CRADLE HOLES CONNECTED MAKING SECOND THE LONGEST CAVE IN IRELAND

Over the weekend  16-17th of May a team Pavel Cesnak and Artur Kozlowski discovered and established a direct underwater route between Upper and Lower Cradle Hole in Marble Arch System

The 165m long link was christened The Dancing Girls' Connection and joined together two only recently established cave systems: The Marble Arch – Prod's Pot/Cascades connected by Kozlowski in November 2009 and The Monastir Sink – Upper Cradle connected by Chris Jewell and Kozlowski earlier this year.

The joined Monastir Sink -Upper Cradle – Marble Arch – Prod's Pot – Cascade System constitutes second the longest cave in Ireland with over 11km of passages

PADI Cavern Course in Ireland

Mexican Passage, Marble Arch, 1 May 2010

TEAM: Artur Kozłowski, Indrė Kutkaite, Éabha Grainne Lankford
(aka The Beauty and The Beasts), Pavel Cesnak

The planned 9am meeting at DCU was slightly delayed as I needed my beauty sleep but by 10.30 am a truly international Irish - Lithuanian - Slovakian - Polish team of cavers was fully assembled and headed off towards the North. After an epic 5h journey which deserves to be told as a separate story with a glass or perhaps a bottle of something stronger we reached the Hoo and after an initial shock that some experienced after realising that there really was no shower there, we set off to the Marble Arch.

Somewhere after the Wet Wiggle we met Steve Muh and Helen the Lovely Girl coming back from the end of Lagnabrocky Way and after a brief chat we continued towards Mexican. (by the way, an awkward moment at the desk in MAC: when asked who I left the callout with I answered that with Steve McNamara, without having known that he entered MAC 2h earlier...lol)