Errigal Glen - The Broken Beech
The Errigal Glen Walk starts at the Errigal Bridge entrance to Errigal Glen on Temple Road, approx. 3 miles south west of Garvagh. The route follows the fast flowing Agivey River through a steep-sided and well wooded Glen.
This short walk follows a trail through a mixed-deciduous natural woodland - there is no formal path surface. The trail is quite muddy in places and there are short slopes and inclines along the way so appropriate footwear is recommended.
The forest, which is classified as an Ancient Wood, boasts a number of superb mature beech trees of a very grand scale. There are also (amongst others) oaks, sycamore, ash and thorn present.
Ancient woods are areas that have been wooded since at least 1600. This definition applies across the UK and was adopted because before this time planting was less common, so woods that were present in 1600 were more likely to have developed naturally. In some places, ancient woodland may even be the last living link with the Wildwood that covered the land after the last ice age.
Also along the trail we recommend you take time to read the information board which explains the details around the late 18th century house across the field - known as Ballintemple House . It is still inhabited today - one of the very few remaining in use.
We always take great care when recording the coordinates of a new cache but had a little difficulty with this one - probably due to local tree cover and more possibly cloud cover. We believe it will probably be accurate to about 10 feet or so - the position of the cache was chosen to help a little with GPS reception. So please bear this in mind when searching - complaints will be ignored!
The cache is a small, round tab lock box. The clue is in the cache name although the cache site itself reminded us a little of Medussa with her hair made of snakes!