Another wet day, and we arrive on the beautiful Achill Island…but a night’s sleep, and suddenly everything is sunny, despite some brooding cloud…

This is unspoilt Ireland…and even the petrol pumps are patriotic…

From the village of Keel (An Caol) we walk to the deserted village of Slievemore. The houses straggle along the hillside for about a mile…a haunting place where generations of people tried to make a living dating back to mediaeval times…and noone’s quite sure why it was deserted…

 

It’s certainly something of a hostile environment and of course there was famine and disease… but today it makes a beautiful walk all the way over the hills and back round to the coast…

Still some permitted peat collection here…