Waterfall Fairies Traditional Cache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(small)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
This cache is available again after being temporarily lost in road works in 2015. Please enjoy the Smoo Cave and the story. This cache gives you chance to view the very pretty Smoo River which plunges down various sink holes and finally the Smoo Cave waterfall and makes up the complex hydrology of the area
This cache is available again after being temporarily lost in road works in 2015. Please enjoy the Smoo Cave and the story. This cache gives a view of Allt Smoo, and especially, just to the right of the trees, a bend in the steam. Associated with this cache is a tale of exploration, cave hunting and waterfall fairies. It is an easily accessible roadside cache, therefore stealth is required. It is reached on the A838 in about the middle of the sprawling settlement of Durness. There is parking and toilets for Smoo 300m from the cache site.. The story starts in 1984 when a small group of us went on holiday in Assynt. After a morning exploring Allt nan Uamh main stream cave, we were sitting in the dry stream bed having a well deserved lunch. The other half of the grains said ‘looking at the smooth rock up-stream and the rough rock down-stream this would be an ideal place to pick up a stone and find a draughting hole’ At which point he did and did. A wee bit of digging revealed a small cave in the stream bed which headed towards the cave we had just visited. It’s now called ‘The Cave of the Innocent Child’ in the Caves of Assynt book. We then headed north to Durness; still buoyed by the excitement of finding a new cave, we went looking for more. We visited Smoo, where the waterfall had dried up and had been for most of the summer and summers previously. To get into the waterfall chamber required a level of scrambling to peer in. We were told that many years back the waterfall was a regular feature and that a boatman used to take tourists in the back of the cave to see the waterfall. Subsequently the waterfall had become a winter feature of after heavy rain. We decided to head up Allt Smoo to see where the water had gone (hoping to find another cave), only to find the steam disappearing down what appeared to be a new infinitely deep hole in the river bed. We were intrigued as it appeared to be bottomless (or very deep anyhow) and taking pretty well all the water from the river. So we set too and started to divert the river down an old dry overflow channel. In doing so the water stopped going down the new hole, unfortunately the sides then slumped and it only appeared about 4' deep. We then wandered off and thought nothing of it....... 4 years later we came back with a group Venture Scouts, only to find, not only the waterfall flowing into the pool in Smoo, but a landing stage and a boatman taking people rides into the chamber to see the waterfall. From the site of cache look across to the bend in stream. In the far corner is the sink hole which still takes most of the water underground and into secret caves which finally link up, somewhere with the known cave system. Across the nearside bend is the overflow channel we reopened. We still nip across to Smoo, a couple of times a year to be the Waterfall Fairies and maintain the overflow channel. The Smoo waterfall now remains a beautiful attraction, even in dry weather.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Gur pnpur vf haqre gur obhyqre ol gur ubgry ebnq fvta