“Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing
Oscar Wilde
I thought I’d kick this one off with an Oscar Wilde quote being as he was Irish, and the quotes pretty fitting considering the content!
The Plan Forms
‘Lugnaquillia’ That’s a weird name for an Irish mountain I think to myself, sounds sort of Spanish or something, yet it is however Gaelic and means ‘Hollow of the wood’. The ‘Lug’ as it’s nicknamed is in fact the highest mountain in the Wicklow National Park. And of course me and my mate Andy are going to go and hike the thing. The navigation here is meant to be difficult, which is good for us as we need to see how our nav is coming along. But why Ireland? Well the Mountain Leader handbook says you need QMD’s in areas such as Scotland, Wales, The Lake District and Ireland. And we are going to Wicklow as it’s the closest part of Ireland we can easily get to on the ferry from North Wales. We can go from Hollyhead which seems nice and simple doesn’t it? Then an hour drive to Wicklow National Park. Straightforward!
Spoke Too Soon About Simplicity: Slight Hiccup Off to the Brecon Beacons For A Month
As with all well laid plans, it’s bound to go to shit. A few weeks ago my boss asked me to go and cover in the Brecon Beacons for a couple of days. That couple of days has turned into ‘how would you feel if it was a month?’ Ordinarily I’d jump at at this opportunity because of course Brecon is a mountainous area also., there’s plenty of stuff round there to explore and why not. Other outdoorsy people may be reading this thinking ‘how dare you!’ but I find the mountains here more like, well big not overly interesting hills. Do I like them? It’s a nice area but the mountains are boring in comparison to other areas. The Brecon Beacons (sorry Bannau Brycheiniog now) area is also very remote even compared to where I live in Llanberis, more remote than the possibility of me becoming a Taylor swift fan. It’s about three and a half hours from here (Llanberis) anyway you get the point it’s not exactly ideal.
The Day Comes
When the day comes I wake up later than I expect which isn’t ideal because I have brought pretty much all my hiking gear with me. And that means I’m going to be going through and making sure it’s all packed and correctly. What I really want to do though is just stay in bed. Why I feel more able to stay in bed do nothing and sleep on days where I have things planned, but not on days I have free I don’t know. That and you would be surprised just how comfy the wipe clean mattresses of the YHA actually are. It takes me hours to pack as the motivated part of me and the sloth part of me are fighting a battle that the motivated part is suffering heavy casualties in. Despite this I do eventually sort everything out, jump in the car, get energy drink and pick my mum up a cuddly sheep toy from Brecon (she’s as weird as I am) I sent her a whatsapp with a pic of one in the other day and when I saw her she was like ‘oh I thought you were getting me it?’ Back in the car with my totally adult cuddly sheep toy I’m now driving to Llanberis, which is about three and a half hours from here, slugging red bull with the same sort of eagerness that Bear Grylls drinks his own piss with. I’d say the drives not unpleasant but with the amount of potholes in the Brecon area it’s like being a rally driver. When I eventually arrive in Llanberis I’m less than impressed to find that as usual people have parked round the hostel like an epileptic playing Jenga. It’s a good job I won’t need the car tomorrow because Andy is picking me up, but I won’t be getting to chill out yet though because I have to empty a month’s worth of assorted travelling and hiking gear out of the car and choose what I need. I manage to get my stuff organised and in a strangely sensible move I manage to stop worrying about if I’ve forgotten to pack something and go to bed early, and pretty annoyingly only get about three hours sleep waking up feeling like someone’s been smearing tile grout in my eyes. Several cups of tea later Andy arrives and he looks more tired than I do, as if being awake is torment to his soul. Pulling up the drive he rolls down his window and says the croaked, pained hello only a man over 40 could give following an orbital concert last night in the midlands and driving three and a half hours here on four hours sleep. Years ago when we were both unhinged ravers and worked in a record shop this kind of disrespect for sleep would have been easy. Now we are much older and both work shifts, it’s pretty brutal. I feel kind of bad seeing him sat in the drivers seat like a sad miniature Richard O’Brien so I try and offer some comfort by telling him I’ll buy him a McDonalds breakfast and coffee when we get onto Anglesey, like he’s a four year old. You know what will cheer you up mate? Have a bag of trans-fats in a vaguely breakfast shaped package passed to you by a moody teenager, you might be tired but look, it could be worse!
Eventually we get to McDonalds, order some breakfast and as usual Google asks me ‘how would you rate this McDonalds’ well I don’t bother as all I can think of is that on the positive there’s no shit on the toilet walls for once and the staff seem calmly resigned to their current fate. It’s a bit like when it asks you to rate a supermarket. What am I going to put? ‘bloody loved aisle three, what a rush!’ After filling up on fats and caffeine we drive for the ferry which is an experience for us both, and somehow we get the car on without incident. As soon as we are on the food floor, like a hobbit I decide I need a second breakfast. Coming off the arthritis drugs my appetite has returned and I have an overpriced breakfast bap which comes with a egg that looks like it came out of a fisher price kids toy. Looking up after finishing this war crime on breakfast I see Andy has fallen dead asleep in the least comfortable looking chair possible with the Irish seas stretching out to the horizon through the window behind him.
