‘Hunting High & Low’ for caches on the Emerald Isle (Part One)

This week I took the other half on his first ever trip to Ireland, land of the leprechaun, lucky charms, countless Eurovision winners and a Norwegian 80s band doing their first 30th Anniversary gig!

Yes, we headed to Dublin to see A-Ha’s opening concert on their ‘Hunting High and Low’ tour. During the five day trip we also did some hunting high and low of our own, taking the opportunity to pick up a number of brilliant geocaches around the city and beyond.

After a very short and cheap Ryan Air flight we touched down at Dublin airport and after a 10 minute taxi ride, we were booking into our hotel on the edge of the city centre. 

Keen to get out and about exploring, we dumped our bags and set off for nearby O’Connell Street Lower where a virtual and several earthcaches were showing on the map.

The virtual was by an amazing pin point monument called The Spike. At 120 metres high it really is quite something and proved a little hard to capture in one photo at GZ. 

The earthcaches were also fun to do and mainly involved examining rocks on the various monuments along the street. 

As we reached the famous Liffy river and crossed one of the many bridges, I spotted we were near to Dublin’s liveliest night spot, Temple Bar. The other half was delighted as he was keen to find somewhere to sit, eat and drink in the warm. 

But first we had to make a couple of last geocaching stops. The first at the pretty old footbridge across the Liffy, Ha’penny Bridge, to grab the virtual and then at at restaurant at the bottom end of Temple Bar to do a biotite earthcache.

The following day, the city was packed full of people. What I hadnt realised when booking our trip, was that it coincided with Dublin’s annual half marathon. And it was clearly a big event in the city’s calendar. 

Keen to see a few out of breath Irish folk crossing the finish line, we set off early. On the way we diverted to grab a few caches, including the sidetracked at Connelley Station and started collecting the clues for the multi, 1916 Rising - The Women. 

As we got closer to the Marathon the streets were packed with spectators and red faced runners who had already completed the challenge. 

Whilst the other half stood watching the event, I slipped off to pick up a traditional nearby. It turned out to be a rather large pot very cleverly hidden in a metal railing post outside a house.

After watching a bit of the marathon we headed off to find some more caches including a traditional on Grafton Street hidden behind a beautiful statue in memory of the lead singer of Thin Lizzy and a virtual at Molly Malone’s memorial statue. 

We also visited the stunning Trinity College, taking photos of the stunning grounds. Whilst the other half popped into the gift shop I set out to do the virtual. It took a bit of wandering about to spot the correct door with the lion on it, but eventually I did, and a Irish leprechaun magnet, purchased an hour earlier, was the perfect thing to feature in the required photo.

Next up my main goal of the day...the lab caches. Having already clocked up 30 in Manchester, it was nice to see 10 had been set in three of the city’s major museums & the national library.

All required visits to each, where we needed to track down a particular artifact to collect some information. And the great news...all were free of charge.

We started at the archaeology museum and got off to a slightly rocky start as I quickly realised the GPS didn’t really work in getting us to the right place within the old building. 

Thankfully the CO’s descriptions were helpful but it still took us quite some time to locate the first artifact. The following two were easier and soon we were in the National Library. 

After examining the stain glass windows for our fourth lab cache, the other half departed to get a sandwich whilst I continued the quest. Sadly the area I needed to get to was closed on a Sunday, so I missed out on getting that lab cache and moved on to the National Gallery. 

Now, a slight warning to anyone else attempting these three...the gallery is huge, on several floors and a maze of rooms! In addition, room numbers seem to jump about a bit, so as I wandered through rooms counting numbers, thinking I was almost where I needed to be, I suddenly realised I’d gone full circle and was back in a lower numbered room! 

After a lot of wandering, back and forth and up and down various lifts and stairs, I finally found the three stunning paintings to my great relief. 

We weren’t able to visit the natural history museum as the road was closed for the marathon, so had to return a couple of days later to get the final two lab caches. 

It was an interesting place, which reminded me of visits as a child to the Natural History Museum in London, but also a little sad to see so many dead stuffed animals.

Back to Sunday, where we finished the day by visiting some of the beautiful historical buildings around Dublin Castle and grabbed a couple more caches. 

Unfortunately, it was also at this point in the day that I realised the Wherigo ‘I Love Dublin’, which we’d been doing for the past day and a half, had stopped working. 

It required us to discover various unknown key Dublin landmarks, ie they popped up as found whenever you got near one. 

We’d achieved 8 of the required 10, but the Wherigo has been silent for almost 4 hours, despite visiting some of the city’s most infamous landmarks. We did try again the following day, but sadly just didn’t revisit enough places during the rest of our trip to get the magic 10.

...to be continued! Until then, slán!