{"id":573898770,"date":"2026-03-18T20:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573898770"},"modified":"2026-04-06T18:51:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T22:51:17","slug":"an-bhinn-bhui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/03\/18\/an-bhinn-bhui\/","title":{"rendered":"An Bhinn Bhu\u00ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve come now to the most northerly summit in County Mayo. It’s called Bhinn Bhu\u00ed, or Benwee Head. <\/p>\n

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There’s a great walk offering a little more than eight miles of views. We don’t not walk the whole thing, but we still got the first views. The whole time we were there we had the place entirely to ourselves. Just us and the wind.<\/p>\n

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There’s a lot of bogland, a lot of cultural and historical spots to see. We did not do the whole route, of course, but we saw some nice spots. <\/p>\n

This place is popular with birders, kayakers and divers. <\/p>\n

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I don’t think I’d want to dive here. The water moves a lot. And it is probably cold, all of the time. Besides, I could stay on the surface and consider this view all day. Right now, I’m trying to imagine how you find a place like this, and convince someone to let you build a house with giant views like that. <\/p>\n

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And then, off to the other side, just more giant, beautiful views to consider, at full volume.<\/p>\n

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If I can’t have a house in a place with views like this, I’ll just have to come back. The ground was soft, inviting enough to consider staying all day, but also wet. It’s called Atlantic blanket bog, and it’s been the prevailing feature of the land for 4,000 years, give or take. The moss on top soaks up moisture, and so its about nine-tenths water. The peat can be acidic and that minimizes the amount of plant decay, it all gets squished down into more peat, and so it is a time capsule, a natural chart of farming styles, volcanic eruptions, and climate change. They say it grows at a rate of about a millimeter a year. <\/p>\n

When we come back to places like this we’ll just have to find lightweight chairs and a waterproof blanket. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve come now to the most northerly summit in County Mayo. It’s called Bhinn Bhu\u00ed, or Benwee Head. There’s a great walk offering a little more than eight miles of views. We don’t not walk the whole thing, but we still got the first views. The whole time we were there we had the place […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,62,10,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573898770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-ireland","category-photo","category-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573898770"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":573898773,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573898770\/revisions\/573898773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573898770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573898770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573898770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}