladder and rigged an expedition standard ladder-cum-progression rope. Al secreted himself in the nearest hidey hole so as to avoid the projectiles that were now coming down the pitch as Aileen and I climbed/abseiled after him. At the base of the ladder, the landing shelf led down a loose boulder slope to the top of the second pitch. This pitch was deeper than the last, maybe 12 - 15 m deep. All around the top edge was a chert banded ledge with copious loose rocks and crud awaiting the next rigging party. Through a misty, drippy haze, the bottom of the pit appeared to be boulder covered, and from our vantage point, blind. The three of us stood for 15 minutes throwing stones down the newly discovered shaft. I found if you angled the cobbles just right and bounced them off the back wall, the booming noise made it seem that there was an unseen undercut at the bottom. I guessed it could signal a hidden passageway and with that positive note we called it a day. I derigged the pothole and all of us made it back to the car for 12:30 pm.
A quick trip but, as foreseen by Mystic Jock, it was indeed a lucky trip.
Stevebus