Have you read THON book? That's a question being asked in Northern Ireland and elsewhere these days, the acronym referring to The Height of Nonsense - "the ultimate Irish road trip" - by Paul Clements, a journalist with BBC Northern Ireland in Belfast.
His mildly eccentric idea was to travel the mountain roads of Ireland and climb to every peak of the 32 counties, even if some turned out to be mere molehills. However, some of the locals Clements meets in his travels, and to whom he explains his mission, treat him with all the compassion one might afford to someone not quite right in the head.
Towards the end of winter, Clements set out in a 14-year-old Nissan Bluebird, beginning his journey on the road from Falcarragh to Gweedore in the Donegal highlands. Errigal is his first destination, but there's no rush to start climbing. There are people to meet and talk to, scenery to be enjoyed and cultural history to be chewed over. At the foot of Errigal he meets self-proclaimed witch Cathy Rea, who can smell fairies before she sees them: it seems they wear trousers and jerkins, but never a red pointy hat. Being a hard-headed journalist, Clements demands pictorial evidence, not realising that fairies never give anyone time to take a photograph. He also meets Cathal Ó Searcaigh, who tells him of Errigal's "shape-shifting sexuality" - no more than you would expect from a poet.
From the start, Clements makes one want to up sticks and set out on a trip of one's own as he writes of the sweet aroma of turf smoke filtering into the car, the roadsides drenched with daffodils and dandelions, and the yellow gorse of Donegal- but of course there's a fair bit of squelching through muddy mountain paths in the rain too, which he appears to enjoy just as much.
It is the GMRs, or Great Mountain Roads, which make up the spine of the book, or more properly, its soul. Wisely, Clements avoids the national primary routes and "key strategic diagonal corridors", as well as steering clear of the Great Irish Roundabout, now as much a symbol of Ireland as the Claddagh ring, though lacking the charm. Ireland, he notes, has become obsessed with roads and their condition.
The observations are droll but pointed, and Clements clearly has a knack for drawing out people on every sort of subject. A lady in the village of Oola tells of how some American tourists came looking for "Zero Zero LA". He notes a tractor passing by with its sticker - "Crime doesn't pay. Neither does farming".
The author stays for the most part in hostels and B&Bs, the latter ranging from the luxurious to the unspeakable. One in Longford with "regulation peeling wallpaper" features a bedroom floor that sags gently, "just like the old mattress". We have probably all been there, and on the same mattress. Another envious B&B madame, hearing of Clements's mission, says the only mountain she sees is "the mountain of ironing sitting on the kitchen floor". Meanwhile a young fellow serving breakfast in Longford tells him that the 21st century means nothing in the county because it missed out on the 20th.
Clements is wise enough to let himself be guided up the sometimes treacherous Carrauntoohil by the well-known mountaineer Pat Falvey, but he makes it on his own to most peaks, including Mweelrea in Mayo. He even makes a decent effort to find mountains in Monaghan. Some mountains are shared between counties - which is why the book features 28 rather than 32 summits. In Boyle, meanwhile, a barman suggests that the highest point in his county is "the giraffe in Roscommon zoo".
The environmental damage to the countryside is noted with an air of sadness but Clements still delights in natural features like the "chaotic jigsaw of interlaced wooded islands" that make up Lough Erne and he is eloquent on the neolithic site of the Loughcrew hills in Meath.
This is a fine adventure. On Lugnaquilla, Clements meets regular walkers Lorraine, Una and Geraldine - check their initials to see why they call themselves the (lovely) ladies of Lug. He is invited to a summer solstice party in Clonegall in Carlow, in the dungeons of Huntington Castle, and is warned by a man in a Graiguenamanagh pub to "get outta town" for asking too many questions, or the wrong ones (think Civil War). He even gets himself targeted by a British Army helicopter in Co Armagh, on Slieve Gullion. And there is a memorable encounter with the female members of an aerobics class on their annual night out in a Drumshanbo pub. "Mary Bacardi", where are you now? On his final peak, Slieve Donard in the Mournes, Clements concludes that it is the people who live on the mountains who make them what they are.
Like all the best travel books this is a journey of self-discovery and of community, a reflection on man's real and mystical connection with nature. On his last night in the Shamrock Bar, a Hilltown shepherd tells Clements that when it comes to mountains, "too many people just take them for granite". Or was that "granted"? This travelogue (The Collins Press, €13.95) delights in such ambiguities, which wind their way through the book like a river through the countryside and culture which Clements loves. It all makes for delightful reading.