This is up the way up the mountain, the name Sliabh Liag, which means mountain of stone pillars. Seems appropriate. We were given the option of walking or driving. Driving cost a few bucks, but it was worth it. It’s a single track up the mountain, and right over that rise is the Atlantic, and some of the most dramatic, and the second-highest sea cliffs in Europe.

This is a panorama. If you click the image it’ll open in another browser window, and you can see this just a bit bigger, but, still, not quite as impressive as what we saw. This tops out at 1,972 feet.

That’s the view from a place called Bunglass. A place we lingered for quite a long while. It was, as you can tell, worth it.

The writer, librarian, and naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger wrote about the “One Man’s Path,” which is here at Sliege League. Praeger called it one of the most remarkable walks to be found in Ireland. Thirty years prior, on the other side of the country, he conducted a survey of a small island and added 90 new species to the Irish flora and fauna and five of them were new to science.

If I added a bunch of new species to the books I would never stop thinking about that. I don’t know how he was able to enjoy the rest of his walks, but he was Irish, and he had places like this to see. I wonder if he saw this he thought, I should go to that little rock and see if that’s a different kind of moss. It could be my next new species.

Here’s the beginning of the walk, or the end. We went up just a tiny little way, but only for this view. Apparently it would take several hours to do the whole thing. Who needs that, when you’ve got this?

I’ve been wanting a picture like this — well, sort of like this — for 10 years. Almost got it. Got this close.

I like these stone steps. The rest of these photos are featuring those steps. Someone put them all there, and we don’t think about things like that enough, and so I thought about that on every sturdy step.

Though I don’t think I can photograph them very well.

But if you go up all of those stone steps, almost to the top of this hill, you’ll turn left, and then continue on that long walk, across the ridge line, with ever-more-grand views of the cliffs and the ocean.

Look at how the peat is growing right up to the rock steps, or probably more accurately, how the rock steps were cut into the peat. Someone had to make that decision too, probably. Or they followed a human or animal path. But suppose a foreman was out there, pointing and drawing and cutting a line. You’d like to think they agonized over that. I’d like to think that, anyway, because that’s a thing I’d agonize over. Whoever made that call, though, probably just wanted to get this done so they could get back in for dinner.

I wonder where the stone steps came from. Probably from the hillside through which we drove on the way up here. They must be well considered, at least a bit. You want stones to be flat on two sides, top and bottom. Surely they didn’t want to waste time on stone masonry here. They’re just steps, after all. So where, then, did the cast offs go?

This place figures, of course, into Ireland’s history and folklore. One of the largest Neolithic cemeteries in the Europe is nearby. An island just off this place holds the ruins of an early Celtic Christian monastery. If you walk along the top you can see an early monastic site and some of the ancient beehive huts, where monks sought solitude, spiritual connection, and help kept the craft of the written word alive.

I had no idea this was here. I didn’t plan the trip, or the day, and I had no idea this even existed. But I’m so glad we saw it. Glad we had the chance to linger here for an hour or so.

This is one of those places I’d come back to, specifically here, to linger, to see more, to see the same, and to find out what’s on the other side of that trail.

Before the next stop, a quick note about the planner of this trip. Here’s a hint, it isn’t me. My lovely bride just finished a successful conference (which she also planned) where almost 200 scholars from all over the world gathered to share their scholarship. While she was putting that together, she was also putting this part of the trip together, too.

If this academic thing doesn’t work out, she, a full professor, is going to be a travel agent.

But only for people who want to go-go-go. I don’t think she can plan a trip where you didn’t get your hustle on. But if you take one of her trips, you’re going to do and see a lot. For instance …

We went to see the fairies at Tulan Strand. The reverend G.N. Wright was writing about them in 1834. The Fairy Bridges have been an attraction for about 300 years now, blow holes carved into the stone at Bundoran. When the tide is up, you can see the sea pushing up from the water below. People thought, according to the sign, that the sound of the waves were fairy guns. Why signs have to insult ancestral intelligence is beyond me. There’s also the wishing chair, a natural stone chair where if you sit down just so, follow the directions and do the hokey pokey, your wishes will come true.

One of the things you’re supposed to do while you’re in that magic chair is to contemplate the view. And, wishes or not, that’s a good thing to do. It’s a beautiful bay, and it was a beautiful day. On the clearest days you can see the cliffs some 17 miles away.

The locals thought that the natural arch had fairies on it, zipping back and forth, doing their little fairy business. I caught one in my video, and if you go back to see this morning’s video you might see the fairy, too. And here’s the arch, itself.

Wright knew the natural bridge was passable by “mere mortals,” which we saw evidenced today as a few people boldly marched out there, disturbing the fairies. “Visitors are recommended to avoid its unhallowed surface, as troops of fairies are constantly heard, and sometimes seen, by those who possess the invaluable gift of second vision, flying hastily from end to end.”

He was also a teacher, and author of some two dozen books, but I wonder what else he was into, having seen and heard fairies and all that.

It’s quite lovely, really. But, believe it or not, the views improved at our next stops. And that wasn’t even one of my wishes in the chair.