Tuesday 6 October 2009

Ireland Four Peaks

Like many things that happen in my life, it all began over a couple of beer's, in this instance it was a couple of Steins of Paulaner while up at the Belfast Oktoberfest celebrations. Aaron was wondering what anyone thought of covering the 4 tallest peaks in Ireland, obviously I said I would be up for it, as did a couple of other boys. A week later and after pretty much forgetting even discussing the matter I got a phone call off Aaron asking if I was still up for it, another yes from myself and it was decided that we would just go for it this weekend.



View Larger Map

The Irish 4 peaks cover the highest mountain in each of the four provinces; Mweelrea 814m (Co Mayo) Connaught, Carrantoohil 1039m ( Co Kerry) Munster, Lughnaquillia 925m (Co Wicklow) Leinster and Slieve Donard 850m ( Co Down) Ulster.

Plan as it stands is to head off on Friday morning bag 2 peaks, drive to the next one, bed down for a couple hours, then up and down and on to the final peak before falling down in a big dirty heap. A couple of fish suppers and pints of Guinness might also make their way into the itinerary, but its still very loose at the minute.

I think I'll take my Holux M-241 GPS logger on the road and trail to keep track of how fast we get up and down the hills. Except for a couple of runs it hasn't been out too much, I'm sure the 700 mile round trip will remedy some of the neglect its probably feeling.

Theres a good bit to be done before we head off, top of the list being picking up the maps and burn off a couple of CD's for the hours of driving ahead of us. Time to go find some of the things needed for our adventure.

Hopefully the weather will be kind enough for views like this.




Add to Technorati Favorites

2 comment(s) so far, add your thoughts -->>here<<--:

Alan Sloman said...

Lovely picture (Where is it?)
Thoroughly looking forward to this trip report!
Looks knackering.
Ever thought of a nice dawdle for a change?
:)

Keith said...

Its a view of the hills around Carrantoohil in Kerry. You can see parts of it in this video around the 6:45 mark.

A nice dwadle? I took the Ulster Way pretty easy I thought? ;-) Next time I'm in the Mournes it will probably be relatively relaxed, I'll get the camera out a bit more.