Many places on the island of Ireland are steeped in mystery, and Loughareena ranks up amongst the best. "The Vanishing Lake" lives up to it's name due to the fact that depending on when you visit the area, the lake may or may not be there. In fact you may not be able to spot any sign of a lake ever being there.
The reason this happens is due to the area being in a large chalk sinkhole. This sinkhole can get blocked up with peat during dry spells. After this happens and when a particularly wet periods happens the water draining from the surrounding areas can flood in and settle in the lake. Eventually the peat blockage errodes, or when the aquifier beneath the lake can accept more water, the lake will suddenly vanish.
An aquifier is a layer of permeable rock, or chalk in this case, which can hold water and can usually be extracted using a water well. There are two different types of aquifier, an unconfied aquifier and a confined aquifier. A confined aquifier can occur when an aquiclude, which is an unimpeniterable area underlying or overlying an aquifier, sits on top the aquifier and increases it's pressure meaning it can not escape.
It is believed that the original engineers of the road to Ballycastle were caught unawares of the lake, as the road runs straight through where the lake would be. During times of flood the original lake would have been extremely treacherous to cross for weeks at a time. The most famous casualty of this road was Colonel John Magee McNeille who in 1898 drowned while trying to cross the flooded road in an attempt to catch the Ballycastle train. The modern road has been raised to the highest flood level and reinforced with brick walls.
Loughareena has been ranked by the public as 14th in list of the Geological Society of London's list of top 100 geological sites in the UK and Ireland, beating the Giant's Causeway by over 50 places.
http://apps.esriuk.com/app/GreatGeosites/6/wmt/view/5e0d44970b3a4b4dafb7da0404b2d8ed/index.html
- Q1 Is Loughareena's aquifier a confined or unconfined aquifier?
- Q2 Go to the waypoint Q2 and look out over where you think the lake would be. How many spikes can you count on the channel which goes under the road?
- Q3 Walk down the path to waypoint Q3. What feature runs under the concrete road?
Log your find and send answers to all the questions to HackAMen via the a private message on the Geocaching site and I'll try to respond if they are correct as soon as I can