Wednesday 8th June

Today we went out to the Mourne Mountains.  The weather seemed like today would be the best day of the week to do this, and Mathew really needed to go up a mountain!  Onward we went, although it was very foggy the forecast said there would be sunny spells and we were thinking that the sun would burn it off around lunchtime.  We weren't in any hurry so we prepared a packed lunch to take with us and throughout the entire journey there we didn't really see any mountains at all, in fact we saw very little of the landscape.  Still, we parked up and started our route up to Duan which is about 584m high.  This area is like a mini Lake District so the height of these mountains is roughly similar.  The route was a bit annoying at first - that really chunky gravel which is actually much more dangerous at least for me, my ankles could have easily turned at any point, but I just have to keep looking at the ground as I'm walking through it!  Finally the path wore out into grass and rock and we made our way up a ridge towards the Mourne Wall.  At this point it was still quite foggy and we had literally no scenic view - we could only really see what lay ahead of us for about 100m. 

Over the wall, we heard and saw some people at the edge of a nearby lough - the cloud seemed like it was beginning to lift, but then it came down again.  The ground was boggy but was quite a dry bog because there had been very little rain recently so this wasn't aproblem.  A little later we found our mountain by silhouette, and headed for it.  It was quite straightforward to get up and it was very rocky on the top.  We stopped for lunch and watched the cloud rolling in, out, and back in again.  No, we didn't have as great a view as hoped as the sun had not burned off the cloud at all.  The air was sticky and warm and the fog may have been a sea fog rolling in from the coast and it just kept coming.  It was a shame, and I know you can't really predict these things but I had no sense of scale as to how far I had actually climbed, and we were unable to see any of the surrounding mountains at all - just vague shadows.  Duan is more or less in the middle of the Mournes and is nowhere near the highest, however the view would have been pretty good from there if the cloud had cleared.

We stayed a while and saw glimpses of what we might have seen, before we headed on downwards and watched the fog lift just a little more, By the time we had returned to the car we could at least see the ridge of the Mourne Wall from the car park but we could also see that the cloud had not lifted very far, so if we had done this in the afternoon we may have got a better view at the top of Duan but we would probably have been missing the tops of most, if not all the surrounding mountains.

Afterward we stopped off at a place called 'The Silent Valley' and we weren't aware that there was going to be a charge to get in before we even arrived.  Before we knew it we had paid £4.50 and to be honest, yes its a nice enough place but its certainly not worth that much!!  We felt that, as we had paid we needed to walk around the reservoir, which we did of course - there were a number of trails around the valley.  The main viewpoint should have given us the reverse view of what we should have had from the top of Duan but we could not even see the top of the mountain in the mist which still had not cleared from the Mournes.  We continued past the Visitors Centre which was basic but quite good with regards to the information of the history of the area and its wildlife, and the cafe which was NOT open and looked like it had been closed or not used for some time, despite the leaflet we were given on entry stating that the cafe was open all day every day in June, July and August.  Given that this was June 9th not June 1st we didn't really understand...perhaps their information leaflet needs altering to state that there is no cafe.  Who knows whether it had been open the previous few months on the days of the weeks it specified?  We guessed not.

Doubly disappointed about the day, we headed home and hoped the weather would be better for us tomorrow.  On the way we stopped off to buy scones and jam which cheered us up - we had our own cream tea today!