{"id":4135,"date":"2015-03-17T18:56:55","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T18:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=4135"},"modified":"2022-04-11T21:32:28","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T20:32:28","slug":"misty-mournes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/misty-mournes\/","title":{"rendered":"Misty Mournes"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a few years of looking yearningly at photos of grit tors with seaside views, I finally made it to Northern Ireland’s\u00a0Mourne Mountains<\/a>\u00a0last week.<\/p>\n

I flew in to Belfast under a clear blue sky, only to hear an apocalyptic weather forecast for the following day. It was depressingly accurate, and I genuinely wavered while sat in the car park the next morning – I eventually decided to just go for it though.\u00a0The cloud level was just above the car park, and\u00a0within about a quarter of\u00a0a mile I was deep in it.<\/p>\n

\"'Heart

‘Heart of the Mournes’. Somewhere. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

An information board made some vague claims about the views, but I can neither confirm nor deny their accuracy I’m afraid!<\/p>\n

\"Northern

Northern Ireland tourist board lies. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

I had planned to do the Inner Mourne Horseshoe, which takes in a few summits over 700m. With gale-force southwesterlies forecast I revised the plan and decided to instead stay low and head up the Annalong Valley for a bit. Enthusiasm gripped me once I was out though, so I ignored the plan entirely and followed the Mourne Wall<\/a> up to the summit of Slieve Binnian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"For

For the avoidance of doubt, this is not my “lovely weather on the hill” gear. Mourne Wall behind me. \u00a9 Haydn Williams 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

The wall was built between 1904 and 1922 to define the boundary of the catchment area for reservoirs created by the Belfast Water Commissioners. It’s an average of 1.5 m high and runs in a loop of 22 miles over 15 mountains, so is quite a structure (and quite a walk\/run<\/a> in one go). I got within a few metres of the summit of Binnian, but the wall hits a cliff and the second I moved out of its cover to find a way around the side I was blown over by the wind. After a similar second attempt I aborted and ran back down to the valley path.<\/p>\n

\"Just

Just keep going along here for a while. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

By now the rain was really lashing down, but I was already sufficiently wet that it wasn’t really an issue. It obviously wasn’t bothering the bucketloads of frogspawn that I encountered on my way to Percy Byshe; it seems spring has sprung. Percy Bysshe is marked on the map as a cairn or trig point; all I found was a big rock (it turns out that Percy Bysshe were the forenames of Shelley<\/a>, although I’m not sure what his link might be with this part of the world?).<\/p>\n

\"Seems

Seems rather optimistic to hope that this lot will stay upright, but it evidently does. \u00a9 Haydn Williams 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

I was again battered by the wind as I reached the col past the Blue Lough, and so decided that discretion was the better part of valour and headed home.<\/p>\n

\"The

The closest thing to a view, at the low point of the run (the car park!). \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

It was nice to go somewhere new, and the terrain is great fun to run on. It’s a bit weird having been out for a few hours but still having literally no idea what the hills around there look like; there was very little visibility all day. Still, that seems like a great excuse to go back another time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a few years of looking yearningly at photos of grit tors with seaside views, I finally made it to Northern Ireland’s\u00a0Mourne Mountains last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[420,1071,1072,1074,396,1073],"class_list":["post-4135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-outdoors","tag-fell-running","tag-mourne-mountains","tag-mournes","tag-percy-byshe","tag-running","tag-slievebinnian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}