Kylemore Abbey nestled into the foot of Doughruagh hill and bathed in sunshine on Saturday morning – Inishturk island is in the background.
After an absence of a couple of years, I’ve been trying to get back to regular hillwalking with the Galway Walking club. I’d been asked to lead a walk this year and typically, I’d put it on the long finger until I was reminded a week ago that I was scheduled to lead a hike the following week – i.e. Sunday. Ooops. Since I was still a bit rusty, I didn’t want to pick a trail that was too long or arduous (it doesn’t look good when the walk leader looks like he is close to collapse – very bad for morale), and also one that wouldn’t be too adversely affected by poor weather.
The planned route – the peaks of Benbaun, Benbrack and Knockbrack are marked in the map above.
The custom is that the leader does a ‘recce’ beforehand (i.e. walks the route a week or two beforehand ) to ensure that he/she is familiar with the route. I only had the Saturday, so I drove to Kylemore Abbey to scout out a route encompassing Benbaun, Benbrack and Knockbrack (see the map above), which are the mountains opposite the abbey (they are also the hills directly east of Diamond Hill). It is a route that, when the weather permits, has great views of Kylemore Abbey, Diamond Hill, the coastline beyond, the Twelve Bens and even Mweelrea -throughout the entire day.
Panoramic view from Benbaun looking west and north – the mountains and islands are labelled. Kylemore Abbey is visible beside the lake in the middle of the picture. Achill island is hidden behind Doughruagh. Best viewed on a big screen.
The weather forecast had not been promising – rain was predicted for Saturday, but the forecast for Sunday was better. So I was resigned to a drenching during my Saturday trek. Instead, it was sunny, from the moment I locked the car at 9am to the moment I returned, just over four hours later, and I was treated to the sight (and familiar sounds) of a male cuckoo as I started my walk into the first hill. True, I could see an ominous wall of dark grey cloud descend first upon the peak of Mweelrea (at just over 8oo metres), then over the Bens (around 700 metres) but the clouds never dropped lower than that, and the day stayed dry. The day after, not so much.
We left the city around nine, and it was very overcast, with the clouds whizzing by overhead. Before we got to Moycullen, the rain had started, and we stopped in torrential rain at Peacock’s Hotel at Maam Cross to decide whether to continue on to Kylemore or not. The day before, the drive up the Lough Inagh valley was a glorious experience – the Bens reflected in the lake and the Maamturk mountains looking splendid in the sunshine. On Sunday, they were simply invisible – hidden in swirling clouds and veils of rain sweeping through the valley. When the clouds occasionally broke to reveal the mountains, dozens of newly formed waterfalls gushed down their sides. The streams in the valley had been transformed overnight, raised beyond winter levels and flooding across the bogland. One stream flooded onto the road, and our cars could barely through the floodwater. It was hard to believe how much rain had fallen overnight.
When we got to Kylemore Abbey, it felt like a gale was blowing – driving the rain almost horizontially across Kylemore Lough. As for the hills we were supposed to climb – the cloud cover was as low as 200 metres and it made no sense to go out in such conditions. So much for a weatherproof walk. As we watched the rain swirling across the car-park, we consoled ourselves with an early brunch in the excellent Kylemore Abbey cafe (I can heartily recommend the fruit crumble with custard) and decided to return home. Another group from the club had planned to start a hike from Corcóg in the Maumturks – they were stuck in Peacock’s instead and had decided to abandon their hike too.
It didn’t stop raining (in Galway city) until five on Sunday evening. It was amazing how much flooding had occurred in Connemara, and given that the hills are full of lambs at this time of year, I hope that not many of them were caught in the floods. Summer in Galway, indeed.