Take a walk on the wild side

'One of the blessings of living in this place is that we are totally neglected," says Father Kieran Devlin, parish priest of Gortin, a small, pretty village in the heartlands of the Sperrin Mountains, 11km (7 miles) from Omagh in Co Tyrone. Deirdre McQuillan reports

Even the townland names there seduce: Butterlope Glen, Altacamcossey, Glenlark, Casorna, Fallagh, Crockatanty. In ancient times, Gortin Glen was the entry point of the prince of Tyrone to his kingdom and the Glenelly Valley, the longest in Ireland, is steeped in history.

The 10th anniversary of the week-long Sperrins Walking Festival seemed like a good opportunity to explore "the biggest batch of hills in Ireland" little known by southerners and though not the highest, certainly the most extensive range in the country.

Though he wears his learning lightly, Fr Devlin is a local, "mothered by the mountains" with a deep knowledge of the area's history. He is one of those responsible for reviving the pre-Christian festival of Cairn Sunday on the last Sunday in July.

While crowds of about 20,000 were climbing Croagh Patrick in Mayo, I joined a group of 300 local people making the two-mile ascent to Mullaghcarn, along a tarmac road (built by the British army) that grew increasingly steep as we approached the summit.

Along the path, wild orchids, myrtle, bog cotton, buttercups and heather coloured the moorland, while stately shelterbelts of Sitka spruce swayed slowly in the breeze.

At the top musicians played and a marquee provided tea and scones. There were once 39 such Lughnasa hill assemblies in Ulster, known as Blaeberry Sundays, but Victorian prudery and the Famine put an end to the general cavorting of those days and the event petered out. It was revived in l997.

The following morning, about 25 participants gathered at the Sperrin Heritage Centre beyond Plumbridge in the Glenelly Valley.

We were there for the first festival walk up Mullaghclogha led by Martin McGuigan, an experienced and qualified mountaineer and rock climber. He has climbed the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, the Canadian Rockies, Mount Aspiring in New Zealand and other peaks, but the Sperrins, "my own back door", is where his heart is.

With the exception of three southerners, one from Galway, the other from Longford and myself, the group was all northern and ranged in age from those in their early thirties to a sprightly marathon runner of more than 70. A regular visitor to Scotland recommended an anti-midge cream, but luckily nobody needed to test it on that or subsequent days.

In what was to become a routine occurrence over the three days, I got lost driving there from Feeny near Derry where I was staying; signage in the area is dreadful and the only tourists I met were two French women having a monumental row over frustrated attempts to find one of the area's many rich archaeological sites.

The three-hour climb in the central Sperrins "contouring" those rounded hills was utterly exhilarating. We traversed rushy fields and springy tussocks steadily making our way across open bogland to the summit of the mountain, the eagle-eyed occasionally spotting blueberries.

This is the only region where Arctic cloudberries grow in Ireland, shy fruits that are hard to find. At the top, there were commanding views across to Donegal, Fermanagh, Lough Neagh and Derry.

A smaller group of us started out on the second day from the craggy clifftop of Binevenagh that rears up over the fertile plains of Magilligan (even locals lost their way to the meeting point), making the downwards descent first.

As we headed forth, a group of men dressed in camouflage brandishing guns emerged from the forest: the British army on manoeuvres. Carpets of harebells and the lovely yellow tormantil dotted the gentle lower slopes while further down sheep "greedily depastured the herbage", as a l9th commentator quaintly put it.

Below us, there were bird's eye views of Lough Foyle and the river Roe threading like a ribbon through the fields, and we could see surfers on Bunowen beach and further west the familiar peaks of the Donegal mountains.

Later that evening, I got lost again trying to find Glenullin chapel car park for my final walk, a "woodland ramble" with vistas of the Antrim hills and north Sperrins, but the effort was worth it.

The advantage of the festival is that it happens in August; "you are not tripping over tourists like the South and the walks are fantastic," commented the Longford walker, who confessed she found the sight of so many Union Jacks disconcerting. She also recommended organising accommodation in advance.

One bright-eyed local confided that she had always associated the hills "with work and cutting turf - it's amazing how differently I see them now".

According to Martin Bradley, countryside access officer with Strabane District Council: "Locals are starting to realise the potential of the area, but they are on the periphery rather than in the hills."

Someone else told me that the region is seen as a "republican redoubt" and that middle-class Belfast "would be afraid of walking in the Sperrins".

The whole place reminded me of Wicklow when I was a child. Driving in the countryside, I saw no B & B signs, no site for sale signs, no holiday houses, no chic restoration, no tourists, no new building development, no restaurants, no hotels and hardly a cyclist.

The Ulster Plantation forced many people into the Sperrins and the census of l835 recorded some 20,000 inhabitants. Today, it's about half that, mostly small farmers.

You don't learn a lot about the area's ancient and Celtic past, though you can visit the Ulster American Folk Park, or pan for gold in the folksy heritage centre where the scones are second to none. It's worth noting that everything is closed on Sunday mornings.

A real treat, however, is the Bellaghy Bawn visitor centre in Bellaghy where poetry and history coincide; it is a great guide to the environment, to the Plantation of Ulster and is also a centre for Séamus Heaney studies. Foreign academics come for the extensive library; a recent visitor was a professor from Tashkent who is translating Heaney into Uzbeki.

There is also pretty Springhill House, a charming plantation house and gardens now belonging to the National Trust, and Lissan House, the oldest house in Northern Ireland continuously inhabited by the same family.

Best of all, simply wander, and let yourself fall like I did under the spell of the Sperrins. But bring a good map.

FACTFILE For more information about the Sperrins, contact Sperrins Tourism Ltd, The Manor House, Moneymore 048 867 47700 or log on to www.sperrinstourism. com or www.sperrinswalkingfestival.org

or the Northern Ireland Tourist Board.

There is a guide to five waymarked walks in the western Sperrins published by Omagh District Council for 50p.