A hike to one of Ireland's greatest ever engineering achievements

The wall around the Silent Valley Reservoir is this country's answer to China's Great Wall and took nearly 20 years to build 

The Silent Valley — view over the Ben Crom Reservoir. Picture: John G O'Dwyer

During the 19th century, Belfast expanded rapidly from just a modest town to a city with a population of 350,000 that had become one of the industrial powerhouses of the UK. Huge pressure was thus placed on the city's water supplies. In this age, engineering was glamorous in the way IT is today and was seen as offering the solution to most human problems. With a desperate need for more water now manifest, it was decided to solve the problem once and for all by building a huge reservoir on the Kilkeel River valley of Mourne Mountains.

Today, it beggars the imagination to consider the number of hoops, in the form of objections and planning appeals, that would need to be jumped through to accomplish such an endeavour. These were simpler times, however, and without any great fuss the project was approved.