Lake Muskry

Looking down into the valley
see all photos »

After having been in Ireland a month it was about time for us to go walking. We decided to start close to home so went to the Galty Mountains, about an hour north of Cork. The start of the walk was surprisingly easy to find, considering the difficulty we’ve had using Irish maps to find houses. The walk began with a gentle incline up a forestry road. Upon reaching a style at the edge of the forest the road became a little steeper and we left the forest. It took us about and hour to reach Lake Muskry where we stopped for a chocolate break. The lake was beautiful against the backdrop of sheer cliffs and looked like it would be nice to swim in on a hot summer’s day. From the lake our guidebook had marked the route as going straight up to the right of the lake. The climb was quite steep and would have been fairly easy minus the slippery grass, which was playing a bit of havoc on Rose’s ankles. Despite cloud around the top of Greenan West we still managed to get a bit of a view. We turned east along the ridge to O’Loughlins Castle a fascinating rock formation, but we didn’t linger too long there as the wind was howling through. Along the tops we had our first experience of peat bogs, they weren’t as bad as we’d imagined but I’m sure we’ll discover a lot worse. After photo stops at the top of Greenan and the booley hut on Farbreaga we headed down a ridge to the moor. The downhill was easy going and we were back at car in no time.