A Stupid Idea

TLDR: I'm gonna be climbing* to the highest point in every county of Ireland with a mate.

If you're not interested in the backstory, jump to the plan or the progress tracker.

The Background

I have a friend, Paweł, who is a bit more active than me. He plays squash, he goes running (well, he has done more recently than me, anyway!) and he hikes. In an effort to improve my general fitness, I said I'd go hiking with him.

Me and Paweł in the carpark before the hike up the Stairway to Heaven.

Not-So Baby Steps

We did our first hike together last October; The Stairway to Heaven in Fermanagh. Paweł mentioned it one day, it sounded like a good start and it's near Enniskillen in Northern Ireland so we could roll in a cross-border trip to Asda for some cheap booze. Win win!

It's a bit of a trek from here so we started early and got the shopping out of the way before heading to the carpark for the Cuilcagh Boardwalk Trail, the official name of the Stairway to Heaven. It was overcast but not too cold and windy, some rain forecast for the afternoon so we set a brisk pace to get up and back before then.

It's a fairly easy hike, up to a point. A gravel track and then a long steady incline across open moorland via a wooden boardwalk. Eventually you get to the steps... at first there are just a few every now and then, but then you get to the stairway itself – 450 steps zig-zagging up the side of a cliff.

A photo showing the stairway going up the hillside. Source: https://trekni.com/2019/05/13/cuilcagh-stairway-to-heaven/

450 steps might not sound like all that many. It FELT like way more. The steps are unevenly spaced and it isn't “comfortable” to walk up them, and it was incredibly tiring. But it was worth the effort! There's a platform at the top where we stopped and took in the gorgeous views across the countryside to Lough Erne and beyond, with the boardwalk snaking across the moor and the weirdly-shaped limestone hills leftover from the Ice Age in the foreground. We had a snack and a drink, took some photos and headed back to the car.

The view looking back from the steps, showing the boardwalk snaking off across the hillside into the distance.

The return trip was much quicker (although the stairs were still awkward on the way down, slightly too high for comfort). We made it back to the car in around 2.5 hours. On a nicer day we might have stayed at the top for a while and not pushed ourselves quite so much on the way back and it would have taken longer.

We actually went to explore those weird hills before we went home; the Marble Arch caves are nearby, carved out of the hills by three rivers, and we took a tour through them since we were so close. At 11.5km it's the longest cave system in Northern Ireland, and they are described online as some of the most impressive caves in Europe. The tour was really interesting, it started with a boat trip on an underground river and there was a load of history about the exploration of the cave system. Even the above-ground area was beautiful; ancient woodland surrounding sinkholes, very cool. It's definitely worth a look if you're ever nearby!

Levelling Up

There was a bit of a gap, 9 months went by, but a few weeks ago Paweł suggested we climb Diamond Hill in Connemara.

I've visited the area many times – we love the Connemara countryside; it's very similar to where we lived in Wales, the beaches out beyond Clifden are incredible and nearby Kylemore Abbey is a common stop when we're taking visitors sightseeing. Diamond Hill is well known, but I've never had anyone to go with. Until now!

It's in the same county as us, but it really is the wild west – no major roads, bottlenecks in all the towns and villages on the way there, meandering routes through picturesque valleys between mountain peaks. It's a gorgeous drive, but it takes longer to get there than it does to get to Dublin which is on the opposite side of the country.

We didn't factor in the weather beyond “it's not going to rain” but it turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year, not really ideal for a strenuous hike. The carpark was crowded, the visitor centre was pretty full, but the trail itself wasn't too busy. I guess most people weren't stupid enough to attempt the climb in the blazing sun!

A photo of the view towards Clifden and the Atlantic Ocean from the climb.

