Saint Patrick’s Day

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

We usually attend the Saint Patrick’s day parade in one of the local town’s with the children’s school, but this year they decided they wanted a break. It was a dry day, but bitterly cold with a blustery easterly wind.

Avoiding towns we headed toward the Nephin Wilderness Area (Wild Nephin). It is a rather grand title for what is 11,000 hectares of planted forest and upland agricultural land, though admittedly there is also plenty bogs, heaths, lakes, rivers and mountains.

The landscape is stunning. There is plenty to see, particularly if you like walking or cycling. The area includes much of the Nephin Beg Mountain Range,  which is a beautiful but little explored part of Ireland.

 

 

 

 

Walking in Mayo

County Mayo has much to offer walkers and cyclists and yet it is very under utilized. When we were in North Wales a couple of weeks ago there were walkers and ramblers everywhere. Many of the small villages within the Snowdonian National Park seem to rely on these visitors in order to make a living. It is estimated that 360,000 walkers climb the summit of Snowdon every year and that’s just one moutain. I can find no figures for County Mayo. Croagh Patrick, which is a pilgrim mountain has up to 20,000 walkers on Reek Sunday (the traditional day in July for climbing the mountain) but for the rest of the summer would have much fewer. The other mountain and hill walks in the county are relatively little explored.

View of Croagh Patrick from the other side of Clew Bay

Last week we completed a walk near Mulranny (Mallaranny) on the west coast of County Mayo. We were surrounded by amazing scenery, Clew Bay with all it’s islands and Croagh Patrick across the water and yet we saw no one (other than sheep and a few cows) till we got back to the start of our journey, where the path joins the now popular Great Western Greenway.

Greenway

Initially, we followed the path that is part of the Rocky Mountain Way, then turned left onto a bog road (a road built to aid getting turf from bogs), and climbed gently uphill. We could see Croagh Patrick across the bay and looking NW, Achill Island.

Rocky mountain way

Achill island – the distance peak

bog road

View across clew bay

Once at the top (and following a number of false summits) you get another view right over Ballycroy National Park – though by this time the cloud had come over and it wasn’t as clear as earlier in the day.

View from summit

As well as sheep, hare droppings were evident and quite abundant. Heather (Erica tetralix) was in flower, and on some of the lower slopes was being visited by camera-shy bumblebees! Bog cotton and many amazing mosses also abounded. We found a few grouse feathers and hoped this now rare bird had not fallen victim to a predator.

hare droppings

grouse feathers (I think!)

Heather

Moss

bog cotton

The walk was a definite tick for my 16 for 2016 list  – 2: Find two new places in Mayo to explore

And is certainly a place I would like to explore some more.