I was in ireland last week, and we had soooo much trouble finding some of the caves- we had the new bristol uni guide, which had apparently worked when one of our group was there several years back. the main problem was everything was over grown.things like polneva pot and the other names i cant remember, were somewhere in a mass of brambles, trees, bushes, forests that wasnt there a few years back- and the guide book would say in an obvious depression- well we coudnt see anything.

we also did doolin river cave- found st catherines enterance and then came out arran view only to be greeted by about 10m of almost impenetrable 'stuff' all around us

has anyone else has similar problems or is it the fact that hardy anyone goes there so things do just get over grown?

The cave entrances ar no more overgrown now (I was in Clare for a fortnight in May) than they were whan I first visited them over twenty years ago. Poulelva is just the same as far as I remember. You cannot see it from the road but if you look for the squeeze style by the telegraph pole you know you have the right field. If you walk across the flat part of the field, near the road, the depression is very obvious...

Now, the number of new houses in Doolin, on the other hand...

Be aware thet the maps in "Selected Caves" for the area seem to be accurate drawings - but not the associated scales!

The only cave we found tricky to locate on the past few trips to Clare was Graggan West. But the surrounding wood had been felled and that made locating it tricky until we discovered a small side-road was the key.

As the editor of said guide, I don't actually recall a polneva pot  :-\

If you mean Poulelva then it wasn't difficult to find in June! If Aran View swallet really was surrounded by scrub then rejoice 'cos it means nobody is dumping crap in it these days.  i do find it hard to believe that a 10 m bund would have developed around it, though, it is used reasonably frequently.

On Poulacapple ridge, we had exactly the opposite problem in that the week after I'd rewritten some of the "how to find" bits, they bloody removed the forestry plantation!!!  'twas a hell of a job to re-do, knowing that the ground conditions would change quite a lot in a matter of weeks after this. That's the area Paul is referring to.

BTW most of the maps in the book are extracts from Tim Robinson's map of the Burren, the best and easiest to use map I have ever had to pleasure to buy.

lol. we must have been very unlucky then, or interpreted something wrong

correction: Poulelva  and yeh i dont think many people were dumping stuff in now- unless they were super sad and sisnt mind getting cut to shreads!

there was one (again can't remember the name- began with a 'c' and there were several enterances- something like colom 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 i think it went to) there seemed to now be a new forest, that looked like it was about to be cleared in the way and we couldnt find the stone wall i think it is that leads to the 1st enterance. i blame our navigator! :blink:

it may be down to too much guinness  :

I suspect that you mean Cullaun 2. The wall is still there, but the muddy path leading to the entrance does tend to be a bit of a give-away.

ahh s**t we were rubbish . we had a good time tho! so it was all worth it- longer in the pub!

Gordy said:

ahh s**t we were rubbish . we had a good time tho! so it was all worth it- longer in the pub!

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Might have been Cullaun 5, that can be tricky to find.

if you have internet access out there then http://www.ubss.org.uk/map_irishcaves2.php might help.