Wild Nephin National Park

You may have read, in my previous post, that the last time I visited the Wild Nephin National Park I had neglected to bring my boots. This time, however, I had brought them with me, and I’d also brought my friend Murray. We set off along the Western Way trail towards a landmark called Altnabroky Shelter for no other reason than it appears on Google Maps and gave us something to aim for.

After an hour we reached the shelter and consulting an OS map I explained that I wanted to exit the forest that we were currently walking through towards the mountains on the other side. We then veered away from the Western Way along an access track for the forestry, looking for a gap in the trees which the satellite images on our phones assured us would soon appear, but it soon became obvious that the forest had thickened somewhat since the satellite images were taken and there were no longer any gaps. So there was nothing for it but to pick our way through the trees at a point where we guessed the forest to be narrowest.

We had picked a good point in the forest as we were soon through the trees and walking along the frozen ground on the other side. From here the snow covered mountains looked magnificent and Murray suggested that we climb the side of one. I had to agree that it seemed like a fine idea, so we headed in the most obvious direction straight in to a bog.

Traversing the bog involved hopping from one clump of earth to another, sometimes having to turn back to find an alternative route when we reached a gap too wide to jump across. Eventually we noticed a fence leading up the slope and figured that if we followed it up we wouldn’t have to spend all our time hopping about in the open like a pair of eejits. Soon enough as we ascended we reached snow and stood on the flank on Slieve Car we slowly became aware of the silence surrounding us. There was very little wind that day and in our current location we were sheltered from what little wind there was. If we stood still and held our breath we could hear litterally nothing. We stood there experiencing complete silence both aware that it was probably a once in a lifetime event, but soon continued upwards as it’s quite difficult to hold your breath when you’re trying to climb a mountain.

Very soon we were walking on thick snow and our way had become steep, but our view was spectacular and the light filtering through the clouds and picking out various parts of the view one at a time was something to behold.

Continuing to climb was becoming hard work (I was lugging my camera gear after all) and a few times I declared that I’d gone as far as I wanted to, but Murray persuaded me to keep climbing. And I’m glad that he did because although we didn’t get to all the way to the top, the view across the top of Slieve Car in the snow was one well worth the effort to see (thanks to Murray’s watch we later found out that we’d climbed to 649m above sea level).

We decided to descend by heading back towards the fence and following it down back to the forest from which we emerged, the light providing theatrical moments all the way down. The fence led us to a river which we followed with some difficulty until we reached the edge of the forest. Again our satellite image led us to expect a gap in the trees at the end of the track which we’d left earlier, but it occured to us as we trudged over spongy and very uneven ground, that our only realistic course of action – unappealing as it was – was to head in to the trees and try to locate the track.

This is where your phone’s ability to track your location accurately came in very handy as we were able to see where we were in relation to the satellite image and know that if we trusted the technology we’d come upon the track. We emerged, hearts racing, at a point in the track which looked like it hadn’t seen man or beast in some years and after traversing one more river were back on familiar ground, which is where we saw a van. Thinking ‘great, we’ll get a lift’ we watched as the van did a three point turn and drove off without so much as a ‘good luck’.

The walk from that point to Murray’s car was a long one with aching legs and my shoulders creaking under the weight of my pack, but when we passed a group of windmills which from the mountain had looked like they were probably on the other side of County Mayo we started to get a sense of how far we’d walked, which according to Murray’s watch was almost 22km. And from the car Slieve Car looked very far away indeed.