Post date: Apr 2, 2012 5:26:17 PM

Cavers: Shauna, Thorsten, Al

Trip time c. 6 hours

Some time ago i offered to help Thorsten locate various small caves in the north-west for him to survey as part of his PhD research. Eventually on Saturday we got out to Geevagh to do some prospecting. Thorsten had a GPS loaded with the cave locations from the Irish Caves Database, so we didn't envisage many problems in finding the caves, and it would be a nice day to see some more of the Geevagh area below the main sinks. So laden with GPS, ranging poles, survey kit and more we left the car parked near the Carrowmore lane and set out for the first target, Churdhe Mhor or Uaighmore in the Ailtnaseabhach.

Pretty, small ailt running north-west from the parking areas near the Carrowmore lane.

Thorsten photographing the northern end of Ailtnaseabhach.

At the time the GPS wasn't telling us that this was Ailtnaseabhach, so we crossed the northern end of the ailt and kept walking. On the plateau west of the ailt there were a couple of shakeholes, that might be worth a bit of a dig. Both could have been infilled by farmers. We walked for about 2 km, continuing downhill to the valley and beginning to question the GPS. I had hazy memories of the sketch map in IS 4(1), but also wanted to have a look at the risings in the valley so we kept on walking and sure enough Dave Drew's coordinates led us to R2. There wasn't much to see, just a pump house and a trickle of water so we walked down the valley, hiking through bog and rushes to find R4, which 'maybe diveable' according to Colin Bunce's Caves of Geevagh. It wasn't diveable at all, just a pump house sitting in a marshy area.

Back on the road, we walked up hill again, passing this interesting feature which seems to have been a mass rock:

The farmer in whose yard this is was very friendly and pointed us in the direction of a couple of caves, and continuing on up the road we came to this one:

It was the first cave of the day, a short square passage leading to an extremely muddy and smelly (sheep and badger) low chamber after 5 m with a couple of crawls leading off. Neither Shauna nor myself wished to grovel in the mud but Thorsten was more adventurous and took a look at the continuations, neither of which went very far. We photographed it and Thorsten made a sketch survey. It has no name that we know of. The entrance looked liked it might have been walled in at some time.

It was getting on into the afternoon so we pressed on up the road looking for the southern end of Ailtnaseabhach, and checking a couple of promising looking alcoves on the way, neither of which yielded any cave. Finally we found the end of the ailt, and just 200 m from the road was Churdhe Mhor (Uaighmore). A quite impressive entrance led into a rubbish-strewn large chamber, and then a crawl over the mud at the end to a short rift passage to a second large chamber, with a deep floor and high ceiling with an aven above, which would be promising if the cave wasn't so shallow and the apparent continuation wasn't heading back towards the entrance. The cave must be about 40 m long, and may be worth a look at the end of a day up at the likes of Carrowmore Caverns.

Thorsten and i had a good poke around while Shauna decided to use up the evening sunshine. We rummaged through the rubbish looking for prehistoric lithics but found only broken bottles, and a few pieces of dunnesware with a cow print on it. Also a pair of latex gloves and 2 shotgun shells in close proximity... To the left of the entrance was an alcove, with straw on the floor and the remains of a drystone wall around it, big enough to lie in.

There was no time left to survey Churdhe Mhor so we walked north along the ailt, looking for the other small caves listed in Colin's book but we weren't successful. It's quite an interesting place, and the limestone crags may be of interest to climbers. At the northern end we found a cow graveyard with cow skeletons buried under small cairns.

Al