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This was three expeditions in one, we covered a lot of ground,
some of it pretty difficult. We had ten explorers: Alasdair
C., Beth, Calum, Chris, Fern, Matthew, Matthew E., Nicole,
Robbie C. and Rowan. There were seven adults, apart from myself:
Gary, James, Johnny, Howard, Liz, Penny, Sandra and Sharon
B., with Ellie and Roo looking for the things which interest
dogs.
We started with a bit of a scramble to the cave at Port na
h'Uamha. A lot of trees had blown down since I was last there
and it became a bit like a hack through the Amazonian forest.
We eventually all got to the cave, to find an otter spraint
on a rock, speedily identified by Matthew E. Everyone had
a good hunt about the place and we all had a look at the remains
of the Belfast beer bottle. Then we took a rather better route
back to the road and went down to the beach to find some old
Dutch tiles. Finally it was back up the beach and, carefully,
across the road to examine the site of the two sailors' graves.
Then it was back to the cars and off to the Ardery Picnic
Site where we did a short and unsuccessful diversion to look
for a boat storage place I had found last year. It took a
struggle to get back to the beach again, but we made it and
stopped at the old fish trap for our Tunnock's break.
Greatly refreshed we walked up the beach to another lot of
mysterious stone piles where I took some pictures of the group.
We then crossed the road to look at the site of the old school,
but my speech was interrupted by a large dragonfly which settled
on Howard's sleeve long enough to get some photographs. Everyone
was able to see it munching away on a wasp it had just caught.
Then we were in the cars again to the Ariundle Centre. We
started by looking at the mining bees, which were very active,
before going down to the site of New York where we found some
more tile fragments on the newly-ploughed ground. The last
visit was to the stepping stones across the river where, since
the river was quite low, several of the explorers were able
to cross a couple of times.
John
Dye
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