My Irish adventure: To search and not find...GEOCACHING

Trafficjam in Donegal

Another day in beautiful Donegal, and we were going geocaching on Fort Dunree. For you who are not familiar with the term 'geocaching' it can sort of be described as a modern treasurehunt...with a GPS. One go online and search for your location and the different caches are popping up, some with clues and some without. Kinda addictive actually...

When we visited Letterkenny (read the previous chapters) we had at one point been exactly opposite the place we would be searching for 2 caches: Fort Dunree
Fort Dunree has a history back to the napoleonic ages, and is found at the mouth of Lough Swilly, a very strategic location. And you will certainly appreciate it when looking from the topspot.
In our quest we were looking for something small, black and magnetic we were told, that were to be found near one of the gates...believe me, we looked EVERYWHERE...I even almost fell into a thicket of nettles...
We ended the quest for the first one with almost concluding that the cache had been muggled (meaning that it has been removed from its place by someone unaware of its significance)

Abandoned and forgotten....

The other cache was supposedly hidden close to the place were the famous guns are placed, and the hint said something about a round table...we split up, me walking in one direction and Michael and Solveig in the opposite one. The fort has been abandoned for quite some time, and it felt like a ghostplace when I walked around looking for the cache, kinda creepy. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

Wouldn't like to be here during the night...one could make a really scary movie here...

But the surroundings of the fort is anything but scary. The scenery of Donegal is amazing even when the sky is grey and threatening to unleash a terrible shower upon the green land below. Once again I found a secluded and oh so beautiful beach...sadly I cannot find its name,,,

 

And some other pictures of the scenery

Enjoy

As we did not find any of the caches, we headed back to Ballyliffin through some amazing areas...and one place Michael told us that even if the road was steep and one should suspect things to go downhill, they didn't....the magic of Donegal.

Back in Ballyliffin, I went straight down to the beach to explore the wilderness, and old castle and the rolling waves. 

Rolling waves brings out the child in me

The sky of Donegal...so blue, almost sparkling

I miss this place soooooo much

I sat here for quite some time, waiting for the tide to come in

A rugged sort of beauty

Looks like its movement has just been frozen

a hint of the past

 The plaque by this place told an amazing story from the second world war: a boy had found a stranded floating mine, and since metal was valuable he had started dismantling it. When he brought some of the pieces proud home, his father understood what it was. He got on the bike as fast as he could to reach the closest Gardai-station to inform them about what had been found. His son went back to the mine, feeling guilty that he had caused so much trouble, and tried to put the pieces back in their right place. His mother called him in for dinner, and 5 minutes afterward the mine exploded, breaking nearly all the windows in the houses around. Luckily noone got harmed.

A little piece of heaven

So as I was walking back from the beach for a final evening in Ballyliffin, I discovered something. It seemed that all the snails of Ireland were gathering in the dunes here to mate...weird right?

The last evening at Michael's, we made a little geocache-challenge for him in his own house. First we hid the chocolate in the old, out-of-tune-piano, and a hint where he could find the next cache...which we had hid in his coat. There he got another hint, and it took him quite a while to find the last cache which we had hid underneath his pillow. That evening we watched an amazing movie; True Romance, drank wine and talked into the night. It felt so weird to think that the next day we would head for Belfast. 

I will never forget Ballyliffin; a piece of heaven