Pushing up the Slieve

The Bank Holiday weekends always inspire me to do something beyond laundry and a walk round the city centre. That extra day off seems to motivate everyone to take advantage of it. And so, Tommy-boy myself and a few friends found ourselves up in the Mourne Mountains for a day-long hike. The Mourne Mountain range rises abrubtly out of the sea and to an elevation of about 2,700 feet. On the drive from Dublin to Belfast (a drive I know all too well) they come dramatically into view just across the border into Co. Down and I've always wanted to climb in them.

After sorting out all the major details, the group of us picked out a mountain in the range to climb called Slieve Binian. It looked like a reasonable hike of about 8 miles and isn't the highest peak in the range so we thought we could all do it no bother... But sometimes the best laid plans fail... We drove along the coast for miles looking for the beginning of the trail and finally found what we thought was the Slieve Binian carpark...

We jumped on to a half-assed trail and just started to climb. And then we lost the trail but continued to climb. Everyone kept looking round asking, "Is that the trail?" There were a few mirage trails: "That's the trail, I see it up ahead!" Fortunately, since there are few to no trees on these mountains it's near impossible to get lost in them. Yer either going up towards the summit or down towards the sea.

Finally we came upon some other hikers with a map who informed us that we were not climbing Slive Binian but were in fact climbing, Slieve Donard, the highest mountain in the range and in NI. The hikers pointed us back in the direction of the real and actual trail (saving our ankles from prickly gorse and mud slides) and away we went. It was a good climb, with the last peak being the steepest and hardest and if it wasn't for my pride, I might have given up but was so very glad I didn't when I saw the incredible views from the summit.

All in, we were up and down the mountain in six hours, slightly weatherbeaten, midge eaten and with sore feet but otherwise feeling aces. If anyone's up for a hike... I'm in.