Episode 2 Off the Beaten Track

The limestone country of western Fermanagh is pockmarked

with the telltale signs of a landscape that's hidden from view.

Just above the famous Marble Arch show caves,

the rivers disappear into sink holes,

dissolving the rock, creating a magical underworld.

If you know where to look.

I've come to Monastir Gorge with cave expert Tim Fogg,

looking for a beautiful cavern that's tucked away

right beside the car park where we started our walk.

We're just going down here to the gorge, Darryl,

and then upstream a bit to a little cave called Templebawn,

which I suppose, roughly translated, is "the white chapel".

It always fascinates me to think that things that you see now

could have been very, very different in the past.

Yeah, it seems very possible that we're walking up now

what was once a cave, and that this whole gorge was roofed.

There's lots of little bits of evidence

-that lead you to think that.

-Yes.

And Tim should know.

He's a very modern caveman,

whose expertise is in big demand.

The rock bed just... At the top.

I've just been very lucky.

Over time, I've been involved with a number of events

to make films underground and on cliffs and in trees,

because they use ropes to get there, to stay safe.

The way the water's found, we're...

'We took Kate Humble and a guy called Steve Backshall,

'we took them into four caves around Britain

'and put them really through a lot of interesting caving.

'Underwater and down huge pitches and so on.'

It was caving that first brought Tim to Fermanagh 30 years ago.

And he's been exploring here ever since.

We're following the Owenbrean River upstream

to find the cave first discovered by a group of ramblers

early last century.

That is fabulous, it's like some tropical ravine.

Yeah, you come here, you just see the entrance... We will need our torches.

OK.

-You have absolutely no idea what's in there?

-No.

So it's going to be a totally new experience,

-creeping into a crack in the rock...

-Yeah.

..and finding something really quite beautiful and extraordinary.

OK, well, let's get on with it, I want to see it.

-A bit of a scramble up from here.

-OK.

'The water that carved Temblebawn is long gone,

'but caves can be extremely dangerous places.

'The best advice is, never go in alone

'or unprepared.'

Hey... Fantastic!

It gets a bit bigger in here now.

Oh! You would never know it was as big as that.

That's big!

It's not just exquisite.

It looks in a way, Tim, almost like

someone's been in here with the icing sugar,

applying it all over the walls, it's gorgeous.

Yeah, the pure white is just weathered limestone,

it's pure limestone and the surface is sort of soft.

It's just that pure weathered limestone,

gives it the lovely whiteness.

This is the big high thing for you.

You spend your life travelling the world exploring caves,

getting people like me into them, and this is on your back yard.

Yeah, absolutely fantastic.

I don't know if you can get the feeling of what it would be like

if you knew nobody had been here before,

you come round that corner and you look into a place like this

and you know that nobody has ever stepped there before.

That's what drives me.

And the possibility is there to do it in Fermanagh, and

-that just keeps me going.

-It's like the final frontier...

-Yeah, yeah.

-..it's either deep sea or space.

-Yeah.

It's easy to see the attraction and why Tim's still searching

for the big one in the heart of Fermanagh.

We know that underneath Cuilcagh there is a vast cave,

taking a lot of water from the east side to the west side.

We've put dye in one end of it, comes out the other.

So it's there, and we're trying to find our way into it!

If I find something big in a far part of the world,

it's nothing like as good as finding something small here in Fermanagh.

100 metres of new cave here is really good stuff.

Much better than a kilometre in China.

We're off on another hiking trail - to Benaughlin Mountain.

"The peak of the speaking horse" gets its name

from the mythical white beast who tells fortunes

and haunts these slopes.

It's a cracking location for a walk,

just off the Enniskillen-to-Swanlinbar road.

It starts and finishes at the end of a forest track,

which gives easy access to the foot of the mountain.

It's a great introduction to hill walking

with the minimum of effort.

It rises to only 370 metres,

but what it lacks in height it more than makes up for

with huge panoramic views of the entire county.

And I'm travelling in elevated company,

heading for the top with three adventurers who trained here

to conquer Mount Everest.

Great view over Upper Lough Erne, there.

Neil Elliott from Ballinamallard

has climbed the highest mountains on six of the seven continents.

He now has Antarctica in his sights.

Trillick publican Fergal Corrigan

has come a long way since his first ascent here in P5.

He's climbed all over Europe and loves ice routes in the Alps.

And their pal, Raymond Hassard,

is serious about the mountains too.

