He departed again into a mountain himself alone.

Mountains feature often in the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus. Like him I go to them to get away from the crowd. To be alone. And a bit of praying too. Yesterday I had the urge to get away again. I didn't think about the destination too much for fear of becoming chicken but, at the various decision points along the route where I might have turned back, I took the long way, and so made it to Church Mountain again.  Barefoot of course. I followed the same route up but this time I took a shorter route down.  One the way back, on the road between Hollywood and home, a driver stopped to ask me the usual "are you OK?". After answering in the usual affirmative he was interested enough to go on to ask me what and why and was duly impressed. "Fair play to you!"

Complete track just shy of 15 miles

Church Mountain detail

As usual you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

The farm track to the gap

Along the way, our lake in the distance

Church Mt on the left, Scalp straight ahead

The church ruins on the top, looking North

Looking North-West

Sunset in the making

Starting the descent

Steep descent to Drunreagh, rather overgrown

Here I joined the Drumreagh forest track

St Kevin (is it?) on the skyline dead centre

St Kevin's way, towards Hollywood