Dan Q
Sooo… I’m in Dublin.
I missed me flight at Knock airport, which turns out to have been the only plane leaving that tiny airport today. So I arranged a flight from Dublin tomorrow, extended my car rental and arranged to drop it off in the capital’s airport instead, and zipped over here.
Now I’m in an underlit bar sipping a Guinness and waiting for a pizza.
This checkin to GC8XWKX Shamrock #20 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
My mum and I have been visiting Ireland on a geohashing & geocaching expedition. We’d spotted this shamrock shape but it wasn’t in our operating zone so we didn’t get a chance to hunt any of them, until today’s journey up to Knock airport saw us take a comfort break nearby, and we figured we’d come find this cache, at least.
Found this well-maintained cache with no difficulty at all: I thoroughly approve of a cache that is hidden just barely enough to not be muggled, but not so much as to inconvenience a geocacher who’s sometimes in a hurry! Nice work, FP awarded. TFTC.
This checkin to GC8E8A0 Challenge 💖 Virtual x 15 💖 Country x 5 💖 reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.
I’ve never much gone for ‘challenge caches’. Mostly they just bug me when I fail to filter them off my map and only end up realising that I’m arbitrarily disallowed from logging them when I’m already out and about.
So imagine my surprise when, stopping in town this misty morning on my way to Knock airport after a week of geohashing/geocaching along the West coast with my mother, I discovered by chance that I’m actually eligible for it. I’ve cached plenty enough to meet the virtuals count but I couldn’t for the life of me name the six countries I’ve apparently found virtuals in. Apparently I have, though, according to the checker, so I parked nearby and walked out here to find the cache.
It didn’t take long before I spotted something suspicious and pulled it, and lo and behold, it was the cache. The lid is absent and the logbook missing, so I tore a bit off a bus ticket from my wallet and wrote the usual bits on that before returning the cache to its hiding spot.
I’m still not a big fan of challenge caches, but I enjoyed this cache for what it is nonetheless. Might need a new logbook and possibly a lid, though!
TFTC.
This checkin to geohash 2024-11-27 53 -8 reflects a geohashing expedition. See more of Dan's hash logs.
Driveway outside a house in Garrafrauns, Co. Galway, Ireland.
A quick and easy find on our way to the airport at Knock to end our Irish adventure, this morning.
Finding the hashpoint was easy. We drove to it, arriving at 10:31, overshooting very slightly and walking back 20 metres (we could’ve done it without even getting out of the car if we’d cared to). Then we were done.
What happened next is where things went wrong. We stopped in Ballyhaunis, half-way between the hashpoint and the airport at Knock, for a comfort break and to find a local geocache. Then we hiked out to find a second nearby geocache, but the icy conditions on the way back slowed us down considerably (and my mother fell over at least once). We stepped into a cafe for a quick drink, and apparently my attitude to our imminently-departing flight was so laid-back (in actual fact, I thought we had about half an hour more in-hand than we did) that my mother decided to reflect it and play laid-back too. Sarcastically, she suggested we stay around Ballyhaunis for a round of cakes, too, and I – not recognising her tone as sarcastic – agreed. In fact, I thought that her relaxed attitude was because we had a long time until our flight, too. (tl;dr: when two people famed for their sarcasm communicate sarcastically with one another, they should be careful not to, y’know, completely fuck up their plans for the rest of the day by accident)
As we digested our scones and my mother prepared to pour a second mug of tea, I pulled out my phone and realised to my horror that our plane was scheduled to depart in a little over 40 minutes: I’d got the departure time wrong. She said, “I thought you knew it was close, but you knew something I didn’t, like that it was really late!?” Nope.
We ran as fast as the icy ground would permit us to back to the car and drove at great speed to the airport, just in time to miss the closure of the departure desk. We’d just missed the last and indeed only flight out of Knock airport that day. Fuck.
Anyway, all of which is to say that we extended the rental on our car, arranged to drop it off at Dublin airport, and drove coast-to-coast across Ireland to get to a more-favourable airport and a last-minute AirBnB, where we dropped out bags then went out for pizza in a dangerously underlit bar before listening to some Irish folks music in a different bar and going to bed.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow… we’ll leave the country. I promise.