To most Corkonians, east Cork is as flat as a snooker table, but this week's search for missing Midleton boy Robert Holohan has introduced the public to another east Cork: rough gnarled terrain riven with nooks and gullies - a searcher's nightmare.
Yesterday at 1 p.m., Sgt Seán Leahy led a group of over 80 volunteers out on their second search of the day for Robert, concentrating this time on an area south of Leamlara village including parts of the Leamlara river.
The group was transported in a convoy of police vans, ambulances and four-wheel drives, which snaked its way along main roads and boreens to the search area.
In other times, the Leamlara river would undoubtedly be scenic - a beautiful deciduous wood flanking either side of a steep v-shaped valley tapering down to the river. But yesterday it was far from hospitable as the rain sheeted down.
The volunteer nature of the searchers was reflected in the huge array of implements they brought with them to beat back briars and gorse as they arrived at the rendezvous point at Knockakeen bridge.
Sticks, pieces of piping, golf clubs, walking sticks and hurleys were all employed in the battle with briars and furze and the difficulty of crossing over barbed wire and electric fences.
Once briefed by Sgt Leahy, they began their search, breaking through gaps in the ditch to spread out and sift through the earmarked fields.
It was not the fields but the scrubland that posed the biggest problems. Tangles of briars, forests of furze and screens of alder saplings down by the riverside made the task all the more difficult, with its impenetrable stretches of terrain that were almost impossible to search.
Inevitably, searchers had to detour, as there were pockets that could not be penetrated. Searchers consoled themselves with the thought that if they couldn't get in there, then hopefully no one else could have either.
John Moore, from Edenderry in Co Offaly, was on his second day of searching. A student at UCC, he decided to join the search on Wednesday.
"I was sitting at home watching it the first night and I was thinking this was desperate.
"But it's one thing just to sit there and think how desperate it is - it's another to get up and do something about it. So I came down to help out."
Ruth Flood, a Dubliner who lives at nearby Ballinacurra, decided to join because of her son Adam, who is about the same age.
"Adam knows him [ Robert] from the hurling and Adam will be 11 next week, so that touched home. It really hits you when you're putting them to bed at night to think about him out in this.
"It really is every parent's worst nightmare."
