Croagh Patrick
The Reek from the wall at Murrisk, and what it asks of the people who climb it.
From the idle wall the mountain is the whole of the view to the south. Croagh Patrick, the Reek to anyone who lives under it, rises to 764 metres straight out of the fields behind the village, and the cone of quartzite at the top catches whatever light there is long after the shore has gone grey.
It has been climbed for longer than anyone can say. The pilgrimage is older than Patrick, who by tradition fasted forty days on the summit in the fifth century, and the path he is said to have taken is still the one the pilgrims use. On Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, thousands come through Murrisk before dawn and go up, some of them barefoot, to hear Mass in the small chapel on the top.
On most days it is quieter than that. The car park fills by mid morning in summer and empties by evening, and the mountain goes back to the sheep and the weather. The scree on the last stretch is loose and steep, and the cloud comes down without much warning, so the climb is harder than it looks from the wall. The reward is Clew Bay laid out beneath you, every island at once.
I have climbed it a few times now and I still look up at it every morning to see what kind of day it has decided to have.