06 Mar 2022: It’s only been six days since High Point Ireland‘s “The All-Ireland Hillwalking Championships” kicked off. The competition takes place over 8 months and challenges participants to visit as many Sport Hillwalking Locations to rack up the most points within the 8 month window. So, if we have a whole 8 months to nab some points, what are we doing here in Anglesboro before 7am on a Sunday morning ready to head towards Temple Hill and beyond? Well, since Tuesday almost 20 walkers have scored points. And it’s not just one or two points either, some are almost at 100 already! So, we decided it’s time to claw our way some bit up the leaderboard again.
There are 10 peaks in the Galtee range where points can be earned. If all 10 are climbed within a 24hr period, you get double points. However, I think we’ll settle for four peaks today and leave the ambition of doing all ten together for a longer summer day maybe. The four we are tackling today are;
- Temple Hill (783m)
- Knockaterriff (692m)
- Monabrack (630m)
- Lyracappul (825m)
Johnny joined us and we set off out of the village walking against a backdrop of pinky-orange morning skies. First up was Temple Hill, which most definitely is not a hill! It’s steep slopes are true lung-busters, so we decided to skirt around the peak and log it on the return leg of our journey instead.
The weather was spectacular; Bright blue skies dotted with fluffy clouds. After skirting Temple Hill, we headed over to Knockaterriff, which involved lots of descent followed by a short ascent to the Peak.
Next, Monabrack! Standing at 630m tall, this was our lowest mountain of the day but by no means the easiest to access. To get there, we had to descend 300m into a valley, and then climb back out again! We stopped for food admiring the peaceful valley and Blackrock river as it meandered around the stone walls of what looked like an old farm enclosure.
After our picturesque break, it was back to the climbing, using some of a zig zag track to help us out of the valley and then leaving it to reach the top of Monabrack.
From there we headed towards Cornabinnia before veering left for Lyracappul, following the Galty wall.
Finally, we set out eyes yet again on Temple Hill, this time aiming directly for the trig point to log our last mountain for today and claim our well deserved 32 points.
All that was left from there was to make our way back down to Anglesboro, the reverse of what we did in the morning.
