Not feeling up to another cold, windy, misty and plonk laden expedition to the Pyrenees, Rog and I decided on a easy trip to Co. Fermanagh, where one can at least find Guinness as well as permanently open pubs. At least that's how it looked as we planned the trip in the luxury of our Cambridge rooms. It felt slightly different as I crawled under a broken down minivan in the middle of Belfast on a cold, drizzly, Sunday morning. Fortunately (?) it was only the exhaust system which had fallen off and after a tour of bombed out garages we found an open Exhaust Repair centre in Andersonstown; it really is such a grim city that I don't blame them for blowing it up.

The remainder of the fortnight was typically Irish, with rain, sun, Guinness and army saracens following one another in quick succession on the surface. Underground we had some very enjoyable caving trips. The caves are ideal for parties of two and the area still has plenty of potential so that a great deal could be found if one had the equipment and energy displayed by some english cavers. In Ireland, however, one tends to fit caving in between lunch at the Bush Bar and the evening in the Bush Bar.

Our caving trips could be divided into three types:
(a) tourist trips into all the main holes in the area that we could do with our minimal tackle (100' ladder and no rope), mainly to have a look round and take photos;
(b) grovelling around and digging, mainly in small, promising looking holes on the surface;
(c) bottle sherpaing trips for the Solari/Farr circus who were caving there with great success.

The last one of these turned into quite an epic. The two of us had arranged to go down the Noon's Hole shaft (300') at 6.OOpm one evening to help Martyn Farr and Dave Underhill carry out their bottles after their first exchange/through trip from Arch Cave. We descended and first looked round the whole of the Afternoon Series, a wierdly shaped system of phreatic passages and a fine trip in itself. Then we went to the downstream sump and waited there for the divers for 3+ hours getting colder and colder. Eventually we decided to climb out as we thought they might have gone out Arch Cave, since they were long overdue; not so however, for just as I emerged from the waterfall at the top of the 150' entrance pitch, Roger Solari rolled up saying the others would soon be coming through the Noon's sump. Sure enough, an hour later we saw the first light flickering at the foot of the shaft and by about 2.30am we had finally hauled the last bottle up the shaft!

Another trip with a difference was taking a few squaddies to the end of Legnabrocky Way in Marble Arch, before surveying it. They were all competent cavers, but this time their ammo tins did actually contain guns and ammo rather than the more traditional Mars Bars -- such is Co. Fermanagh at the moment.

Link to 2340x720 (100 dpi) survey - 29k png

Also, through sheer ignorance of the whereabouts of the Sewerage System, we accidently found a new passage in the Boho Cave system. On reading the next issue of Descent back in England, we saw that Gareth Jones of the Reyfad Group had also stumbled across it and had named the 1,000 feet of new stuff "Flush Passage'. The "fine self-entombing scree slope" mentioned in Descent really is a bit of a hair-raiser, as the gap between roof and shingle in the squeeze at the bottom of the slope definitely decreases every time someone thrutches through.

Fermanagh, even under the threat of fuse-less bomb and wide-of-the-mark bullet, is still a fine place for a caving holiday, with great potential and pubs that are open for over 12 hours a day, so there's no need to go caving to fill in the intervening period. A typically farcical operation was the daily routine of crossing the approved Border road North to South first thing in the morning to get to "Puckoon"; then recrossing by the Official road S. to N. to go to the Great Orange Public Bogs 100yds into the North; back 5 minutes later N. to S, to the Bush Bar 100yds into Eire for a few pre-caving Guinnesses and then back into the North over the Unapproved road to go caving. We were only stopped once, late at night on the unapproved Road by the U.D.R. who couldn't stand the smell of rotting caving gear and so hurriedly waved us on after the briefest of glances through the back door.

So, if you want a good caving holiday, cheap, with no travel problems, no Franc & no customs posts - (they've all been put into orbit by the Irish Rocketry Association) - come to Co. Fermanagh for a Guinness trip.

N.B. EXCHANGE RATES.
1) £1 = £1 (even in someone else's pocket).
2) ¼ litre of "Merolite" beer = 4 pints of Guinness (see Rog for details)
3) Petrol cheaper than in GREAT Britain (see Bord Failure)
4) 1 Customs Post = 751bs of gelignite (or 10 mortar rockets).