Doolin River Cave

A cloudy but dry start to the day, with a little drizzle overnight. Boyd, Keith and I walked down to Fisherstreet Pot, which has a new fence with a small gate around it replacing the old damaged fence that was there on our last visit. Again, someone seems to have been busy tidying up various cave entrances in County Clare.
We tied a 30 metre rope to the new gate post backed up to the nearby electricity pole with a spare 10 metre rope. Keith had brought an oversuit and wellies so he did the rigging job. Meanwhile a small heard of bullocks in the same field came thundering down the sloping pasture to find out what was going on and then took to licking the rope.
We set off back to the cottages and then later in the day we all had a lift in Boyd's van, dressed in our caving gear, up the road to the gates leading to the farm where one of the other entrances to Doolin River Cave, that is, St Catherine's Cave, is located.
As on previous trips we knocked on the door to ask permission to enter St Catherine's Cave, but as usually happened before, there was no answer. At least we tried!
We had an excellent trip as usual in the excellent cave, mostly following the underground river which was never more than a foot or so deep. Still, it was sobering to spot the odd plastic bag caught in the roof some 30 foot above our heads, left high and dry during times of high-water...
We had entered St Catherine's at 11:45 and were all back on the surface at Fisherstreet Pot at 14:05.
Afterwards we de-rigged our rope from Fisherstreet Pot and walked back in our caving gear to Doolin Cottages much to the amusement of tourists sitting outside McGann's pub.
After showers and washing caving gear we drove down the road to stop at a café near the Tourist Information Centre to have a pizza seeing a it had “Pizzeria” as well as “Cafe” on its shop sign. We were told by the staff that they only did pizzas on Saturdays and Sundays after June!

Oh well, so it was back to Lisdoonvarna to get fresh baguettes for lunch.