Stiffy at the Liffey and other Biffo69 Achievements in Fabulous Dublin

Okay back to the stats! We love our map, we like that we are gradually filling it in like a little jigsaw, we especially love when the jigsaw pieces get darker, we do NOT like blank pieces. The lovely Emerald Isle lay blank and wanting for a very long time, scratching at our shoulder every time we looked at our achievements.

                                                  Time to book flights to Dublin! 

We chose Dublin over Northern Ireland as in 'Earthcaching' terms Ireland does count as another country (quite rightly!), and just 'up the road' from Dublin is a little Earthcache,

 here we come!

Love it or loathe it Ryanair is local and handy but on this occasion it would not be possible to travel there and back in one day. So we booked to leave early on the Saturday morning and back home on the Sunday evening. Mr.Biff downloaded everything in a 30 mile radius, as he does, just incase! Dublin and surrounding area is not short on caches and it would be possible to really cache frenzy here, however our goal was to light up Ireland, see a bit of Dublin, bag our Silver Earthcache and of course drink some Guinness in a good Irish pub.

                                                 


Saturday 12th February we headed off, the flight went without incident other than Mrs.Biffo ripping Mr.Biffo's arm off at take off, I'm not a huge fan of flying. The flight is super fast, I barely had time to eat my super expensive baby tub of Sour Cream Pringles (oh Mr.Biff hates the smell of those) and my ears started to warn of the decrease in altitude OUCH! Every step of transport that we took in Ireland was surprisingly smooth, maybe we are just used to really shoddy infrastructure and poor service, but I was really impressed by how easy and effortless it was to get around. I later found out that it is all run by leprechauns, well naturally......


Stiffy By The Liffey 
by Donnacha | GCE388 | Dublin, Ireland    was our very first find in Dublin! A rare Virtual cache first listed in 2003, what an amazing structure, I really loved it but I fear it left Mr.Biff feeling a little lacking..........

Biffy with the Stiffy

It was only about 7.30am so we were feeling really happy with our first cache so early in the day. The Stiffy is Dublin's latest and controversial attraction located in the position formerly occupied by Nelson's Pillar. 

The Spike is a winning design by Ian Ritchie Architects of London chosen from an international field of 205 entries. The majority of the entries were from Ireland but were also received from Europe, America and even Iran. The field was short listed to three, Jonathan Bennett, Dublin based architect, Ian Ritchie Architects of London and Hunt McGarry, Architects, also based in London.

The Spike is a conical spire of rolled stainless steel plate which tapers from 3 metres in diameter at the base to a 0.1 metre pointed pinnacle at a height of 120 metres. The top 12 metres of the structure is illuminated from within and the top 500 mm of the structure is made of conically cast optical glass. The upper part of the monument will gently sway in direct response to the wind reflecting the character of its climate, landscape and people.

Our second cache was another virtual and one of my favourite caches ever, I'm sad to see that it has been archived but hopefully someone will use the site to bring folks here to these haunting sculptures.

Memories By The Water

A cache by RoswellJam Hidden : 01/11/2003

The dramatic sculptures depict the anguish of the potato famine in the last century (1845-49). They really make you stop and think. Potato Blight was the fungus that caused the failure of potato crops over a few years. As this was the staple diet of the poor and for many their only source of income it led to the death of millions of Irish men, women and children. 

Ireland is in your hands, in your power. If you do not save her, she cannot save herself. I solemnly call upon you to recollect that I predict with the sincerest conviction that a quarter of her population will perish unless you come to her relief.

Daniel O'Connell to the British House of Commons, 1847.

Mr. O'Connell underestimated the famine as it claimed half of the Irish population. Political unrest resulted in Britain's Prime Minister, Charles Trevelyan, stopping the export of corn to help feed the starving, his openly stated desire was to make Irish property support Irish poverty. No aid was provided, instead of sending food, the government sent soldiers to stop rioting and thieving. The lucky managed to find passage to Britain or America. 

Anyway enough of the history lesson although it is truly fascinating albeit heartbreaking. We stayed in the North Star Hotel in the ropier side of Dublin, but it was clean and in a good spot for the trains and trams. WoW trams! The trams in Dublin are fabulous; I wonder if perhaps this was the vision for Edinburgh? We deposited our bags in the hotel as it was still very early and off we set to grab a few in the area.

Forgotton Façade
by Bootle | GC11YE9 | Dublin, Ireland

An interesting facade indeed but not a nice place for a cache grubby spot that you don't really want to go poking around in! 

