Marble Arch Caves delighted to welcome student on Work Experience Scheme
This week we were delighted to welcome William, a student of Devenish College, as part of a Work Experience Scheme. Getting to grips with the inner workings of a large visitor attraction can be daunting for most, but it wasn’t long before he got stuck in helping the Operations Team with the showcave, assisting our Visitor Services Team, and getting creative with the Development Team looking at new events and the exciting things we have planned for 2024. William was kind enough to put together a short blog about his week with us, let’s see how he got on;
” For my school work experience I decided to pick Marble Arch Caves. I picked it as it lined up very well with my school subjects and my interests, plus it also sounds cool. Here’s what happened.
The first thing on Monday was getting shown around the building, and then taken into the cave itself. Due to the stormy weather the previous few days some parts of the cave were inaccessible, and the whole thing was covered in sand. I was talked through the basics of how the cave was formed and the different points of interest. Then it was helmets on because it’s cleaning time! The river had left sand on the path that needed to be cleared, not too hard but time consuming, a head lamp ended up stuck in the river too, very funny. There was meant to be a tour that day but due to the high water levels in the cave they were cancelled.
On Tuesday the cave was EVEN more flooded and by the time I left the whole cave was shut. That day was mostly doing odd jobs like cleaning the shelves in the gift shop and seeing the VR tour.
Wednesday had the best weather thankfully as we were going up the side of Cuilcagh Mountain on the boardwalk to do some litter picking! Got a lift to the boardwalk path itself so that was nice. We found about half a bin bag of litter on the way up and down, even saw a rare bird and some sheep, also a lot of banana peels. Don’t throw those down, they take ages to decompose!
On Thursday I saw the safety checks done at the caves, such as the backup generator, boiler and fire alarm. I then had a chance to help the front desk, making sure the float was the right amount, getting the tickets for the tours ready for the weekend and learning how the online booking system works. Then at the end of the day we set up a classroom for outreach pictures, got to look at some taxidermy and seen some top quality acting.
And finally on Friday I was talked through the [events] the caves has planned for the coming year, how the MAC social media operates and even suggested my own ideas (they were very good ideas) then we went and looked around Cladagh Glen Nature Reserve and talked about the activities hosted there.
Overall I learned a lot about the Geopark itself as well as how MAC operates day to day, the importance of respecting the local environment and the most important thing I learned is that someone can talk about how peat bogs form for 40 minutes.”
– William
Well there you have it! We’d like to wish him all the best in his future studies and career path, and we hope he had fun. Who knows, maybe we’ll see him working with us again in future, a budding Tour Guide in in the making perhaps!
See some of William’s Photographs below;
