Author: Jacob Podesta, Photos: Stu Alldred_

The driest summer for seven years and UBSS return to Ireland, hopefully to make up for the wettest summer in 100 years the previous time.

That’s how weather works. Due to the varying availability of people, the evening of the 7th of September arrived and a mere four cavers, Stuart Alldred, Anya Keatley, Cameron Bullen and Myself, crossed two countries and one sea to explore, map and describe the caves of Co. Mayo with relatively intact sanities, despite the best efforts of a wayward pair of headphones and Cotton-eyed Joe. Delirious with lack of sleep, the second day was spent making our way from the ferry terminal to our cottage near Ballinrobe. Along the way we went for a walk in Pigeon Hole Woods to scout out the caves there. Had we the foresight to bring a torch, this endeavour might have been more productive. The effects of the day and a half’s travel were so acute that we also utterly failed to find the café in Cong with free Wi-Fi, a mistake we didn’t make again (twice a day, every day for two weeks).

On the beginning of our first fully Irish day, we stocked up the cupboards and returned to Cong to Ashford Castle, where we hoped to find Lady’s Buttery and Horse Discovery. After getting verbal permission to survey the caves in the grounds (and, it seemed, do anything we liked anywhere in the local area thanks to an improvised note on a bit of card) from the manager of the hotel there, we got our first bit of Irish surveying done in Lady’s Buttery. Whilst I did not know any better, I was assured that “it was much drier than last year”. This sentence would be repeated two or three times daily for the whole expedition, usually in a grateful tone of voice.

The following day we set off in the morning to Westport to see if we could find somewhere we could go kayaking to repeat the previous year’s antics. Since we were slightly out of season this proved to be a bit of an ordeal, but we were eventually pointed in the direction of the Petersburg Centre, who would prove to be useful contacts later in the week. We organised the kayaking for the day where the most of us could come, which sadly meant that Anya could not. The rest of the day was spent surveying the muddy, wet and spidery Horse Discovery. Since it was a warm day, and we were muddy, we all washed in the sump before leaving presumably to the irritation of the fish that live in the cave.

The morning of day 5 was spent filling in the gaps in Lady’s Buttery and Horse Discovery after which we set off in search of Pigeon Hole but instead found Wolves’ Hole, a cave that was unknown to us at the time. The army had been training in the area and asked us what we were up to. Upon finding out we were cavers, they directed us to Wolves’ Hole and wished us luck. Sadly we were ill equipped for the ten metre entrance pitch, so had to save it for after the others arrived with a ladder. When we arrived at Pigeon Hole we discovered we were ill equipped to survey that too, as we had left the PDA in Stu’s car. A clammy dash in wetsuits back to the car and a quick cool off in the river later and we finally began surveying. We finished up when the batteries died, sadly rendering the previous 100 splays more or less useless. We made better progress the next day, but found an extension in the back of the cave which more than doubled what we had left to do, right before we picked up Adam from the airport.

The rest of the group arrived the next day but that morning was troubled by bad calibrations and a dwindling supply of batteries, meaning that no actual surveying could actually be done before they arrived. Never mind! It was Cat’s birthday so we had to have some kind of party, even if we were all in a different country.

As we left to go kayaking, Anya left for home. After kayaking we asked around the centre, which also runs caving trips, to see if we could get any leads. We were directed to the person who runs these trips who, whilst slightly evasive, did direct us to Church Cave in Ashford Castle. In the afternoon Stu, Cameron, Simon and I continued to explore Pigeon Hole, concluding that there was a lot more than two weeks’ worth of work down there, whilst Adam, Rosie and Alice scoured Co. Mayo for lithium ion batteries! Now that we had a ladder and ropes, we could at last explore Wolves’ Hole. Adam, Rosie, Simon and Alice spent the day in Pigeon Hole Woods exploring Wolves’ and getting coordinates for some other caves in the woods. It turned out that Wolves’ Hole is quite extensive, and Stu, Cameron and Simon would spend most of the next three days underground surveying it.

Meanwhile, Cameron, Stu and I took a break from surveying to go for a tourist trip down Allie River Cave, to see what it was like in the drier conditions. On the way back to Cong, Stu rescued some kittens, the hero. In Cong we did some plain cloths caving to survey the microscopic Priest’s Cave before revisiting the Guinness tower from last year.

The next three days were spent surveying Wolves’ by Stu, Cameron and Simon and searching for leads and information on the surface for the rest of us, the most exciting being the entrance to Church Cave, in the canal under the Church of Ireland.

Alice and Rosie left at the end of day 11, and the following morning the rest of us met with the manager of the Petersburg Centre, who we were told has an interest in the caves of the area, to hopefully get some more leads. The chat was very helpful and she seemed very interested in what we were trying to do and we said we would try and contact her again for information next year. After that we drove back into Cong to buy postcards and see if we could get any more information. A chance conversation with a bookseller led to Simon getting some useful information; apparently the bookseller had been compiling all the literature on the caves of the area for quite a while.

To ensure that Adam did not leave Ireland without getting to see the extent of Pigeon Hole, we went on a quick tourist trip there on Adams last day. A small dog attempted to accompany us, but lost its nerve at the last moment and didn’t show up for our surveying trip to Teach Aille, a tiny cave which almost immediately sumps. After Adam left, we went on a night time surveying trip to try and link up the entrances of Wolves’, Priest’s and Pigeon Hole, so that they could all put together on a 3D map of the area.

With two days and four cavers remaining, we went off on a relaxed surveying/photography trip to the short but very pretty Bunnadober and then returned to Cong to say thank you to the lady in the tourist information office, who had been helpful throughout the expedition. After this, we split up and Stu and Cameron finished the Teach Aille survey whilst Simon and I searched for the elusive Lost World Cave. Lost World turned out to appropriately named, as the now collapsed cavern made it a hidden nook in the woods with a sump at either end, and would have made a pretty good spot for a picnic.

The last task for the day was to survey a section of Horse Discovery we had missed the first time. The section was the other side of lake which turned out to be almost exactly six foot three deep. Due to my failure to successfully swim one handed (keeping the DistoX dry at all costs), a pair of wellies now lie stuck in the mud at the bottom of this lake, there for any brave and water competent caver to claim. The extra surveying did reveal a potential lead at the back of the cave however. The cave gods can be generous when provisioned with adequate gifts, it turns out.

Final day and we return to Pigeon Hole Woods for the last time, to survey the entrance of Pigeon and so that I could have a look in Wolves’. We found some workmen erecting a fence around the entrance pitch of Wolves’ Hole. Apparently someone had hurt there ankle a few weeks before. Thankfully they were cooperative and gave us a number to organise some kind of access arrangements, making sure we had a tree to rig the ladder off of for the time being. One last trip down Ballymaglancy to clean off our kit and it was back to the cottage to tidy up and pack before we left the following day.