Cullaun 2

All the others were taking advantage of the opportunity to visit Ailwee Cave and its extra attractions for free as part of an offer for this weekend, while Karen, Keith and I decided on a trip to Cullaun 2.
I think this is the first occasion for quite a few tripe to County Clare that our first trip underground wasn't Pollnagollum, which always seemed to be the first cave to visit for some reason.
The weather was still windy and somewhat cooler as we first made a quick trip to the newish grocery shop next door to Maganns, which is quite handy, to get some bread and milk, also having a look at water levels in the river. The water had dropped significantly overnight, and it hadn't been particularly high yesterday anyway. So with a dry forecast, we wouldn't have to worry about water levels anyway.
We parked on the small hard-standing area about 200 metres from the path leading by the edge of the forest to Cullan 2.
We had noticed a significant part of the cave upstream of the main entrance when looking on the survey earlier and as we hadn't visited this section of the cave before, we decided to have a look there first.
Just inside the entrance we found a tightish constriction leading up stream and as I followed the other two I got a little stuck because my belt buckle was catching on the rock I was laying on, but I soon was through.
After a short hand and knees crawl, there was another blockage which could be bypassed low on the side and after that it got a bit bigger.
I decided to leave the other two to continue on and investigate while I returned to the surface to see if I could find the other nearby entrance and hence miss out this smaller section altogether.
There was an obvious linear feature leading in the correct direction with a couple of openins which contained local blockages of the rifty passage below.
I dropped down onto the pile of soil and debris at one of these collapses and could neither see nor hear the other two so presumably, this section of the cave was separate from where they had gone.
I returned to the Main Entrance and after a few minuted, Karen and Keith had returned saying it had got lower further on and they had decided to give up in visiting that section of the cave.
We continued downstream into the usual section of the cave and at a small climb up into a side passage we took the detour to see a couple of sections of well decorated sections of the cave before retracing our steps back to the main route.
There was also a short oxbow which had a laminated paper sign at each end warning of a dangerous loose flake and to avoid passing through this short oxbow.
We continued onwards, pausing to clamber up to have a better view of a small well-decorated grotto.
We continued onwards clambering down a small waterfall and eventually arrived at the feature known as the “Bloody Guts” which is a boulder partly blocking the passage with a red-stained flowstone formation. Once there used to be a grill of flowstone blocking the route over the boulder which forced the caver to pass underneath in the water, sadly now gone. Still, to prevent further damage, we passed underneath the boulder.
The passage continued with sections of chert sticking out of the walls and forming small holes on the floor beneath the water.
We passed along the top of a section of narrow slabs partly blocking the passage (but passed beneath them on the way out) and then a short climb up, crawl along more flat slabs then a short climb down to arrive at another small waterfall.
Keith had clambered down this and been to the final climb down to where there is a sump, but founf there was too much water to attempt this climb and had returned, so we didn't bother clambering down to join him.
All that remained was to turn around and start off back to the entrance, which didn't take long.
Altogether we we underground about two and a half hours.
Again it was McDermotts for an evening meal with the same musicians as yesterday. Matt and Nikki Adlam-Styles arrived later on as they are also in Doolin this week with a group for thr Forest of Dean along with Andy and Lin from the Alternative Tuesday caving group.