It was so mild yesterday on Benbaun that we walked some of the route in teeshirts [the route we took sheltered us from the breeze]. Picture taken looking down the Lough Inagh valley and the rest of the Twelve Bens [covered in cloud]. In the foreground is the Gleninagh river (which flows into Lough Inagh) and the large mountain covered in cloud is Bencorrbeg [Binn an Choire Bhig in Irish]. At the bottom left of the picture is a line of standing stones aligned with both the Bens and the Maumturks.
In the last few years, the adventures of the Irish Antarctic explorer Tom Crean have been well remembered in Ireland – a play on his life is showing later in January in Galway. His greatest feat was helping Ernest Shackleton get the entire crew of the Endurance back safely from an ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic [he had been on the Scott expedition too but wasn’t selected for the final – and fatal – team].
There were three Irishmen that were part of the team that planned to trek across the continent of Antarctica, but who found themselves battling for survival once their ship, the Endurance, became trapped in ice and was crushed. The three were Crean, Timothy McCarthy and Shackleton himself, who dropped dead on South Georgia island in the South Atlantic Ocean, on this day in 1922.