You can see the rock slabs of Spellack more or less in the middle of the photo, the sun lighting them up a bit, and Slive Meelmore up to the right, Slieve Bearnagh behind them to the left.
The Meelmore Lodge was having a fun day for kids, with loud music blaring up the whole valley. It was rather bizarre, being in this beautiful, wild setting, with cheesy inspirational songs such as "Eye of the Tiger" and "We are the Champions" clamouring for our attention. We could hear all the commentary too; knew exactly who had won the sack race, for example.
This is the gulley you scramble up to the start of the route:
And the climb itself; Mark led it and we both struggled. I'm not sure why, Mark has climbed it several times before. It just felt hard for a 4a, with delicate footwork needed pretty much the whole way up. I think we're both just rusty, not enough climbing this year.
In this photo you can see Hare's Gap behind my left shoulder, and the peaks in the background are Commedagh (left), Beg (centre) and Cove (right).
A super day with a nice breeze to keep the midges at bay!
