On the way back from Cork, we stopped off at two different destinations; the Mitchelstown Caves and Cahir Castle. The two are quite close together and also quite close to The Rock of Cashel, you could do all three in a day of you really wanted to. But this post is just about the Mitchelstown Caves.
I really love visting caves, there is something so fascinating about them. Last year in September, we visited the Wellington Caves near Dubbo in New South Wales, with my extended family - it was such a good trip with all the cousins. The Wellington caves were the highlight of the trip for me. I think I also remember visiting a cave when I was really young while staying with relatives who lived near Ashford in Country New South Wales. But anyway, Ireland has a number of ‘showcaves’ as they call them, so we decided to stop off and see the Mitchelstown Caves on the way back.
The caves were discovered by a local farmer, Michael Condon in 1833. He found them when his crowbar fell down though a crack in the ground. The land that the caves are on have been owned by the same family ever since, and the original farm house still serves as the admin / ticket building. There isn’t any indication that the caves were used by humans throughout history, there hasn’t even been any animal fossils found in the limestone cave systems.
On arrival we entered through the hole pictured below and descended down some very steep steps that were construction with concrete in the 1970’s. We were in a decent sized group of about 12 people with two young ladies as our guides. They provided some fascinating facts about the caves as they led us through three large caverns. The sheer scale of the caves is simply breathtaking, it’s such an otherwordly feeling being deep below the surface of the earth and I always think of how intrepid the people who first explored the cave were, venturing deep into the unknown
At one point, the guides turned all the lights off to demonstrate how dark the caves really were and my gosh, it was pitch black! It was a very unsettling sensation but the girls were really brave. Electricity was run down in to the cave systems in the 1970’s, before that the explorers and visitors used candlelight and torches.
In recent years, the caves have been used for events, concerts, film premieres and as film locations. Visiting the caves was such a great experience for the girls, it challenges them a bit in terms of getting out of their comfort zone and building self confidence. They were so brave, having already experience what caves are like in Australia and so well behaved in terms of listening to the guides . It also gives them a bit of an intro into geology and earth science. I’d highly recommend a visit to a cave as a learning experience for kids.
If you are planning to visit the Mitchelstown Caves, do call ahead and make a booking. We called on the morning of our visit and had no trouble booking into one of the time slots that day. They have guided tours every hour or so between 10am - 4pm. From memory - the tickets were about 8 euro each.