2010:365:233 Holidays are for ...

…. climbing mountains ... one step at a time.

School trips are commonplace these days and, from the earliest years, classes are taken to see important geological features, castles, the aquarium, museums and the zoo among other things. Residentials to Edinburgh, London, Paris or Rome are now all part of the curriculum.

Geography students study the beach, mountains, rivers, urban growth and traffic flow, all in the field. Back in the “Old Days” things were different! I could still list on one hand the number of field trips that we had. An outing to the local glacial erratic was one of the few excursions that we had.

Cloughmore (an Chloch Mhór = Big Stone) is perched at 1,000' on the side of Slieve Martin, above Rostrevor. The boulder is a different kind of granite from the underlying rocks and was transported by a glacier that was moving along Carlingford Lough during the last ice age. The erratic came from the Strathclyde region in Scotland.

The school trip took us from sea level to the stone but nowadays there’s a car park half way up the mountain which makes the walk to the Big Stone considerably less strenuous. The 1:4 gradient still needs to be taken ONE STEP AT A TIME.

Thankfully there are stopping places and plenty of opportunity to take photographs and catch your breath.

Legend has it that the giant Fionn MacCumhuill threw the stone across the Lough … all 40 tonnes of it … well … maybe draw your own conclusions!

Glacier or giant … Cloughmore is impressive and the views from it are beautiful.

We’d been waiting for the entrance to the forest drive to be unlocked so no one else was on the mountain at 9.30 am.  Eliot had freedom to run and bounce among the heather.

He’s now home with “Perfume de Renard” … so he and I are keeping some distance between us. Why is it that the most obnoxious smell is the one that he rolls in?

We made it to the top and back down again so that’s today’s exercise! The afternoon will be devoted to recovery!

This drawing from the signboard shows the areas that we've been exploring in recent days - The Cooley Peninsula, Carlingford Lough and Greencastle.  Only three more days to run around!  Wonder where we'll end up?

Lord of beauty, thine the splendour
shown in earth and sky and sea,
burning sun and moonlight tender,
hill and river, flower and tree:
lest we fail our praise to render
touch our eyes that they may see.

Church Hymnal number 29

Cyril A Alington (1872-1955)