This is up the way up the mountain, the name Sliabh Liag, which means mountain of stone pillars. Seems appropriate. We were given the option of walking or driving. Driving cost a few bucks, but it was worth it. It’s a single track up the mountain, and right over that rise is the Atlantic, and some of the most dramatic, and the second-highest sea cliffs in Europe.

This is a panorama. If you click the image it’ll open in another browser window, and you can see this just a bit bigger, but, still, not quite as impressive as what we saw. This tops out at 1,972 feet.

That’s the view from a place called Bunglass. A place we lingered for quite a long while. It was, as you can tell, worth it.

The writer, librarian, and naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger wrote about the “One Man’s Path,” which is here at Sliege League. Praeger called it one of the most remarkable walks to be found in Ireland. Thirty years prior, on the other side of the country, he conducted a survey of a small island and added 90 new species to the Irish flora and fauna and five of them were new to science.

If I added a bunch of new species to the books I would never stop thinking about that. I don’t know how he was able to enjoy the rest of his walks, but he was Irish, and he had places like this to see. I wonder if he saw this he thought, I should go to that little rock and see if that’s a different kind of moss. It could be my next new species.

Here’s the beginning of the walk, or the end. We went up just a tiny little way, but only for this view. Apparently it would take several hours to do the whole thing. Who needs that, when you’ve got this?

I’ve been wanting a picture like this — well, sort of like this — for 10 years. Almost got it. Got this close.

I like these stone steps. The rest of these photos are featuring those steps. Someone put them all there, and we don’t think about things like that enough, and so I thought about that on every sturdy step.

Though I don’t think I can photograph them very well.

But if you go up all of those stone steps, almost to the top of this hill, you’ll turn left, and then continue on that long walk, across the ridge line, with ever-more-grand views of the cliffs and the ocean.

Look at how the peat is growing right up to the rock steps, or probably more accurately, how the rock steps were cut into the peat. Someone had to make that decision too, probably. Or they followed a human or animal path. But suppose a foreman was out there, pointing and drawing and cutting a line. You’d like to think they agonized over that. I’d like to think that, anyway, because that’s a thing I’d agonize over. Whoever made that call, though, probably just wanted to get this done so they could get back in for dinner.

I wonder where the stone steps came from. Probably from the hillside through which we drove on the way up here. They must be well considered, at least a bit. You want stones to be flat on two sides, top and bottom. Surely they didn’t want to waste time on stone masonry here. They’re just steps, after all. So where, then, did the cast offs go?

This place figures, of course, into Ireland’s history and folklore. One of the largest Neolithic cemeteries in the Europe is nearby. An island just off this place holds the ruins of an early Celtic Christian monastery. If you walk along the top you can see an early monastic site and some of the ancient beehive huts, where monks sought solitude, spiritual connection, and help kept the craft of the written word alive.

I had no idea this was here. I didn’t plan the trip, or the day, and I had no idea this even existed. But I’m so glad we saw it. Glad we had the chance to linger here for an hour or so.

This is one of those places I’d come back to, specifically here, to linger, to see more, to see the same, and to find out what’s on the other side of that trail.

Before the next stop, a quick note about the planner of this trip. Here’s a hint, it isn’t me. My lovely bride just finished a successful conference (which she also planned) where almost 200 scholars from all over the world gathered to share their scholarship. While she was putting that together, she was also putting this part of the trip together, too.

If this academic thing doesn’t work out, she, a full professor, is going to be a travel agent.

But only for people who want to go-go-go. I don’t think she can plan a trip where you didn’t get your hustle on. But if you take one of her trips, you’re going to do and see a lot. For instance …

We went to see the fairies at Tulan Strand. The reverend G.N. Wright was writing about them in 1834. The Fairy Bridges have been an attraction for about 300 years now, blow holes carved into the stone at Bundoran. When the tide is up, you can see the sea pushing up from the water below. People thought, according to the sign, that the sound of the waves were fairy guns. Why signs have to insult ancestral intelligence is beyond me. There’s also the wishing chair, a natural stone chair where if you sit down just so, follow the directions and do the hokey pokey, your wishes will come true.

One of the things you’re supposed to do while you’re in that magic chair is to contemplate the view. And, wishes or not, that’s a good thing to do. It’s a beautiful bay, and it was a beautiful day. On the clearest days you can see the cliffs some 17 miles away.

The locals thought that the natural arch had fairies on it, zipping back and forth, doing their little fairy business. I caught one in my video, and if you go back to see this morning’s video you might see the fairy, too. And here’s the arch, itself.

Wright knew the natural bridge was passable by “mere mortals,” which we saw evidenced today as a few people boldly marched out there, disturbing the fairies. “Visitors are recommended to avoid its unhallowed surface, as troops of fairies are constantly heard, and sometimes seen, by those who possess the invaluable gift of second vision, flying hastily from end to end.”

