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Caves of Kesh - Keshcorran

1-July & 6-August 2017

The Caves of Kesh and Keshcorran.
Then throw in Elmafad / Emlaghfad  Cemetery ( or as a friend of mine says ) A left footers Graveyard.
 
Went to both the caves and the cemetery twice this year. The first time was on the 1st July with Orla and her two little Angels! Cliodhna & Tara and the second trip on the 6th of August, where we took in the top of Keshcorran, was with the bigger Germanic kid...Annie.
 
I would highly recommend this walk to just about every who can take on a wee hill. It is a steep walk up but it is short and the views from the front of the cave looking west are fantastic.
 
If you do go up there is place for a couple of cars near the stile however there is a nice car park opposite the small school house in Kesh and it adds just a Kilometre to the walk.
The walk itself will only take between 10 and 20 minutes.
 
Both days we went up were a bit clouded over, you know, a soft day. I am pretty sure the sky still looked blue those days but just not in our part of the world. On the plus side because of the days being overcast it lent for less people around. The Saturday with Orla  and the girls I don’t remember meeting anyone else while the Sunday with Annie perhaps around the dozen or so bodies, but these were only on the walk to and around the caves, none of them ventured to the top.
 
The mountain is mention in several myths. It get is name Ceis Corran, “the harp of Corran”.
It was here that she-wolf raised Cormac McAirt, his mother had given birth to him at a well near the base of the caves as she fled from Lughaidh Mac Conn who had killed her husband. While the mother slept the she-wolf how lived in the caves dragged Cormac off and raised his as her own. Year later he was discovered crawling around the caves on all floors. He was to become the greatest High King of Ireland.
 

Apart from the above there are another two stories about the caves that I like. The first is told of a woman who, many years ago, went to bring her calf in for the night, so grabbing his tether she started to lead him towards the cottage, however he was having none of it and instead dragged the poor woman into a cave near the Royal site of Rathcroghan, some twenty fives miles distant from Kesh. She had a hault of the rope and there was no letting go an loosing the beast so the calf dragged her through the night until they emerged the following morning from the Kesh cave.
 
The other relates to Fionn McCool who, along with his warriors, was hunting a large boar in the region. They eventually caught and killed same beast, however they were surprised by three hags, known as the Winter Witches that had being sent by Conoran who held sway over the area. He had taken offence to the hunt having taken place without their permission. So they ensnared Fionn and his men in a rope that took away their strength and left them as feeble old men. However all ends well when an ally of Fionn sees his plight, catches the witches off guard and beheads then, thus freeing the warriors from the spell.
 
Among the first of the caves you have Cormac’s Cave, which has several antechambers running off it. It was here that Cliodhna decided to find her adventurous streak and disappeared into one that for Orla or Myself would have involved getting down and sucking it in if we were to have any chance of following; my apologies Orla, it’s just me that would have to do the sucking, you would have being grand. At the time I was not too worried as we could still see her and she did come back when called. However when Annie and Myself explored a little deeper into them a few weeks later we discovered a couple of holes that could easily be missed; so with hindsight not a good idea to let a 7 years roam too freely in there. On the plus side Cliodhna came back empty handed, if it had being Tara she would most likely have appeared with a stray calf or the head of one of the Winter Witches.
 
Other than that one time I am glad the girls did not venture any deeper into any of the caves, especially the ones further along. At the time I did not know how interconnected caves H to M ( see diagram ) were and I dare say if Tara had known she would possibly have gone exploring to the detriment of her mothers peace of mind. Hopefully the day they do find these passages Tommy, their Dad, will be with them, he is just going to love getting down and dirty in the potholes.
 
So we had nice picnic and about an hour and a half later and we are back in the car and heading for Ballymote and a few corpses. More on the latter later. (I should have been a poet.)
 
Day 2
So skip forward five weeks and a day to the second visit. This time with the not so much insane German but truth be told not normal German…...actually not normal person would be better; there is a possibility that she got disowned by the Fatherland so we will leave Germany out of it for now. Hence the reason she is here in Ireland and accepted...even by Evelyns, at least one of them anyways.
This was not one of our usual straight forward walks. Someone, I am not saying who however I am just going to state for the record that it was not me, decided it would be a good idea to see how far we could squeeze into each cave. I am kinda glad I have a love for the Guinness….it was a good excuse for only going so far.
 



We did manage to press ourselves into some tight spots, I did however call a halt when, as we are in cave N or O, Annie has to sit on  a ledge to jump down. I asked her was it okay, could she see down, the answer “Yea, there is hole here but I can jump to the side and miss it ” My answer….” I am sure you can...but not today “. She was not impressed. Truth be told it was a bit of fun, though as we explored the last one I did temporarily mislay myself ( as I am known to do ). So I get talked into crawling belly in the dirt along this passage way, now it is very short, however after a few meters I was left wondering if should have skipped that Pints last weekend. It was tight, dark and the light disappeared, the passage is that tight that you cannot turn your head never mind your body. So I have the import shouting at me to head towards the light, that would be a  brilliant idea if only I could see it. So there I am with only the light of my torch, not a great one I might add,  I can hear Annie but cannot see her or her light. I crawl on another metre….I know it cannot be far…..another 2 metres….then I see the end of the tunnel I am in….it is a wall. Damn. I had to crawl backways for about 4 metres before I found the light of my not so Angelic companion…….truth be told I was kinda glad to see her. The wrong tunnel I had taken she had missed because she had crawled from the other direction. On the other hand it; could it have being intentional…… getting some payback on me for halting her Indiana Annie moment by not thinking the jumping into the cave with the hole was a good idea ????????
 

