A Star is Mourne

This is a story about a mountain range.

A real multitasker of a mountain range in fact. Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, cluster of magical nooks and crannies,  muse to famous writer, and host of festivals and quirky sports.

We dare you to resist the Mournes

The are different things to different people. But to everyone, they are beautiful to look at. Here, we’ve tried to present the Mournes, in all their guises and in all their glory.

Set your eyeballs to stun and awe.

Once upon a time

…there was a Belfast-born fellow called Clive Staples Lewis. He had some imagination – enough to write the classic children’s books The Chronicles of Narnia. The magical ‘always winter, never Christmas’ land of Narnia of the books is not just a twinkle in his eye either. He spent enough of his childhood in the Mourne Mountains for their landscape to inspire his fairytale setting.

Skeptical? We have the full story, and the photos to convince you.

Narnia, sorry, we mean the Mourne Mountains

The Mournes sporting the 'magical land' look it does so well

Walk through the valley

Evocative names don’t come any sweeter-sounding than the in the middle of the Mournes. As well as lying still and looking majestic, it supplies water for most of County Down and Belfast. It was built between 1923 and 1933 by a workforce of over 1,000 men. Nine died during construction, making the echoes that little more poignant.

If we were slightly more astute we would question the location of a children’s playground and cafe in a ‘silent’ valley, but then there’s always these scenes to stun you to silence:

Shhhh... The Silent Valley

The Silent Valley Reservoir doing its silent gorgeous thing

The Great Wall of the Mournes

It may not be visible from space, but there is something heart-warmingly epic about the sight of the . Things called coasteering.

Coasteering in the Mournes

As you can imagine, there is a lot of walking being done around here. Enough walking that one day they looked around and realised they had a seriously scenic  on their hands.

Walking in the Mournes deserves a festival

Whether you find the Mournes have you inspiring, perspiring, a breeze or a challenge, the most important thing is that you find them.