Irish Munros
This classic from the Trail archives reveals seven amazing Irish peaks to challenge the best Scotland can offer
To celebrate Trail’s 30th year we’ve been dusting off our archives each month to resurface a favourite mountain adventure from the past three decades. For the final instalment of the series, we’re heading back to November 2003 when our former writer Piers Pickard made the short flight across the Irish Sea to tackle seven mountains that would all reach Munro status if they were picked up and plonked in the Scottish Highlands. The big question was, do the big peaks of the Emerald Isle have the character as well as the height to match their counterparts in Scotland?
You’ve never read this before. You’re reading it here for the first time. Why, I do not know, but it seems to be something that the world has simply overlooked. Ireland has seven mountains over 3000ft.
They’re scattered across the southern half of Ireland in four different ranges. One dominates a rolling wilderness covered in early Christian ruins. Another is a solitary giant standing like a Munro among the Fens. A group of four peaks puncture Macgillycuddy’s Reeks, a huge, rocky massif that competes with Scotland’s finest and has the best Grade 1 scramble in the British Isles. Finally, there’s the westernmost mountain this side of Iceland, with a wickedly sharp ridge and a sea view that stretches almost to America. That’s not the new bit.
This is: you can do them all, every single one of the Irish Munros, in one madcap, four-day extravaganza of bagging heaven.
The adventure begins
At the other end of the line, someone picks up the phone. An Irish accent says: “Hello. Army Information and Advice Centre.“
“Hello,” I reply. “I’m planning on climbing Lugnaquillia on Friday. I understand that it’s on a firing range so I was wondering, are you doing any shooting or anything then?”
“I’ll tell you what,” the voice replies, the sound of a smile travelling down the phone. “Seeing as you’re coming for a bit of walking, we’ll call it off that day. We won’t bother. We’ll stay at home, have a cup of tea and there’ll be no bullets or anything.”
“Er... thanks then.”
“Now you enjoy your walking. Bye.” There it was, my first contact with someone in Ireland, and he was incredibly charming. Especially for an official. I’d always been sure that all that stuff about ‘the craic’, shamrocks, leprechauns and Murphy’s ads on TV was a marketing ploy. But buying my maps at Dublin airport, again everyone is nice. Not in a saccharine way: there’s nothing plasti-grin, have-a-nice-day-now about it. Just unassumingly pleasant. How refreshing. We have the tourist office book our B&Bs for the next three nights,
pick up our car and we’re off.
Driving round Dublin, there’s an air of palpable excitement in the car. I’m driving and Tom the photographer is frowning at the roadmap, concentrating hard so we don’t miss a turn. To waste time on extra driving would cost us precious minutes – and we’ve got mountains to climb.
Into the mountains
As I drive, I’m immediately surprised by how hilly the area around Dublin is. It reminds me of Glasgow, with its feeling of hills on the doorstep. We’re soon among them as we drive through mountains that remind me of a larger version of Scotland’s Southern Uplands. They’re big, rounded and wild-looking. And there are lots of them. Even though they’re just an hour’s drive from Dublin, they hardly look well-trodden. We’ve stopped for lunch (more faultlessly charming locals) and the time is now 1pm. We’re itching to go.
Past the stunningly beautiful early Christian monuments at Glendalough – no time to stop there – and up the quietness of Glenmalure, we finally park the car. Lugnaquillia is our first target.
It’s 1.30pm. Can these mountains really be done in four days? We’re not so sure now we’re here. Before we made this trip, we called Jasper Winn, Trail’s globe-trotting Irish correspondent, who lives in Cork. We asked him about the hills we were going to try and he waxed lyrical about every one of them. Each one we mentioned was more beautiful than the last. So we asked him the million-dollar question: if we wanted to do them in one four-day trip, would that be possible?
“In four days?” he asked, puzzled. “Well, I don’t see why not. It’ll be hard. That’s a long day you’ve got on Macgillycuddy’s Reeks, and it’ll involve a fair bit of driving.”
Then came the magic words: “But I’ve never heard of anyone trying it before.”
A new route, and we were to be its pioneers! I was hooked. Roll over Columbus, move over Magellan, there are some new explorers in town. Back in England, it sounded perfect. An Adventure, yes, with a capital A. But now, starting off on foot, it seems like a lot to do on mountains that we know very little about.
Views to thrill
First impressions are good though. We walk up a forested glen which almost seems too colourful: pines, ferns and grass compete in the greens; the rock is a cool grey and the heather blooms pink around it. Above, the sky is dotted with little white fluffies. It’s a mountain version of Teletubby-land.
The climb is steep and we have to weave our way up through crags as peregrines wheel and screech above us.
The path soon disappears, and we don’t see a soul until we emerge onto the summit ridge. Hills stretch away north and south of us. They’re smooth and grassy, a bare handful of walkers sprinkled over them. From the top, we can see the Irish Sea. In three days we hope to be looking down on the Atlantic at the other end of the country. But not if we stay up here gawping at the view, so we head back along a long ridge that gives us time to enjoy our height for as long as possible before we drop steeply back to the car.
