Ireland is a country on the very western fringe of the European continent. On moving to Dublin, its capital city, I found that things I was able to obtain easily when living in the UK were either not available or could only be obtained at great expense. When I moved to Galway, despite it being a city I found that certain other things weren't available outside of the capital. I then discovered Connemara, an area that covers the western tip of County Galway, a place which at first seemed impossibly remote and although it's become far more familiar to me and therefore less remote, I

The weather forecast predicted early morning fog up at Renvyle, so I left in good time to catch the dawn. I was hoping to see a bank of fog seeping in from the sea from a high vantage point I'd selected on the coast. I opened my front door to a real pea-souper which I didn't drive out of for several miles, and as I drove cross country I'd go from perfectly clear patches where I could see the stars in the sky to heavy fog where I couldn't see much more than the road. I got to the location but there was only a small sliver of fog - not enough for what I had in mind - so I headed for

I'd overestimated the length of the journey and parked outside an abandoned church at the foot of the Maumturk mountains shrouded in pitch darkness and absolute silence. As my eyes adjusted I saw the light of farm houses dotted around the landscape. Dawn wasn't long in coming and I set off along a muddy track towards the shore of Lehanagh Lough. My way got progressively more waterlogged until I could go no further and all I managed to do was get my feet wet (I later read that Maumturk Mountains are one of the two wettest places in Ireland). I had intended to climb up a mountain to