So our little underground emprise at an end we make for the top. It is a short steep climb ( about 100 mts ) and there you are...fantastic views…..and I am sure we would be able to see them if it was not so grey and cloudy with every chance of rain…..still...what can you do. Annie stopped to rest at the cross….and she did not burst into flames. I suppose that is not necessarily a bad thing but it was a pretty miserable day and the bit of heat would not have gone astray.
I remember reading that they used to be a fairly popular gathering at the foot of the mountain on Garland / Reek Sunday. Apparently it was a none religious event that involved music, sports,  the picking of bilberries and a trip to the caves. So I assume that someone stuck this almighty cross above the caves and that stopped the craic in its tracks. Only kidding, sort of.
Moving on from the cross we followed a track that led us west and then north to the fence. Once over we headed south, the plan being to walk the circuit anti clockwise, reaching the cairn and heading down from there….the best laid plans….and all that. Once over the fence there is no real path to speak of we followed the fence / at times wall for most of the walk however we did have to enter the extremely ambitious heather, what you may as is ambitious heather…...well it is heather that believes it should be more like a bush than a ground hugging plant. In this case its aspirations were quite justified, it was doing a damn good job of reaching for the sky. It fairly drew the energy out of you as you wade through it.
 
As we wade on we admire the view of the small lakes nearby. The first one you notice is Lough Feenagh as you look to the west. It is fairly obvious from the caves that the lake takes on the shape of our little island of Ireland and this becomes even clearer once you ascend to the cross and higher. So as we head South the next one that came into view is?????? At the time we did not know its name so I christened it Germany…..Annie is not impressed and points out that this is not right as Lough Germania appears to be similar in size to Lough Ireland…..So I explain that we are basing size on the sense of humour of the race presently occupying said named land. She is still not impressed but did see my logic….then again maybe she did disagree and I just forgot to listen. ( It turns out Lough Germania is actually called Lough Gowra.) So a bit further on and we spot another lake...aha I point out Lough China….( Lough Laba )….pretty small but we are still going sense of humour. I recently found a survey on the internet that reckons the Germans are the least humorous……..the great thing about the internet…..don’t like the answer….just search again until you find some fool that tells you what you want to hear…...though the survey here has a high probability of possibly being….well shall we say right.
 
So a little over an hour ( about half an hour over to tell the truth ) after leaving the caves we eventually make the cairn. We were both a bit surprised, at least I was, the walk around was more gradual that I had expected and thought our line was straighter. I wondered for a moment was there a second decent sized cairn here.
The wind and rain was intermittently trying to chase us off the mountain so we were thinking we would oblige once we had a bite of food and a wee jive. Typical Irish mountain, we find the sheltered side and start to eat and the wind and rain decide the are bored with their current direction so come around an say hello to us like right in the face hello.
 
So one jive later and it was time to head. Looking back on the day we should have continued on with the original plan and circled the top of the mountain, we were possibly 20 minutes or so from our start point but there was no visible path and we could see that there was a lot of cloud and rain coming from the West. We erred on the side of caution and decided to retrace our steps. That is we would do so as soon as we took this one we short cut over a fence we most definitely had not climbed earlier. So not long on and we see Lough China appear and a few minutes later Lough Germania comes into view. Good thing nobody was listening in as I said aloud “We are heading in the right direction, there is Germany over there”. They would wonder.
So with Germany well behind us and Lough Ireland ahead we started to descend. Taking a similar line down, it is very steep, I came up with the brainwave of sliding down. Annie was not over gone at first but I did point out that she was the one who had asked me, not so very long ago, where was my sense of adventure when I hesitated before entering some dark dirty caves. I did also point out that by sliding we could save a fair bit of time and that could be spent in Elmaghfad cemetery ….. That done it….( amazing what motivates a body ) it was fun sliding down….for me it was a case of revisiting my childhood …...for Annie…… possibly just another day, as well,  I don’t think she has properly left her childhood yet. I reckon it saved us at least 20 minutes as we arsed it down close to 100 meters. It did take a small bit of manoeuvring though as we had to lift our butts on a couple of occasions to avoid thistles and swerve another couple of times to avoid rocks. As we reach the stile I could not believe it…..the drizzle stops completely and blue skies appear. Well a slight exaggeration but there was plenty of blue peeking through the clouds a plenty.
 

So why Elmaghfad Cemetery? Well I had noticed this partial ruin of a tower as we drove to Gurteen for dance classes on Thursday evenings and ruins have a way of piquing my interest.
When I explored it the first day with Orla and the girls I honestly thought we would be visiting a tower that remained of some forgotten castle or keep. I did not expect to find this fascinating Church and Cemetery.
The site is believed to have being occupied from the 6th century when St. Colmcille built a church here. Over the centuries it is believed the church was developed into a monastic type settlement which in the 16th / 17th centuries the structures took on some form of military fort. It was around the mid 1700’s the Church of Ireland adopted it for their use.
The earliest headstone dates from 1709 and this is located within the church itself.
Some of the headstones make quite melancholic reading, especially the family plots, of which there a few where the children are interred before the parents.
 
A very good blonde haired friend of mine, no names mentioned, did say one elder relative of hers, down the county, was going to be delighted to hear that some many left footers appeared to take up residence in this patch of the earth during the famine years.
 
This building was abandoned upon the completion of the new church was built between 1815 - 1820 in the centre of Ballymote village though the cemetery continues to remain in use. Certain families still have the right to be interred here.
If you like history it is most definitely worth a visit.
After the cemetery we stopped off in Ballinafad Playground ( as you do ) for half an hour. That was only on the first days excursion, I did not inform the German of this little extra as it may have been past midnight by the time we got back to Sligo.
 
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