Climbing Slieve Donard – what I learned from hiking up Northern Ireland’s highest mountain

This Easter break, I set myself a new challenge: climbing Slieve Donard. For those of you who are reading this post from elsewhere in the world, the Mourne Mountains are the highest peaks in Northern Ireland.

Actually, I can’t take any of the credit. It was my son’s idea, and I didn’t want to let him down. We even went on a dedicated hiking boots shopping trip earlier this week. Now, that’s commitment.

My fitness level leaves a lot to be desired. Day to day, I get a lot of steps in, but I’m not a dedicated gym bunny, or anything like that. I have to admit, I spent the bulk of this week trying to prepare my kid for what I thought was the inevitable: that we would be turning back after the first bridge. Or maybe the second, if I really pushed myself.

So, when we made it to the ice house, beyond the third bridge, I was thrilled. Beyond the treeline? Amazed.

There were a few points along the way where I thought I might have had to call it quits. My legs turned to jelly before we even reached the Mourne Wall. At that point though, we were two thirds of the way there, so I felt the finish line was in sight.

Not exactly. Apart from a false summit, there was snow and ice in increasing frequency the higher we climbed. Again, I almost packed it in out of fear about how we would get back down as it was quite slippery.

Climbing a mountain really takes mind over matter. The last time I climbed a mountain was 20 years ago when my then-boyfriend-now-hubby, Joseph Robert and I climbed Mt Fuji together. Back then I was pretty active as I cycled, did yoga and martial arts and I felt young and fearless. These days I’m of moderate fitness for a middle-aged person, so not too shabby, but I think my biggest barrier is how I feel about my fitness level in my own mind, rather than the reality.

Mind over matter for the win. We are only as old as we feel, right? I really underestimated my fitness ability to climb the highest mountain in Northern Ireland. Tweaking my mentality while on the mountain really helped me to get to the summit of Slieve Donard during the trickiest last forty minutes or so. The Mourne Mountains were a source of inspiration in two of my books: my poem ‘Tors’ in poetry collection, A Model Archaeologist, and as a source of black tourmaline crystal for my characters to use for an occult ritual in horror novel The Blue Man – and now I’ve inspired myself to get fit after scaling this while on a family hiking trip during the Easter holidays. Hurray.