North Strand 1941 

by toczygroszek (adopted by anacreon, then Bootle!) | GC1R1J2 | Dublin, Ireland

Interesting war history to this one.

Dublin's Railway Termini: Amiens Street 

by Bootle | GC16NV2 | Dublin, Ireland

I note that when writing this Amiens Street has been taken off.

We got at bit lost at this point and ended up outside a massive stadium which was overrun with muggles including protest muggles! No jobs for teachers...hey no kidding I could have joined them! This was one of our DNFs, which was so difficult to walk away from but sometimes you have to simply value the time you have and walk away. This saddens Mr.Biff no end. So we headed to Amiens Street station and started on our journey to claim an Irish Earthcache.

  North Bull Island

GC1J3MC

Created by: AbbeyAckbar

Difficulty: 

Terrain: 

Date Hidden: 2/7/2010

Cache Size: 

Favorite Points: 5

We departed the train after a short trip at Howth and headed towards Bull Island. On a map it doesn't look much of a walk! Lol! It was pretty windy and bitterly cold as we walked over the causeway to reach the 'island', it's a nature reserve but clearly popular with golfers, surfers, families the lot! We found it quite difficult to work out the answers for some of the questions to claim the earth cache, it asks about waves, well in truth one wave looks pretty much like any other to me!

We were also able to pick up a multi cache:

Interprete this Dollier
by snoopyandmickey | GC18VX0 | Leinster, Ireland 

It was an extra effort to come this far out of Dublin but I am really pleased that we did. There is also St.Anne's  Park nearby where we grabbed some more caches and another DNF 

St Anne's - Duckpond View
by Bootle | GC18R08 | Dublin, Ireland 

Firefly series - #6 - Jayne
by AbbeyAckbar | GC26NE6 | Dublin, Ireland 

Still the object had been achieved everything we needed to claim our silver Earthcache.

I am a proud

Back on the train and back to Dublin, we freshened up and then headed out for an evenings caching and of course our next achievement 'Earthcache Guinness Master'! We did lots of caches before hitting the pub, the most memorable of these being the Webcam cache:
Gardiner's Treat
by Bootle | GCJKTN | Dublin, Ireland

Yet again Dotscot gets roped in to help out, as Mr.Biff and I loiter about the centre island between two

streets Dotscot tries to find us on the webcam. What a scream "move to the left, no, no over a bit go right, okay back a bit!" It's a wonder we didn't get run over or lifted by the Garda! You can just make out Mr.Biff, on his trusty phone, and myself still trying to find the webcam. Later in the evening we went to O'Shea's which is behind Mr.Biff in a North Westerly direction. We can highly recommend this wee pub for fabulous music and hearty Guinness, a further claim to fame is that it's where the Boomtown Rats used to play in the early days.

Other caches we found this night were:

Art Deco Dublin: Townsend St. Flats
by Bootle | GC1G2W9 | Dublin, Ireland

Art Deco Dublin: The Gas Co.
by Bootle | GC1G2TX | Dublin, Ireland

Ein Stein
by toczygroszek (adopted by Hezekiah) | GC1NTJM | Dublin, Ireland 

Firefly series - #1 - Firefly
by AbbeyAckbar | GC263R0 | Dublin, Ireland 

The next day we headed off on the tram to the other side of Dublin destination Phoenix Park where we nabbed a few more:

Phoenix Park - Park Gate & Lodge
by Lahtac | GC27V18 | Dublin, Ireland 

Phoenix Park - Islandbridge Gate
by Lahtac | GC27P7B | Dublin, Ireland 

The Pantheon
by Blue Jay | GC22Z5C | Dublin, Ireland

Phoenix Park - NCR Gate & Lodge
by Lahtac | GC29YZZ | Dublin, Ireland

Z is for Zoo
by Hezekiah | GC11FDB | Dublin, Ireland 

You certainly get around a place geocaching and we can definitely say that we have seen plenty of the sights of Dublin, though not all and we must return again one day as it is a really lovely city. We didn't get to the Dublin castle area at all so that will be on our list for the next visit.

A is for Arsenal
by Hezekiah | GC11F7Q | Dublin, Ireland

This cache is now our farthest west cache, this upsets Mr.Biff as although it is to do with arms not football, he is a loyal West Ham fan and does not like to see the word Arsenal on his stats! Funny creatures men.

This pic is really in here because I was teaching myself to add animations to my blog...... honest .... sadly none of these men as far as I am aware are geocachers.