This morning in service I looked longingly out of the window at the purple headed mountains and so, having looked at an ailing coffee maker, mended a crackling 'phone and established that there was nothing else that I needed to do I donned minimal clothing, took my shoes off and ran away.
The track and elevation graph are from my Garmin and, once again, it has lost track whilst climbing Silsean. I was also tracking on my Samsung which was more successful, see below. The total distance was 14.95 miles, maximum height 755m, average speed moving 4.35 mph.
This gate and the inscription are at the end of the quarry road in Ballyknockan and gives easy access to the Wicklow mountains.
I seem to be attracted to cows. This is half way up and I gave them wide berth - I didn't bother them and apart from raising their heads and sizing me up they didn't bother me.
I followed a wadi - a water course through the peat, with lots of wet sphagnum moss, one of the most delicious substances to walk barefoot on.
Here is the wadi, looking back towards the Blessington Lake
And here's looking upward.
More of the same. Although overcast there was no rain from the duration of my adventure and it was very warm, warm enough to make me sweat profusely.
At the summit the wadi took me slightly north of Silsean's peak, so I ran south and circumnavigated the cairn to prove that I had been there. As one does.
This is a screen shot from Oruxmaps on my Samsung smart phone that is no longer a phone, and the mapping is not as good as in my recent Willand posts. Sadly Ireland is not so gracious with their OS mapping as is the UK. The cows are not shown on this map.
Silsean has a cairn. It also has some nice muddy peat and two shallow "lakes" to mess in. So after messing I ran to the companion peak Moanbane where, we are told, instead of a cairn there is a lake at the top. And sure enough there is, right smack at the very summit. It is quite small, perhaps 10 ft wide and 20 ft long. But the amazing thing is its depth. I lowered myself into the water expecting it to be like one of the inactive ponds in the
Wood between the Worlds, but found that at shoulder depth I was only just beginning to find what might be the beginning of the bottom (one never quite knows how much or what sort of mud to find). And the water continued a bit under the surrounding ground which was a bit scary. So I left the bottom largely undiscovered and gingerly swam across the lake - the temperature was quite reasonable, and it very effectively washed off all the mud. I can thoroughly recommend it.
It seems a strange place to find all that much water. In my experience I have found that water generally goes downhill but not, apparently, in Ireland. After all, why else would they put Cork at the bottom?
Having done Silsean and Moanbane I continued in a generally north direction with no definitive idea as to get back to the road and this turned out to be a mistake. Ignoring such details, how I loved the freedom of the mountains! To run barefoot across peaty grass-land or heather without a soul around and such beauty all around. But life cannot be all
fricasseed frogs and eel pie and I had to get back in time for a shower before dinner at 6pm.
This stream between Moanbane and Black Hill is marked on OpenStreetMap as Cook Brook. I looked in vain for a suitable place for a dip.
This picture is from the flank of Black Hill looking towards home, having just crossed Cook Brook. At this point I started looking for likely places to regain civilisation.
The heather on this mountain grows twice as high as normal, sometimes waste height, which made my progress slow. Eventually I decided to descend come what may. The heather eventually gave way to gorse and I began to fear that the way might become impassable (to bare legs and feet) but thankfully I made it through. Towards the bottom the gorse gave way to ferns and these were even higher and I had to fight my way through - but it was nice fighting. Bracken is friendly. I headed for a dwelling place and was able to join its (no doubt private) driveway and thence to the road and the long haul back home.