If Lugnaquillia impresses with its wildness, Galtymore impresses with its situation and views. Our second 3000er sits amid a great plain of flat farmland. Imagine depositing a great, whale-backed Munro in the middle of the Fens, and you’ve got Galtymore. It’s not a dramatic mountain, so I hadn’t expected to be blown away by the climb. In fact, Tom and I had been referring to it as “the boring one”. Until we climbed it. You see, on a bad weather day, it might well be the most boring, overgrown hummock in Ireland, but on a good day… well, imagine climbing that Munro in the middle of the Fens on a clear, sunny day: this is the most expansive view I’ve ever seen. No hill in England, Scotland or Wales can match it. They’re simply not in the right places. Looking north, we can see an endless patchwork of fields stretching on and on. Now we know why it’s called the Emerald Isle.
The big day
Macgillycuddy’s Reeks is Ireland’s biggy. Every guidebook we’ve read (there were only two of them, actually) has warned against trying to do all of the Reeks in a day. Or if we are silly enough to give it a go, they tell us, we might just manage a linear route, but we’ll finish 11 miles from our car. And whatever we do, they say, don’t try a circular route taking in all four of the 3000ers. Which is exactly what we propose.
I’ve studied the maps again and again. I’m sure I’ve spotted a way of doing it, so with a flutter of nerves Tom and I set out from Cronin’s Farm, midway along the north side of the range.
If we can crack today, we can be pretty sure we’ll do it, meet our challenge and make it home tomorrow.
Before long, as on the previous two days, we’re walking over trackless ground which must be one great big sucking bog after a less dry summer. The mountain stretched out in front of us is huge. It would look out of place in England or Wales. It’s too big for anywhere else but the north-west Highlands, where it could sit happily alongside such multi-topped giants as An Teallach or the Torridon hills. It is a great, complex line of craggy peaks, sheer corries and sparkling loughs (that’s Irish for lochs), all joined by a wriggling, bucking backbone of ridge. Along it lie four summits and six tops.
We pant up our first summit, Cruach Mhor. On top is a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a strong reminder of where we are. But it is the ridge ahead that draws our eyes. The guidebooks (both of them) mentioned some scrambling on the ridge to our first 3000er, Cnoc na Peista. What the guidebooks didn’t mention is that this is the best Grade 1 scramble. Anywhere.
You heard me. Best Grade 1 scramble anywhere. Knocks the socks off Crib Goch, Jack’s Rake, the CMD Arête and any other you could mention.
It is in two halves. The first is a ridge of rising crests, each higher than the last, made of the most beautiful purple sandstone. It presents itself a challenge at a time and the exposure is, in places, fearsome. But the rock is wrinkled like a beach at low tide, giving reassuring holds to nervous hands.
The last rise of all is The Big Gun itself, a great cannon of rock that
couldn’t have been better named. Then comes the second half. This is a classic, tightrope-thin ridge slung loosely between the peaks at each end. Its edge is razor-sharp – walk along it and you’re in danger of cutting your feet.
It’s over all too soon, and we’ve bagged our third 3000er. Today’s other three lie at the end of a wide grassy ridge, and the middle one is Carrauntoohil, at 1039m the highest peak in Ireland. After a diversion to our fourth Munro, Caher, we bag it. From here on, the going is tough. It’s a long day and we’re tired, but two hours and our fourth peak of the day later, we’re in the car, already thinking that it wasn’t that difficult. Why had all those guidebook writers said it was too much? We’d done a nine-hour day and it was tough, but there are plenty of mountains in Scotland that require that amount of time and effort.
Atlantic ascent
The next morning, we get up early to enjoy our last peak before the flight. If any mountain deserves the title of Munro in the sea, it is Brandon. Surrounded by Atlantic on three sides, it has an air of being at the end of the world. This is the very tip of western Europe, a finger pointing across the ocean, from where St Brendan launched his 6th century voyage to the Land of Delight. He was gone seven years, and legends say he discovered America almost a thousand years before Columbus. On the way up, the views, again, are breathtaking. Miles of untrodden white sand, another great scrambling ridge to the summit and the vastness of the ocean all around.
You probably think I’m exaggerating. But I promise you, Brandon is the best peak yet on a trip of superlatives.
At the airport, we know we’ve done it.
This has been an incredible trip. Each of the peaks exceeded my expectations and each was better than the last. Sure, there was some driving involved, and yup, doing the Reeks was hard, but that all added to it.
So please, Trail readers, prove me wrong, as I think Tom and I are the first people to have done all the Irish Munros in four days. The wild peaks, the expansive views, the ocean mountain and the best scramble anywhere – we’ve been blown away by them all. So please, someone tell us we’re not the only people who know about this route.
And if we are, remember: you read it here first. Now go try it for yourself.
“This is the very tip of western Europe, a finger pointing across the ocean, from where St Brendan launched his 6th century voyage to the Land of Delight”