Leg 27, Although this was a relatively short leg at just over 24k it did contain a bit of ascent up the twee named Bessy Bell Hill and it was conducted in either thick mist or thin fog (there is probably a meteorological difference between these two but the end result in terms of view was much the same).
The route did pass a wonderfully neat Church of Ireland building apparently in the middle of nowhere. If you study the photo you can see the impossibly enticing bell pull rope attached to the bell in the external copula – I only just fought off the temptation to pull the rope because of a lingering suspicion that if I did ring it smock clad, pitchfork wielding and torch bearing peasants would immediately hasten in large numbers from the nearby woods in response to the alarm and demanding to know if “the creature” was once more roaming the countryside.
Further along I came across a forestry operation with trees being felled, stacked and possibly transported. I say possibly because the very heavily log laden lorry was actually stuck in the sloppy mud that made up the forest track. He was waiting for a tractor to help pull him out, actually the forestry team did have a large and powerful tractor, unfortunately it was trapped behind the lorry and there was no way it could pass around the stranded beast. The Galway driver was rather stoic about the situation “Those boys can’t get out till I’m moved, and if it comes to it I’m the only one with a bunk in my cabin!”
A couple of things today did cause me a bit of concern. Household waste just dumped at the forest edge. This sort of fly tipping infuriates me, it must save the perpetrator a small amount of effort (driving to dump it in the forest can’t be that much easier than driving to dump it at a free council site) but is a dangerous eyesore and inconvenience for hundreds of people. The second slightly more worrying item was the prominent “shooting in progress” notices and the sound of nearby gun shots, possibly always a cause for some caution but given the thick mist I was concerned that my bobbing purple hat might look enough like a skulking bird for a hunter to take a pot-shot. I know this is incredibly unlikely but I pocketed my hat for the duration of the ascent.
The trig point on Bessy Bell was a welcome sight only because it was the top of the climb. The notice affixed to the nearby stile had, I thought, a strangely authoritarian tone. Implying that to venture beyond this point would be a mistake both for me and for my whole extended family. Perhaps the peasants were right and “the creature” was at large on these hills… Nevertheless, I resisted the siren call of the Mellon Hotel car park and proceeded downhill toward the sentinel army of giant unmoving turbines.
As it happens SSE who manage the turbines had a team of inspectors on site today. “Over from France” I was told by the sheep farmer on whose land the machines sit. Sharp suited chaps in ties with shiny hard hats and clip-boards pointing out defects to groups of boiler suited engineers in worn out high-vis vests seems to bring out the socialist in me, but no tyres were slashed in the completion of this leg.
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