Decided it couldn't do any harm to get on the M11 down past Arklow and make the journey to Croghan Kinsella.

Coillte and the ESB have created a 35 MW wind-farm on the eastern flanks of the mountain between the main mountain and Slievefore to the east.

Probably to seek to allay concerns of people in the vicinity, the bodies have sought to market the recreational use of the forest tracks that lead to the summit and the windfarm from the entrance at White Heaps.

I suppose in some respects it's not totally far removed from the late 18th and early 19th century when government appointed geologists were directing gold mining works on the north of the mountain - there's an economy to drive one way or the other. Back then, men were tunnelling hundreds of metres into the mountainside, now there are structures rising almost 100 metres above the land.

A contemporaneous account by one of the Directors of the mine, Thomas Weaver (of whom there are apparently trenches named on the latest mapping of the northside of CK), offers a vivid insight into the times that were (see also comments on the Moneyteige summit page):

"The discovery of native gold in the Ballinvalley stream at Croghan Kinshela was accidental, and at first kept secret, but being divulged, almost the whole population of the immediate neighbourhood flocked in to gather so rich an harvest, actually neglecting at the time the produce of their own fields. This happened about the autumn of the year 1796, when several hundreds of people might be seen daily assembled digging and searching for gold in the banks and the bed of the stream. [...] The populace remained in undisturbed possession of the place for nearly six weeks, when Government determined to commence active operations. An Act of Parliament was then passed for the management of the undertaking [...] and up to the unhappy period of the rebellion in May 1798, when the works were destroyed, Government had been fully reimbursed its advances [...]. In the year 1801, the operations were resumed, when the directors proposed to Government not to confine its views to the mere collection of the alluvial gold, but to extend the researches, directing them more particularly toward the discovery of the auriferous veins."

Who knows what it will be like 200 years from now? An Ozymandias-esque array of decaying wind turbines presumably! Linkback: https://mountainviews.ie/summit/261/comment/20071/