North Atlantic Skyline » galway

Search and Rescue

John Smyth — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:27:00 +0000

One of the Irish Coastguard’s Search and Rescue helicopters flying past Letterbreckaun (Binn Bhriocháin) in March this year, on a morning when most of the mountains in Connnemara were lightly dusted with snow. Letterbreckaun is 667 metres tall and is part of the Maumturk mountain range. The low altitude would suggest that the helicopter was probably engaged in a search operation.

Feeling a little sheepish

John Smyth — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 21:09:23 +0000

Near Duach beach on Inishbofin was a newborn lamb and its mother. Like all baby creatures that can do little more than wobble about on oversized legs and guzzle milk for the first few weeks of its life, the lamb’s instinct is to hide in undergrowth for safety. The grassland near the beach was a thin green carpet over a mixture of rock and sand dunes, and the lamb had been sniffing around the depressions made by rabbit burrows when I took the bottom picture. Later, I spotted that it had snuggled down into a clump of nettles. I was marveling at how the instinct for concealment was so strong in such a young creature when it dawned on me that the lamb’s hiding place might have been a bit too secure. Approaching slowly so as not to panic the ewe, I walked over to the lamb. Sure enough, it had manage to jamb itself into a rabbit hole – its legs were caught underneath and it didn’t have the strength to get out.

The lamb was lucky, not just because I lifted it out of the hole but also because, given my culinary appetite for all things ovine, I had approached it carrying a camera rather than a knife and fork.

Fires in the west

John Smyth — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:40:01 +0000

It is illegal to burn growing vegetation between March 1st and August 31st – a period that happens to coincide with the most suitable conditions for setting fire to things. In Connemara every spring, large plumes of smoke regularly appear on the horizon as bogland is set ablaze. The purpose of doing so is to burn off the gorse (or furze) bushes, which themselves spread like..er.. wildfire. The problem is what else gets burned. Connemara, like other parts of the country where the land is too poor for tillage [i.e. bogs], has many forestry plantations, and those forests get incinerated, along with any nesting birds, parked vehicles, households and anything else in the path of an uncontrolled fire.

I drove past the cottage above (on the road out to Rossaveal) a couple of weeks ago. Three fire tenders and crews were in the process of trying to control a roof fire in a thatched cottage. However, the brown smoke in the upper right hand corner of the photo is not from the house fire. It is from a huge bog fire burning out near Carraroe, further west. And therein lies the real problem with gorse fires – it has the potential to tie up valuable resources from doing more serious work – like saving a house. I don’t know how many fire tenders are available in the whole of Galway city and county but I suspect that it is not many. And I’d like to think that if I called the fire brigade, they’d be able to speed directly to my aid imediately rather than have to drive for an hour or so back from a bog fire.

Irish Army Road Race in Connemara

John Smyth — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:35:52 +0000

It was a bright, sunny day in Connemara today, and if you were sheltered from the distinctly chilly breeze, it felt almost warm. The Irish Army had a road race across Connemara today – soldiers from across the country were competing. I took the picture above in the Inagh valley and though it was still along way from the finish line in Leenaun, number 149 was well ahead of the pack.