County Clare #2

My memories of this trip are quite vague and somewhat confused with memories of our previous visit.  Anyway, thanks to Mike Simms (aka Cissy) we now have the set of photos below and a little more detail.  We were there for a week, from August 31st.  This time we hired a minibus and I think the team was Honky, Pixie, Cisco, Cissy, Grunt and Ram (I remember we were a bit worried when we found the van window wouldn’d lock shut so placing our dry clothes etc at risk.)  This time accommodation was a bit better located for access to the caves.

I think it was this on trip we discovered the world famous Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival was in progress. We wanted to sample the thermal Spa water and it was available in one of the hotels, straight out of the hot springs. No problem finding where, just follow the smell of Hydrogen Sulphide (fart!). If you could down a whole pint of the noxious water you’d get a certificate.  We’re cavers so of course we did.  But then we thought of our poor colleagues back in Brum, unable to partake. So we filled a plastic fizzy drink bottle to take home for them.  Rather disappointed to find that it didn’t travel well, back home the smell had gone.  The same hotel was hosting some of the matchmakers but we declined the opportunity.

By then I’d moved to work in London but kept up my membership including when I later moved to Sheffield, still occasionally caving with WMCEG , I took the service bus to Castleton to join the group for a visit to Peak Cavern. The return trip to Sheffield was rather more of a problem, backpack full of soaking wet caving gear weighs a lot and bus-stop to home involved a steep hill.

There are larger versions of these photos available from me or Mike Simms, they have been scaled down a bit here to save storage space on the webserver.