Post date: Apr 11, 2011 12:08:26 AM

(Jock and Emma, 09/10 April 2011)

The Brickleives are an interesting area for the aspiring speleologist. Situated in a stunning location amongst the tombs of Carrowkeel in Sligo/Roscommon. We first happened upon this spot 4 or 5 years ago on a random cold December evening.

To cut a long story short we spent a day moseying about the place and found well over 15 impressive sinkholes and multiple good digging options. The one beside the tent was taking a stream and looked to be more of a bog hole so we walked up to the first dig site that sparked my interest on our first visit many moons ago.

The main reason this spot remained in the memory was because it contained remnants of car and was taking two small streams at the foot of a large undercut limestone cliff about 15 metres in height. Said car was removed to reveal a lot of old rubbish so we started digging at the foot the cleaner second drier stream. Following a faint draft we dug for 2 hours in an awkward arms length position into a muddy gravel pit. Contemplating the need for reinforcements we opted to dander deeper into the main dry valley.

Many impressive sinkholes were located but another random bog hole turned out to be a tight wet 4 metre descent into a nice chamber with little prospects upstream and a low wet dig downstream. Further up the valley more sinks were located, most of which had faint drafts after easy initial clearance of debris.

Along the left hand cliff face two obvious open caves were spotted. One was an open 10 metre rift passage and the second involved a 5 metre climb into a low crawl which yielded many bones and a tooth which I collected and should probably be sent to some archaeologically minded person for further investigation. During the day we checked out all the obvious cave entrances in the surrounding cliff faces and I shifted a substantial boulder into a low crawl with a good draft at one of the largest sinks.

All in all a really cool area that may yield some results with a full surface survey and few extra bodies keen to check out somewhere different.

Outside of the limestone being of Dartry origin, similar to the stuff about our more traditional home turf, interweb searching hasn’t provided too many details about potential or existing caves in the area.

Happened upon Kesh caves after further random driving (really beautiful and worth visit with an over suit). Met the most hospitable youth hostel owners who have a beautiful unofficial campsite by Lough Arrow who promised that Ireland’s deepest pitches were just up the hill over there..