Luck of the Iris

Cork in an October morning

Posted on 11 October 2014 by Jan Hayes

Saturday morning, 11th October I decided to take a short trek around Sunday’s Well and Mardyke while morning fog had rolled into Cork city. For that brief period it was reminiscent of an 80’s fantasy movie.

Posted in Cork, Cork City, Fog, Nature, sunrise | Tagged cork, cork city, fog, mardyke, mist, october, park, sunday's well, walking | Leave a comment

A Tunnel at the Marina, Cork City

Posted on 15 September 2014 by Jan Hayes

About two weeks ago I stumbled across a small tunnel near the old slipway by Dundanion Castle, roughly 1o meters in length it looks like it is being recently used as an illegal dumping spot. I checked Ordinance Survey Ireland site to see what this small tunnel was identified as, according to their Historical Map this was marked as ‘Cave’. My guess it was some sort of cellar.

Link to OSI:
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V1,571173,571820,7,9

Two weeks later I returned to the site with a better camera.

Concealed Entrance

Entrance from the outside

Entrance. Seems like a popular dumping ground

Entrance. Looks like it turned into an illegal dumping ground

End of the tunnel. There is a small portion of space at the archway, barely a foot deep

“Backstreet Boys Suck” it says

Looks like some blood on the wall

The tunnel also was a habitat for the Meta Menardi, aka Cave Spider. There were plenty of these crawling along the ceiling. They’re an unpleasant sight but apparently pose no threat.

Meta Menardi or Cave Spider. Ugly but harmless.

Meta Menardi or Cave Spider egg sack

Meta Menardi or Cave Spider. Ugly but harmless.

Meta Menardi or Cave Spider.Ugly but harmless.

Posted in Activity, Caves, Cork, Cork City, Spelunking, Urbex | Tagged abandoned, blackrock, cave, cellar, cork, cork city, dunandion castle, dundanion, marina, stone, tunnel, urbex | Leave a comment

Mount Gabriel – Mizen Peninsula, Co. Cork

Posted on 1 September 2014 by Jan Hayes

Mount Gabriel not only provides a pretty great view of the peninsular but also features some mine shafts as well. We managed to find at least 3 mine shafts close in proximity to the road leading up to the mountain top, only one of which we couldn’t access. The remaining two mine shafts were quite small, tiny when compared to the copper mines in Allihies. The biggest of these two only went as far as, 30 meters before reaching a dead end.

According to mindat, Baryite was the main material being mined.

Entrance to the first mine shaft

Exiting the first mine shaft

Exiting the second mine shaft

Inside a chamber of the second mine shaft

material in the second mine shaft

Material from the second mine shaft. Is that Granite or limestone?

Inside the chamber of the second mine shaft, this is roughly a 5 second exposure

First mineshaft, water constantly dripping from the ceiling

The view from the top is pretty great.

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Schull

Posted in Caves, Cork, Mine, Mountain, Mountain, Scenery, Spelunking, Urbex | Tagged abandoned, ballydehob, baryite, exploring, mine, mine shaft, minecraft, mnt gabriel, mount gabriel, schull, spellunking | 2 Comments

The Crow’s Nest – Minecraft

Posted on 31 May 2014 by Jan Hayes

I’ve recently decided to give Minecraft mods a try after having abandoned the game for something like six months. Previously I’ve been put off installing them because of the awkward processes required. Some of the mods were dependent on other mods which were then dependent on other mods and so on, until you reach the final mod that wasn’t compatible with the version of Minecraft you’re running and so I just gave up.

Apparently the process has improved, albeit not by much. I would be inclined to write the exact instructions I took to install all the mods for these screenshots but there is a good chance it will be outdated in a matter of weeks. Instead I’ll just list the mods and setup I have:

Shader: SEUS v10.1 Preview 2 for Minecraft 1.7.2
Mod dependancy for shader: Forge 10.12.1.1101
Resource Pack: Chroma Hills 1.0.8 LATEST
Minecraft Client version: 1.7.2
OS: Windows 7

It may be awkward but it’s definitely well worth it, some of these mods are a stunning piece of work. Here I have started working on a project called The Crow’s Nest, you can download what I have so far from here.

Posted in Building, Gaming, Minecraft | Tagged architecture, crow's nest, gaming, house, minecraft | Leave a comment

Fitzgerald’s Park got a new facelift

Posted on 17 May 2014 by Jan Hayes

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Old Kenmare Road, Co. Kerry

Posted on 12 November 2013 by Jan Hayes

We recently trekked a small part of the Old Kenmare road near Killarney, beautiful place to be in despite the bad weather we had for most of the day. Although we were soaked to the bone, we had a blast!

Posted in Activity, Climbing, Kerry, Mountain, Nature, Places | Tagged Irish countryside, kenmare, kerry, killarney, mountains, trekking, walking | Leave a comment

Carrig House, Lower Glanmire Road, Cork City

Posted on 12 October 2013 by Jan Hayes

I’ve seen this late Georgian house across The Marina on several occasions and was always curious as to see what was inside it. Unfortunately, a fire in 2002 had destroyed most of the interior. An attempt to renovate it had been made but only getting as far as building the new roof, the house has since been closed up with metal sheets installed on all entrances.

Recently, I noticed one of the sheets had been torn down and figured it would be a good opportunity to check it out before the sheet will be put back up again. While there was a shortage of furniture, we did find something interesting in the end …

We found two old computers that looked like they were from the 60’s. According to Fabice Blewitt’s comment below: “The computers belonged to the Old Radio school located in Carrig House. “