Mayo North: in search of Ireland's most remote wilds

Tom Breathnach visits our country's ultimate remote destination

Ballycroy National Park

I’m standing in the most remote lands of Ireland. Heathers are windswept, skylarks are flitting in the gusts and ewes are grazing the boglands — purely indifferent to the drama of their surrounds.

Here, on the fringes of Ballycroy National park in North Mayo, there’s said to be nowhere less trundled in Ireland  and — even in these howling gales — few places more serene. Not as celebrated as the national parks of Killarney or Connemara, Ballycroy together with the recently added Wild Nephin region covers over 100 square km of Atlantic blanket bog and hilly terrain in what is considered to be Ireland’s greatest wilderness.