Walks sparkle with interest

HOW wonderfully a day of sunshine transforms the world, and ourselves.

Inspired by the sudden and unfamiliar sunshine of last week, I headed for the Galtee Mountains to find a few pleasant routes for my Walk-a-Week column on the Monday Outdoor page of this paper. It isn’t always easy to capture the glory of a walk in the space available — setting down clear directions, so that the walker doesn’t get lost, is the priority and this tends to precludes any heartfelt rhapsodising or quirky observations on the numerous wayside attractions.

Almost any walk one takes in Ireland is replete with interest, Coillte walks down endless corridors of Sitka or Norway spruce being the exception. Not that we should not be grateful to Coillte for supplying these off-road itineraries, and not to say that there isn’t anything but endless Christmas trees to break the monotony and the claustrophobia. There may be forest fungi, interesting mosses and lichens, encounters with frog spawn or frogs, and, often, there is a cordon of varied deciduous species along the forestry edges, alder, silver birch, and mountain ash.