Walk · Co. Mayo
The 764-metre mountain near Murrisk, traditionally the place where St Patrick fasted — a broad, windswept summit and one of the great walking and pilgrimage places in the country.
Croagh Patrick is the most famous mountain in County Mayo, and for a lot of reasons. It is a broad, windswept peak of 764 metres, and its summit is a flat, open plateau rather than a single point, with a small shrine and the "Reck" — the Leaba Phadraig, or St Patrick's Bed — at its centre. The mountain has been climbed for over a thousand years, and it is one of the few places in the country where the religious and the recreational uses of a mountain are so visibly entangled.
The local tradition is that St Patrick fasted on the mountain for forty days in the fifth century, and the story has made it a place of pilgrimage ever since. The annual pilgrimage on Croagh Patrick Sunday, the last Sunday in July, draws thousands of people up the mountain, some of them fasting, many of them climbing in the night for the sunrise on the summit.
There are two main ways to be on the mountain. The first is the summit path, a marked trail from the car park at Murrisk that climbs to the plateau; it is rough and steep in places, and the final stretch is exposed. The second is the "round the mountain," a circular walk that follows the hillside below the summit and gives a wide view of Lough Corrib, the Nephin range and, on a clear day, the Sligo coast. The round is the gentler of the two and a good half-day walk.
The summit is a place to be for an hour or two, not all day. The wind is constant, the ground is wet, and there is no shelter.
The light is best in the early morning, when the sun comes up over Lough Corrib and the mountain is in full view from the round. The summit is most dramatic in a moving summer cloud, and the pilgrimage in July is a different experience again — loud, crowded and full of feeling.
Free to climb. The summit path is open in most weather, but it is a climb, not a stroll, and the weather on the summit is quick and cold even in summer. There are no facilities on the mountain; the village of Murrisk is the base for most people.
The largest island off the west coast, linked to the mainland by a bridge since 1987 — wild Atlantic headlands, black-pebble bays, a lighthouse with a story, and a landscape that has shaped Irish life for a thousand years.
A castle turned abbey on the shore of Lough Corrib near Cong — one of the most photographed buildings in the west of Ireland, and a working monastery with a story that goes back to the 1870s.