dr_banuska on Mullaghsallagh

This hill is probably best included in a route taking in some of the higher surrounding summits - perhaps evidenced by the fact that this is its first dedicated comment. I tackled it from its eastern neighbour Crockbrack, originally starting from the village of Moneyneany - see Crockbrack entry for start of the route. From the summit of Crockbrack, I travelled a short distance downhill again to an old rusty gate over a fence at the end of the established track, at about C (H716 956). The broad shape of Mullaghsallagh was clearly visible and I decided to tackle it by crossing the gate and descending and ascending in the most direct way possible. In the dip between the two peaks I could clearly see a small but conspicuous clump of forestry (unmarked on Discoverer map 13) and just behind it what turned out to be an old abandoned (?) caravan. I aimed for these over terrain that was often dense but relatively dry and not too tough going. I headed to the right of the forestry, crossing two small streams shown on the map either side of the area named Finglen. The caravan now seemed to be at the end of a track clearly shown on the map, at about B (H704 955). From here I made my way uphill again, parallel to a fence some distance to my right. I eventually came to a gate over the meeting of this and another fence. I crossed here as the summit was about five minutes beyond at another meeting of fences, once again in typical Sperrins fashion. I didn't hang around as it was late in the afternoon and made my way back down to the gate. From here I could see that a fence led directly downhill to the welcome sight of the main B47 Glenelly road and I followed this, ignoring another fence going off to the left (which I later realized led back to Crockbrack). One the way down there was a large erratic right next to the fence. The fence in fact marks the border between Counties Tyrone and Derry and I could see that where it met the road at A (H704 943) there were signs on either side marking Strabane and Magherafelt Council areas. From here I had a very long road walk back to Moneyneany and so wouldn't particularly recommend this route, unless perhaps you had two cars. A suggestion for a quick if unexciting ascent would be to park along the track clearly marked just to the east of this point (that ultimately leads to the site of the caravan), from where you could just follow the fence uphill. As for views, these were quite limited due to haze but I could see back over to Crockbrack, west to Sawel, Dart etc. and Carnanelly, Goles Forest and hidden Lough Ouske south across the valley. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/summit/499/comment/4296/

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Squelch city

We approached this hill from Craigagh and Spelhoag (ignoring the previously bagged Oughtmore.) The initial descent from Spelhoag was across grassy, mostly firm terrain with some decent views, but once we reached the peat hags around D (H699 964), the trek turned into an unpleasant trudge up through mud, bog and generally sodden ground, and a lot of meandering around peat hags is unavoidable. Another Sperrin purely for the baggers. Linkback: mountainviews.ie/summit/499/comment/23316/

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