Dublin
The ferry finally arrives in Dublin after around three hours, and before long we are driving off it. The first thing that hits us is that actually we haven’t thought about where we are going. And the second thing is that neither of our phones are roaming so, after a few roads apart from ‘Dublin’ we haven’t to a frigging clue where we are. Typically we have planned for every eventuality apart from this one! This throws up a few issues, the main one being that we cant use google maps, and we need this to find our way to the accommodation. The fact we came to Ireland specifically to practice our navigation provides a burning irony. We have to find a place to park as close to what we believe is the centre, and then jump out of the car and follow signs making guesses at where the busy area with the most shops is, so we can find a mobile phone shop and fix this issue. Somehow, we manage to guess correctly and after a bit of guidance from people in the other shops manage to find our way to to a 3 mobile shop. I buy a European second sim-card and Andy discovers he just hasn’t turned his roaming settings on properly! With this sorted and thanking the guy who probably now thinks we both have a brain injury we head right back out and just about make it to the car before the ticket runs out and we are off, avoiding Irish drivers who all seem to be trying to kill us and traffic lights that seem to be on a hair trigger.
Ballymore Eustace
It doesn’t take long to get to our airbnb in Ballymore Eustace a lovely peaceful little town. This small town escaped many of the worse effects of the ‘Great Hunger'( the Irish Potato Famine) a famine that began in 1845 when the heavily relied upon potato crop was infected by a mold called Phytophthora infestans (or P. infestans). Ballymore and county Kildare only had potato as roughly 12 percent of it’s crops and due to this avoided some of the worst effects of the famine. In other areas however this was devastating for tenant farmers, ruining what was reported as up to a half of the whole potato crop for 1845 was destroyed and to make matters worse this continued for the next seven years ruining reportedly around three quarters. This as you can imagine was a catastrophe, and by 1852 a reported one million people had perished due to starvation and related causes.
Ballymore is a pleasant quiet town which you’d never expect was the origin of the first clashes of the 1798 rebellion against the English but it is. During the battle of Ballymore-Eustace the British garrison was attacked here by the United Irish Rebels on the 23rd May however the rebels were defeated. I could write so much more about this towns history but we are really here for the mountains (of course). If you ever come here though you should totally check out the Ballymore Inn they do an amazing steak sandwich!
Glenmalur
I’ve been planning for quite a while to hike this and so has Andy, so when we set off the next day for ‘The Lug’ we are both quite excited about it. The first thing that strikes us driving into Wicklow National park apart from all the Lycra clad cyclists with death wishes is that the national park is beautiful to look it. It reminds me of all the different bits I like about the lakes, Scotland and North Wales all blended together. We are also really lucky with the weather, it’s really good and the MAMILS know it too, in fact we pass several who think that by riding in enough numbers, and covering as much of the road as possible by default ‘ a car’. Don’t get me wrong I cycle too, just don’t be a stretchy clothed pest, single file is a possibility dudes. I have to admit, zipping down these roads on a road bike sounds like lots of fun.
“The term MAMIL has now officially been immortalized in the Oxford English Dictionary, and as one horrified cycling widow wrote in the Daily Mail, it is defined as “a middle-aged man who is a very keen road cyclist, typically one who rides an expensive bike and wears the type of clothing associated with professional cyclists.”
Bonnie Friend/ welovecycling.com
We are both pretty awed by how beautiful this place is and we have seen a lot of mountains and national park before. We drive to the carpark in the Glenmalur and leaving the car notice that near the start of the miners track there’s a huge boulder in memory of freedom fighters who based themselves in these mountains, highlighting the turmoil Ireland has been through over such a long period of time.
Chucking the gear on we head to the start of the trail, a road that crosses the small bridge over the river Bheag where we are slightly confused by the fresh looking ‘Private’ sign on the side. There is no indication of this being private on the OS maps we have. Me and Andy have already seen plenty of roads with ‘Private’ written on them which have a trail running though them and the ‘Private’ relates only to the surroundings, so based on this we decide to investigate. We are making our way up this road when we see a chap who has to be a local walking down with his dogs, and when he gets closer he shouts ‘can I help ya lads?’ in a way that doesn’t sound much like he wants to help us. Despite this me and Andy great him in a more friendly manner. He tells us the way is private and we explain we were confused as it isn’t marked as such on the maps. Hi body language is pretty off and he asks us where we are actually trying to get to, and when we say Luganquillia this doesn’t seem to surprise him. He starts a sentence which contains the words ‘the best thing you can do is head down the next trail’ it sounds like almost a threat. Which seems a bit rich coming from a guy who we can’t decide whether he’s an adult or teenager who’s talking to two full grown men. So we do take his less than friendly advice and the route plan I spent a good deal of time on is about half out of the window. What we aren’t aware of is this part of the trail is referred to as ‘the zig zags’ which is appropriate as it’s how it appears on the map. Neither of us got a friendly vibe off the dude, and we spend a lot of the hike questioning exactly why. And later we will put all the pieces together about the feeling of hostility we were getting.
