Parking is at a premium along the R344, with only one well-defined space at
A (L82395 55600) near the bridge over the Tooreenacoona River. From here we walked to
B (L820 562) where a private road gives access via a farm to the Gleninagh Valley. Beyond the farm is a rough, boggy track about 1.5km long leading to an old stone sheep fold. The views are magnificent. The Gleninagh River meanders amid the russets and green of the bog that sweeps up to the feet of rocky giants: Bencorrbeg, Binn an tSaighdiúra, Bencollaghduff, Benbaun and the long arm of Knockpasheemore Ridge. The hand of man is lightly etched across the landscape in the form of the ghostly ridges of lazy beds and the tumbled down walls of small stone cottages whose inhabitants once looked out on this formidable landscape in a time before An Gorta Mór.
Across the valley we spied Carrot Ridge, curving upwards towards Binn an tSaighdiúra, an Arabian dagger-shaped ridge of quartzite, its eastern edge just beginning to catch the rays of the morning sun. From the wall of the sheep fold
C (L80595 54816) we headed south to cross the Gleninagh River near a prominent sand bank honeycombed with holes made by a colony of noisy sand martins performing aerial acrobatics as they caught insects on the wing. Crossing the gravelly river bed at a shallow point where the pale green spear tips of yellow flag irises were just beginning to thrust up through the soil, we struck out across the bog towards a distinctive white slab that marks the start of Carrot Ridge immediately left of the imposing quartzite cliffs below Mám na bhFonsai. The walk upwards across steep terrain where the bog has slipped to reveal jagged lumps of white quartzite and scrambling across scree slopes slowed our progress, while the rising sun and high humidity sapped our strength.
Ireland’s longest rock climb (370m, described separately and rated difficult) was technically straightforward on good clean rock and provided a challenging way to attain the summit of Binn an tSaighdiúra. It was exhilarating melding oneself to the form and shape of the rock face, feeling the rough, cold stone beneath one’s stinging fingertips, the silence broken only by the percussive clinking of metal on rock and the occasional cries of newborn lambs in the valley below borne upwards on a gentle breeze.
The climb completed, we moved out of the gully
D (L81086 52969) marking the end of Carrot Ridge and ascended the summit of Binn an tSaighdiúra. The terrain here is brutal and unforgiving consisting of jagged quartzite rocks that rumble and groan when stepped on, but this is magnificently compensated for by a breathtaking summit panorama: to the east, Bencorrbeg, Lough Inagh and the Maumturks; north, beyond Knockpasheemore, Mweelrea and the Sheeffry Hills with the serpentine coils of the Gleninagh River evident in the valley below; west, in a purple haze, the conical peaks of the Twelve Bens and south, our next objective, Bencorr.
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