Ireland August 2012 - Day 2 - Mourne

My second day in Mountains of Mourne.

It's a pretty good forecast today.

Good enough for a walk.

(This may be my last post for a while since I don't know the WiFi set up of where I'm going for the rest of my trip. Apologies if I don't get to your pages, but I will catch up once I'm back in Scotland)

Where I'm staying, The Mourne Lodge in Atticall has great amenities for groups.

I think we may get a group of the Wigtownshire Ramblers over here sometime.

Apologies too for the lack of details, I hope you enjoy the pictures.

It's a 3 mile walk in on a stony old drovers track to Lough Shannagh.

There's still cloud on top.

I like this picture

This is the Mourne Wall which stretches for 22 miles across 15 mountains.

This link takes you to Walk NI County Down website where it details all short, medium or long walks.

Watch out though, these were written for mountain goats. This today is 'EASY' (maybe it's just me)

Down below is the Ben Crom Reservoir. I'll mention it again later.

The Miners Hole River. The bridge dates back to 1812

Carn Mountain left of centre was my original plan, but prudence won the day.

Sorry, no time for explanations.

It appears to me that the Mountains of Mourne are one gigantic boulder pile.

This underfoot makes it quite tough. (sorry, I meant easy)

Lough Shannagh and some summits.

Instead of Carn Mountain, I thought I could just scramble up Doan at 594 mtrs or just under 2000 feet.

Wrong !

That looks like snow up on Slievenaglogh, but after zooming in I've decided it's rock.

On my return I bumped into a number of other walkers. A few were from England, but most peop.le I spoke to today were local

Honestly, it did look like bad weather was coming in. However it failed to materialise and the day got warmer.

Back in my car, I head up to the Spelga Reservoir where I get talking to some fishermen and a few other friendly folk.

There's a brae down to the dam that's the same as Dunure's Electric Brae, but the road is closed, so I couldn't try it out.

I bought my lunch in Hilltown

I ate my lunch with this view.

So I'm going to finish my day with a visit to Silent Valley, a Northern Ireland Water facility.  

There is an entrance fee.

Here's the website link.

Silent Valley

It's certainly beautiful when the sun shines.

Now I mentioned Doan earlier. 

Looking at it from this point (centre of picture), I was further up than I'd realised.

The shuttle bus wasn't running today, I didn't fancy another six miles. 

This is the reservoirs' overflow.

I don't know why they aren't producing electricity from this ?

There's an excellent visitors centre...

....and other stuff to look at.

I thought I'd finish today with some nature

Gorgeous water lilies.

Bye for now.