Behind the Fall

The glen

This is a short, steep-sided glen cut into basalt by a stream that rises a kilometre inland and drops about forty metres in the last three hundred. The basalt is the same lava sequence that forms the Giant's Causeway fifteen miles east, and it weathers in the same blocky way, which is why the glen has vertical walls rather than smooth sides.

The fall itself is about six metres and lands in a plunge pool. It is not a dramatic waterfall and it is not the reason people come here; the reason is the wood that fills the glen, which is one of the few surviving fragments of native ash and hazel on this coast, with a ground flora that includes wood anemone, wild garlic and, in the wetter hollows, opposite-leaved golden saxifrage.

The approach

From the car park, follow the waymarked path into the glen. The path climbs beside the stream, crosses it once on a footbridge, and then swings right and away up the side of the glen about eighty metres short of the fall. That turn is why the cache gets missed: the fall is visible but the path no longer goes to it, and the last eighty metres is a rough scramble down the bank beside the stream.

That scramble is the terrain rating. It is not technical, but it is steep, root-covered and wet, and it needs both hands in places.

The find

The fall drops over a lip of basalt that projects further than the rock behind it. That means there is a dry niche behind the water — shallow, about a metre deep, but dry. The container is in that niche on the left-hand side, at about head height, wedged behind a loose flake of basalt.

You do not need to get wet. Stand to the side of the fall and reach in; the water lands about a metre clear of the back wall. If the stream is in spate, do not attempt it — the niche fills with spray and the scramble down becomes genuinely dangerous.

Take the container out of the niche to open it. Logbooks signed inside a waterfall do not stay legible.

Terrain and safety

• The scramble down to the fall is the only difficult section. The bank is steep, the roots are slick, and the stream bed is loose.
• The basalt is columnar in places and the columns break off. Do not pull on any projecting block.
• The glen is a nature reserve and the woodland is ancient. Stay on the path where one exists and do not trample the ground flora.
• After heavy rain the stream rises fast. This cache should not be attempted in flood conditions.

After the find

The coast path from Ballintoy to Whitepark Bay is one of the best short walks in Northern Ireland: limestone cliffs, a white sand beach, and no development of any kind. Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge is four miles east and needs booking in summer.