Due to all this pissing about we have to head back the way we came to near the miners track car park and join a different trail that heads in the direction of the Lug. We intend to now take the trail to the small hill of Bendoo and head South. The only thing is because we are still talking about what was going on with the angry local we we overshoot the intended route up onto Clohernagh heading up it’s West Ridge. As we have been talking rather than check distance / direction and pacing we end up transporting ourselves instead to the North to Baravore. THis only clicks in when we stop for some lunch and I scan the map several times, come to the conclusion we are not where we are meant to be, start paying attention and look at check off features. Quickly I establish we are not where we though we where but in the glen area near Baravore. We have cocked up but now we know EXACTLY where we are. This is a happy mistake however as you can see the Glen (below) is stunning and it is pretty easy to join my original route about half way into it. Now no longer being half arsed and both paying attention we set a bearing to Arts Lough and follow a trail not marked on the map.
Pacing Problems And Shoe Eating Peat Bogs
The terrain here is quite hard going, which makes doing any kind of pacing near impossible, being deep peat bog in some places which we have to hop and dodge across at times both nearly losing a shoe to the bog. The trails here are either poorly defined if you’re lucky and non existent in general however that’s another reason why we are here, to build and test our skills somewhere difficult to navigate where we have never been before. And it does test our skills, as we were expecting as many websites and route plans for this area describe it as a difficult area not for amateur hikers. We can’t complain it’s exactly what we thought we were letting ourselves in for.
Eventually we start to see Art’s Lough ahead of us in the distance, shining a dull steely grey in the overcast light. Navigating ever more deep peat bog we head past the lough SW onto the mountain called Clohernaghn (Irish for stoney place apparently, very fitting) . On the way up to the summit we pass a fell runner who talks to us briefly, and she asks us where we are headed. Telling her we are en-route to the Lug she tells us to carry straight on but not to go left if we want to leave the summit. Obviously we ask her why that is and she tells us the landowner has been assaulted and the access rights revoked. Me and Andy discuss this for a while and it starts to dawn on us that we were probably going the correct way when we started and the hostility we encountered could have been due to this, we can’t be sure at this moment though. Reaching the summit of Clohernagh is a relief as this means we have finally re-joined the route I had already planned though about half way into it. The terrain is much easier which means we can use pacing and it’s an easy run from here, passing through giant mounds of ancient eroded peat as we hike past Corrigaslegguan.
The hike to Lugnaquillia has some amazing views of the national park. As we ascend up the long trail to the summit there’s lots of rocks shining on the floor, which look metallic but they turn out to be a mineral called Mica. This forms mainly in igneous and metamorphic rocks, which explains the lead mines around here. Arriving at the summit of ‘the lug’ is quite uneventful there’s just a stack of boulders and a trig point here with a bit of shelter for us to make a coffee, apart from that the top of the ‘Lug’ is like a large plateau. The important thing is though we have got here, it’s been a challenge and definitely will be a QMD. And that was the whole point, practice for Mountain Leader and have a big adventure.
Though the lug itself is not that interesting bar the views, it is a remote place which is why we are here or apparently as certain Irish say ‘Coming on the road’ (less sniggering at the back they mean traveling) to this national park. In fact there is hardly any civilization near here bar the closest town of Aghavannagh which is apparently known as the ‘last place that god made’. Due to this the ‘Lug’ and surrounding area has some interesting history. Following the 1798 rebellion, Irish rebel Michael Dwyer also known as ‘The Wicklow Cheif’ chose this mountain and the surrounding area as his area of operations for a Guerrilla war with the British. Which harried British forces So much they had to build a military road to access the mountains. After which his forced negotiated a surrender in 1803 and Dwyer was held at Wicklow Gaol until his eventual deportation to Australia.
Legends of Lugnaquillia
Legend suggests that Fionn mac Cumhaill, the very same giant of Irish Legend responsible for the giants causeway hurled what is known as the ‘Mottee Stone’ from the top of Lugnaquilla to the Croneblane Ridge overlooking the Avoca Valley.
Returning: The Way Is Shut
What we were not aware of earlier was that recently the landowner of the permissive trail was recently assaulted by some idiot and that’s lost everybody the right to cross the landowners land. This is a real shame that there’s selfish and aggressive people out there, which seems to be more and more frequent since COVID. We have to make a decision, do a long reroute and possible be navigating in the dark. We instantly rule this out, the navigation has been a small challenge but attempting to night nav this area seems like a bad idea. Or take the boring way out and descend via the route we came up. It’s the boring option but we decide the wisest and safest option is to backtrack, we have a much clearer idea of how long this will take. Plus we really fancy a chinese and a few beers after this. I think we’ve earned them.
Requiem For The Extreme 