He's reached the top on five continents.

A far cry from the farm near Enniskillen.

And they love home ground.

Raymond and I started from school, as such,

and we met again through the Duke of Edinburgh Award at school.

And then we went on to Gortatole where we met Fergal,

at the age of probably 17.

And we had a like interest in mountaineering and climbing,

getting out there doing things, and we've developed it

and we've been all round the world.

Whenever we decided to go off to Everest,

it was brilliant to go off with such a group, you know,

my two best friends, and you knew you were always safe with them.

It's a passion we've had and it's been great, it's worked really well.

The first time I came up here

was with an uncle and with my old man.

It was an expedition in itself.

The heather and that probably as tall as I was back then!

But I remember finding money on the summit

that obviously someone had lost, and they spun me some story

about fairies leaving it or something like that.

So I kept searching the whole time I was up here!

The likes of this on your back doorstep is brilliant.

It's a great stepping stone for anybody, any aspiring climber.

Or anybody into hill walking who wants to do a bit of rock climbing,

or whatever, you're in a fantastic area for that.

With myself, Raymond and Neil,

we sort of started off here and it was like a natural progression

for us to go to other places, but

I suppose our friendship grew alongside our climbing talents,

which was good.

The hiker's trail follows the contours around the mountain.

We're making steady progress,

but it was a very different story for Raymond

when he first tackled Benaughlin as 12-year-old boy scout.

I remember coming up the steep section,

and I was just wondering, "Will I ever get to the top here?"

And every kind of hill that you climb

and you go round a corner, you see another hill,

and right the way up to the very top,

you weren't sure you were going to get there.

When you got to the top, you were elated.

You'd actually climbed a mountain.

-It's possible.

-Yeah, that stuff's great when you're a kid.

It definitely is.

'If anybody who does any kind of walking,

'whether it's just up and down the town,

'if they really want to get out into the hills, they can,

'and it's not that big an effort to...

'You could start off with forest tracks

'and then progress your way up to, maybe, like, Benaughlin here

'or Cuilcagh Mountain.

'Like you've seen, it was a fairly easy terrain.

'There's a track almost the whole way to the summit.

'And, you know, if you prepare yourself well, be sensible about it

'and wear the correct footwear and bring a hot flask with you

'and bring rainproof clothes and what have you,

'it's a safe place to be.'

And who knows where it all might end.

Benaughlin was the spark that took the men to Tibet in 2006.

For years, going up the various mountains that we climbed,

we would have talked about the Himalayas and Everest.

And it was a case of,

I wouldn't want to go out there, just pay the money

and join an expedition that I didn't know anybody in.

If we were going, we were going together,

we would support each other, because we trusted each other.

But Everest is a killer,

and thin oxygen at altitude took its toll on the boys, including Neil.

Oh, that's hard work.

-Hard, hard work.

-Well done.

I think I'm just going to lie down and die here!

We're as close friends as ever.

The likes of any of them, our experiences down the years,

we've always made more friends out of them.

It's a great place. It can be difficult at times,

but you actually see people's real values.

And whenever you get people together when times are tough and hard,

then you know everyone gels together and that's always been the case.

So, if anything, we're better friends, not worse.

We don't see as much of ourselves during the week now,

you get busier with life,

but there's always someone at the end of the phone.

If you're going to do something,

there's always someone there to jump up and go and do something.

'And with the gentle patchwork of rural Fermanagh laid out below us,

'we're on the last leg of the hike.'

You can take this mountain at whatever pace you want.

If you want to train hard for a mountain like Everest,

you just come here and you go faster

and go longer distances.

We usually took in Cuilcagh from here as well,

cos we wanted big days and endurance.

So we put on heavy packs and carried big weights,

so we could go to Everest as fit as possible.

As I say, it's great that it's on our doorstep and...

Here's us just coming up to the tricky point now.

Yeah, and that's one for a Sunday afternoon, to work off the dinner.

Anybody could manage that.

Absolutely, you know, an hour probably, something like that,

you could be up here from the road down there.

So it's brilliant, really is.

It's just pretty as a picture.

360 degrees of beautiful Fermanagh.

And the big mountain, the big boy, Cuilcagh, in the distance there.

-Yeah.

-Lovely.

'If you fancy a breath of fresh mountain air,

'why not give it a go?

'Just log on to:

'You'll find route maps, advice about how to tackle the walk safely

'and useful links to rambling clubs in your area.'

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