Go Walk: Birreencorragh, Nephin Beg Range, Co Mayo

Those days between Christmas and New Year are special – relaxed gatherings of family and friends around cosy warm fires and meal tables, garishly bedecked Christmas trees, lights and decorations all confronting the gloom outside. The year turns, and freshness and hope seem all around.

A transient anticyclone came our way on those days, slowly traversing the country with its vast pool of clear, calm air. Wintery showers in a preceding northwesterly airflow had brushed the mountains around Clew Bay with their first real winter snow – and lonely Birreencorragh, by some quirk of topography, had collected the most of it.

And so that mountain was our choice, on one of those days, to feel that old familiar crunch of fresh snow.

We parked at the entrance to a forestry plantation, just northwest of the Loughanawillan Loughs in the townland of Cloondaff. From there we followed, for about two kilometres, a marked loop walk running northeast in the direction of snowy Nephin Mountain (806m), then striking off northwest towards the minor top at 295m.

Along the way, partially uncovered by erosion of the overlying bog, a fallen tree trunk pointed northeast away from its broken stump – and told us its story of a southwesterly gale one stormy day or night five or six thousand years ago.

Cloud was now obscuring the sun as the southerlies on the western side of the anticyclone took hold. A “chocolate-box” day was being slowly turned into a more atmospheric one of elemental black and white, bringing a small hint of menace.

The top of Knockaffertagh (517m) was under full snow cover, deep in the lee of eroded peat hags, themselves hanging with icicles. A long silent pull followed to the summit ridge, in increasing gloom and windchill – what my friend calls “dead walking”.

Lowering spirits were lifted by the view to the northwest, away along the long fingers of Birreencorragh and into the fastness of the Nephin Beg range. And all the time the peaty flanks of those loneliest and most beautiful of mountains were turning almost black under the darkening sky, all contrasting with the white of the snow.

The summit was above freezing despite a force six or seven southerly wind, and the snow was firm as we came down a long linear drift off the top.

Away in the distance, the Reek (or Croagh Patrick) was doing what it often does, ripping a hole in the northwards-racing clouds and allowing an array of sunbeams do a slow dance around a corner of Clew Bay and its islands. That special winter harmony of snow and ocean stopped us in our tracks as we made the turn south towards our final summit of the loop at 564m.

We picked up the forest track at about 200m elevation and one kilometre southeast of the final summit, following it for about three kilometres to our waiting car – and a celebratory pint in the sheebeen pub beside our base in Rosbeg outside Westport.