2024-11-24 52 -7

Sun 24 Nov 2024 in 52,-7: 52.3551281, -7.6005570 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Forest in the Suir Valley, South of Kilsheelan, Ireland.

Participants

• Dan Q
• his mother

Plans

Day three of our geohashing-focussed holiday in Ireland, and the other hashpoints near us look likely to be inaccessible to owing to flooding, but this one's in a hillside forest. Should be easy, right?

Expedition

It took us around an hour and a half to drive from our accomodation out to Kilsheelan, from which we'd planned to cross the bridge and ascend the hill into the forest where the hashpoint could be found. We'd originally anticipated that we'd tackle the trail of geocaches alongside the River Suir afterwards, but looking down from the bridge made it clear that this was not going to be possible: the riverside path was completely underwater where the river had broken its banks.

We pressed on up and into the forest. It's mostly a managed pine forest, surrounded by pockets of native deciduous trees. The trails are, for the most part, wide enough for the forestry vehicles to traverse, and - apart from the points at which streams has escaped their culverts and flooded the path - it was mostly dry and easy walking. The maps indicated the the fastest route to where the hashpoint could be found would have been along a road, but we opted to climb to an altitude of about 150m to take a forest trail parallel to the road, instead, and it was certainly a more-welcome view.

Getting closer to the cache, we found a trail leading down and began to approach it. We seemed to be endlessly stuck at around 370 metres away as our track wound back and forth with the contours of the hill, but eventually we began to approach it. I was momentarily panicked when we disovered an area of new plantation, surrounded by a 3-metre tall wire fence, because it looked as though the hashpoint might turn out to be inside it and therefore inaccessible, but as we continued to walk we discovered to our delight that it would, instead, be in one of the mature parts of the managed forest instead.

We broke off the track with around 50 metres to go and began to hack our way through the slippery mud and tangled undergrowth. Before long, we came across a stream, converted into a torrent by the floodwater and the mountaintop's melting snow! After scouting for the narrowest point (and giving up on attempting to construct a bridge) I leapt across, and then reached back to help my mother do the same. Now we were able to pick our way around decaying wood and slippery leaves to finally get to the hashpoint. We arrived at 11:20.

Retracing our steps to the path and continuing our descent, we returned via the road to the bridge we'd crossed at. We enjoyed a spectacular view of Slievenamon to the North, a mountain that towers over the valley. Returning to Kilsheelan, we had a great lunch at Nagle's Bar, then continued on our day's adventures: taking in some history at Cahir Castle (and finding a nearby geocache), dodging the rain at coffee shop Keep Coffee, and then taking on a challenging series of caches on the Millennium Loop of Glengarra Woods, where we almost found ourselves stranded by the setting sun, short on batteries for either GPS, phone, or torch use, and having to carefully pick our way back to the car before a long dark drive over the winding Kilmallock road to get back to home, beer, and baths.

A wonderful adventure that's left me heavy of foot and light of spirit.

Tracklog

Full journey

(includes the driving sections and our other expeditions, including some lunch, touring a castle, and geocaching a valley)

Walking

(just the bit from where we parked up into the forest, to the hashpoint, and down again; minus a bit at the start where I forgot to turn my backup GPSr on)

Photos

(to follow; still working on uploading them on our accomodation's terrible Internet connection)