The first half of the climb is easy; a nice clear trail, a few steps, the occasional boardwalk, a bridge over a mountain stream. Then you get to a point where the trail splits, it's a one-way loop, left to ascend and the people on the way down come from the right (although we passed more than a couple of people heading back down the up path!). From here, things got more interesting! A steeper climb, as we got closer to the top there were stone steps either laid or cut into the rock, and I had to stop a few times not because I was tired but because I was just overheating, I needed to rest and let my body calm down a bit. Each stop was rewarded by the increasingly incredible views over the countryside and out to sea. The climb got steeper and steeper the closer to the top we got.

A photo of me catching my breath as the climb got steeper.

The ascent is from the Clifden side of the hill, so the views that way are of the valleys leading down to the west-Galway coastline. When we got to the top however, we were treated to a 360° view including the hills and mountains of Mayo, Achill Island in the distance, the taller peaks of the 12 Bens to the East, and, right below us, the valley with Kylemore Abbey, its lake and walled garden, in miniature due to the distance but still clearly visible. A truly spectacular view, thanks to the clear weather.

A wide shot of the view to the north of the peak, showing Kylemore Abbey in the centre, Mayo and Achill in the distance. A zoomed-in close up of Kylemore Abbey, taken from the peak.

We enjoyed that view (and the cool breeze!) for a while, Paweł shared his Polish sausage with me, we took some photos, and then we continued along the descent path which went down the far side of the hill. The first bit was just as steep as the ascent, but then we were on a boardwalk which followed the valley floor all the way around the hill and back to the point where the trail split earlier.

We got back to the car after around 2.5 hours, and headed to a beach near Cleggan for a dip in the Atlantic to cool down before heading home.

The beach at Rossadilisk. It's a gorgeous place with white sand, the shallow water is turquoise and changes to a deeper blue as the water gets deeper.

The Plan

While we were climbing Diamond Hill, I mentioned that a friend of mine visited the highest points in each county of Ireland. It was a gorgeous day, we were enjoying the climb... we decided we would do the same.

Over the next few days I did some research, started making plans. There are 32 counties on the island of Ireland, but some of the county peaks are on the borders between counties so they are shared between them; there are 27 unique peaks.

A map of Ireland with circles marking the various high peaks of each county.

Around half of them are under 609m (2000ft) and so are considered hills rather than mountains, and many of those are very easy hikes, particularly Longford, Meath and Westmeath's peaks – all three can be done in the same afternoon. There are a few others that can be checked off in a single trip.

But that means half of them ARE mountains and will require proper planning and good weather conditions. I'm not a mountaineer, but none of them are exactly Everest. There's no actual climbing required, but there's not always a clear path to follow. Some of them will take all day, not just a couple of hours. The highest of all is Carrauntoohil in County Kerry at 1039m. We might save that one for last...

Rather frustratingly, the highest peak for Cavan and Fermanagh is... Cuilcagh, which is a couple of km beyond the top of the Stairway to Heaven. If we'd kept going back in October, we could have visited that peak very easily!

So, here we go! We haven't set ourselves a time limit, we'll do this as and when we can, when the weather and Paweł's shifts align. Our first hike is planned for this weekend – Moylussa in County Clare, our closest one. It's a hill overlooking Lough Derg, if we're lucky with the weather we should have another gorgeous view as a reward for reaching the top.

Tracking Our Progress

I wanted some way to plan and track our progress. I've been messing with agentic AI, so I got my dude to build a web app for me. I gave it a rundown of what I wanted, and I tweaked it until I was happy with how it works. I have a list of all the peaks, I've also added some other places we have either hiked or would like to hike, you can sort and filter in all kinds of ways, and it shows our next target.

This link is pre-filtered to show the highest peak in each county, sorted alphabetically. The blue one is our next (first!) target. The colour indicates the status, and the icon indicates the height – hill, mountain or BIG mountain (by Irish standards).

Distances are calculated from the home location configured by the “settings” cog, it's set to Loughrea by default (which is where I live) but if you're curious you can add any location you wish. Clicking the “x” will clear all filters and show everything (including the non-peaks). I'll update the status of each peak as we go, and I'll probably (maybe) add a link to a blog post about that particular climb.

Notes

*I say “climbing”, but some of the highest points of Ireland are not particularly high.