He was also a teacher, and author of some two dozen books, but I wonder what else he was into, having seen and heard fairies and all that.

It’s quite lovely, really. But, believe it or not, the views improved at our next stops. And that wasn’t even one of my wishes in the chair.

We had an amusing morning and mid-afternoon. After a skimpy little continental breakfast, we packed up and set out for another day of glorious sites. First, we went to Queen Maeve Trail Knocknarea. There sits one of the nation’s most important Neolithic passage tombs. It was a sacred burial place for ancient people. You wonder why one is more important than another. And if such a thing hurts neolithic feelings.

It’s on a looped walking trail and at the summit there’s the supposed burial spot of the legendary warrior queen Connacht. She’s said to have been buried upright, and facing her enemies. Her name is said to mean “She who intoxicates.” She was described as a fair-haired wolf queen so beautiful that it robbed men of two-thirds of their valor. She was famous for a cattle raid, part of an Irish epic. She was killed by a piece of cheese. Or she was an allegory.

Anyway, we didn’t walk up there. That wasn’t the trail we were after. So we pressed on to find a unique biome that was nearby, but we couldn’t find our way down to that. So we pressed on.

We hit Raghly Harbour, once a popular trading center for lobster and crabs, but the remote location doomed it. We enjoyed the gravel walk path, reading the signs about the old coast guard station, the local sea pilots, the signal communication system, and the Preventive Waterguard which operated in this place from 1809 to 1822, trying to curb smuggling.

It was a nice little walk. Bright, warm, sunny, and perfectly empty and quiet. Didn’t see another soul until we walked back to the car, and that person was going to do something else. Remote then, remote now. But at it’s height, they had seven harbor pilots on call here, there was a fish curing factory nearby, too.

Today, its local fishing boats, sea birds, and people taking this walk.

And that takes us to Mullaghmore Head.

There’s about 130 people that live in the village here. There’s a castle, and it’s a popular swimming and surfing site. This is where the big waves come in. We stopped at the pull-out next to the big sign. There were a few cars there. And sat up next to one of them was a man and a woman sitting in two skimpy lawn chairs beside a tiny little table. There’s a very short trail by the sign, and you had to walk past the couple to get there. I said something about the view they had, and the set up they’d … set up.

The little path was about 80 feet. You walked down, and then back up. It looked like a jump ramp, down and then up, narrow, falling away on either side to the sand and rocks just a short way below. From there, you could get a little closer to the water, a little lower than the road.

My lovely bride walked down the path ahead of me. It’s a well-worn walkway. Ankle-deep grass worn down to dirt by other visitors. The grass is wet. And, somehow, one wrong footstep and she hit the ground. It was funny, too. She somehow landed sideways, across the path. She was on her back, laughing, her feet dangling on one side off the path, her head dangling off the other side. It was ludicrous, because she was laughing.

Something about how gravity had arranged her made it difficult to help her up. The man that had been sitting in that skinny little chair to help, concerned for her well being until he saw her laughing and me giggling. He pulled, she pulled, I pushed, and we got her standing. We thanked the guy, and he went back up the hill to his chair.

We continued to admire the view, and continued the laughing, which turned into my talking smack about her slipping and falling.

“At least I,” I said, “haven’t fallen. Today, anyway.”

About 30 seconds later I fell. I mean, that grass was slick.

I was facing the water, fell to my left, landed on my side and was up on my feet again I even knew it, managing to keep my phone in my hand and out of danger. It all happened in a heartbeat. I was up, I had the sensation of falling, and then I was standing, feet wide, hands on the grass, laughing.

The guy that came down to help a moment earlier stayed put this time, but they were laughing at us from above. We enjoyed the view a bit longer, swallowing our pride, and then walked back up the hill to the car. Carefully.

They were still laughing at us. I said, “I told you that you had the right idea!”

So here I am, on this trip, one pair of muddied jeans from two days ago and, now, a muddied shirt.

Just down from that nice little view was this lovely view.

And off to the side was Classiebawn Castle, built as a 19th century country house built for Henry John Temple, the 3rd Viscount Palmerston and prime minister. Only he didn’t live long enough to see it finished. It’s most famous resident was Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. He spent his summers there, until August of 1979, when he was assassinated, not too far away from here, by a bomb in his boat.

Today, the castle is still in private hands.

We didn’t go too close to it, but we did enjoy the views. I liked the rocks down by the water. I wonder how many kids have climbed down there and explored that spot.

I wonder how the water carves those grooves into the stone like that. But, then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the patience of water. Maybe that’s because of all of the things we can see the water’s magnificent work. Wait until you see some more of what we saw today.