I bless the rains down in Africa – and Slieve Donard

I ONCE sent the city of York my idea for a catchy tourist slogan: ‘York, so good they named it only once.’ So far, the burghers haven’t found time to reply.

I made a similar approach to Newry & Mourne District Council.

Why not, I said, go with this catchy slogan: ‘See Venice and die; See Newry and Mourne.’ I’m afraid the suggestion was met with something approaching apathy.

But another idea has occurred to me, sparked off my by some recent inclement weather in the Mournes

First, some background. In 2018, I paid a visit to the NamibNaukluft National Park in Namibia. The largest game reserve in Africa and one of the biggest in the world, it extends over a substantial part of the Namib Desert. The Sossusvlei area in particular is mesmerising: vividly-coloured sand dunes — the colour changes with the time of day — surround starkly white salt plains. A place to dune in and chill out, definitely.

I was just a year too early to enjoy another attraction of the Namib desert.

In January 2019, a sound installation was set up at an undisclosed location to play the song Africa by Toto on constant loop.

The installation is powered by solar batteries, allowing it to be played indefinitely — they enjoy a lot more sunshine than rain down there.

Maybe they could do the same thing in the Mountains of Mourne.

They could hide a recording of Percy French’s wonderful, eponymous composition somewhere in the locality.

The sun could drive the solar panels and the Mountains of Mourne could boom out across

Slieve Donard and Slievenaglogh, across the Hare’s Gap and the Diamond Rocks towards the boggy land of Tievedockdarragh

Oh, hang on. I think I can see a flaw with that plan.

In case you haven’t spotted it, the average annual rainfall on Slieve Donard is 2,000mm. And there’s not too much sun to drive those solar panels.

Maybe we could go for a water-driven feature.