The Wilderness

John the Baptist managed forty days and forty nights. We would have liked longer, but our bargain break only promised three. We were, however, located in the magnificent Nephin Wilderness: 27,000 acres of mountain, forestry and bog in North Mayo entirely preserved for nature. The principle behind this unique designation was that nature rather than humans would mould the development of this landscape over the coming decades. Visitors were welcome to experience the Nephin Wilderness as long as they used the land sensitively and left no trace.

Mindful of these principles, we picked a good hotel on the coast near Achill Island and went for walks into the wilderness each day. The weather was changeable: bright sunshine and blue skies interspersed with showers of rain and sleet. This produced some fantastic vistas of changing light as we walked along old drover’s trails and turf-cutters paths across the bog. The mountains had a sprinkling of snow on the tops and hardy black-faced sheep peered at us as we passed. We were able to take an informed interest in their heads, eyes and legs, having recent viewed the excellent hill-farming documentary ‘Addicted to Sheep’.

We ate well at the hotel breakfast buffet and pocketed snacks to munch during the day. We had home-made bread and wild honey; as no locusts were available, we took sausages. The first day we walked some eight miles and the second we went seven. I found that my post-operative body could manage these distances okay. The only trouble for me was a sore knee, a flare up from an old injury. T managed the walks without any problems.

Our hotel was blessed with an award-winning restaurant run by a very inventive chef who only used locally sourced ingredients. The restaurant also made all their own bread and each day there would be three or four different types to try. Our wild walks meant that we tucked into the very fine food on offer most heartily. The first evening we became so stuffed that we had to go for a walk down to the village and back to be able to sleep.

Unfortunately, there has been a sting in the tail. At the end of the week the hotel became full of families on half-term break, with kids running everywhere. The very next day we went down with a dose. Our return journey became an ordeal of coughing and sneezing. And since then we have been suffering in bed. It’s proving to be a bad dose of the flu.