Saturday, March 6, 2010

A somewhat different day in the Mournes

Well this was almost two months ago, just after some of the most severe winter weather in decades. Yes, it's taken me that long to put up a post about it; I will not be rushed on these things.

The western part of the Mourne Mountains is the quickest to get to for me, it's less than an hours drive from Dundalk, more like 45 minutes. That's if traffic in Newry, a town which I can't avoid, isn't too heavy. Newry and Dundalk are only about 13 miles apart, but on different sides of this weird, artificial construct of a border which creates Northern Ireland. Spike Milligan wrote a book about this border ("Puckoon"), so enough said, probably. Anyhow, due to different VAT rates, lower cost of doing business in general and a very favourable euro-sterling exchange rate at present, Newry, and many other border towns in NI, have become shopping Meccas for people living in the Republic. The Sainsbury's in Newry sells more alcohol than any other Sainsbury's in the UK, and I've done my bit to contribute toward that reputation. The ASDA in Enniskillen is apparently the most profitable ASDA in the world. So when I go climbing after work in summer, or walking over the weekends in winter, I have to deal with Newry, its drivers, shoppers and worst of all, its unsynchronised traffic lights.

But it's all worth it to get to the Mournes, which has become one of my favourite places on earth. The rounded mountain tops, sometimes crested with rocky tors, spectacular views, beautiful countryside and great rock-climbing makes up a large part of the gaping chasm in any Capetonian's life who no longer lives there.

Every winter there's a bit of snow on the higher peaks of the Mournes, not all season, but for a few weeks. This year, however, we've had several heavy falls. I've never seen as much snow on the peaks as that Saturday, the 9th of January 2010. I donned my thermal base layer and headed out. The peaks on this side mostly have bird names, Hen, Cock (stop sniggering in the back there), Pigeon and Eagle. Not really inspiring, it has to be said. The tors of Hen provide some good rock-climbing with only about a 25 minute walk-in. Likewise Pigeon has some good rock routes, and I'd walked to its summit before with the children, so I decided to walk up past Hen to the summit of Cock, and back down.


The above photo is looking across to Eagle mountain on the way up to Hen. The path, a steep but pleasant stroll up a grassy slope in summer, was icy and quite teacherous; I slipped a good few times. Going up the northern slope of Cock I was soon wading through snow. This was the view looking down on Hen (the scene of my accident in 2006):


The view from the summit was amazing, not because Cock is a high, inspiring peak (it's not), but because I have never in the 5 years I've lived here seen the Mournes with this much snow. The peak in sunlight at the back of this next photo is Donard, the highest in the area at 850 metres. To the left of it you can see the rocky summit of Slieve Bearnagh (I was up there 2 weeks ago):


The Spelga Dam was frozen over and almost unrecognizable, the mountains' usually green landscape temporarily dressed in white, as though to be given away. I'd take you, Lady Mourne, except I'm already married.


And now the real fun part, I had battled through the snow on the way up, and wasn't looking forward to sinking up to my thigh on each step on the way down. Then I remembered there's a thing called "glissade", glissading is basically sliding down a snow slope on your arse. I was able to do this for at least 200 metres before it got a bit too rocky and grassy lower down.


By the way; the main reason I use Blogger instead of Wordpress is that with Blogger you can upload 5 photos at once. That's also why most of my posts have a maximum of 5 photos. I'm a lazy blogger, and totally unashamed of that!

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