The Silent Valley

It was a cold wintery morning in Northern Ireland and everything was bathed in grey. The sky had been drained of its colour, the greens and yellows of the fields and crops had been washed away, and a looming sheet of cloud covered valley.

Cycling through The Silent Valley in the Mourne Mountains and alongside Ben Crom Reservoir, we hiked with our bikes up the slopes of Slieve Bearnagh and ricocheted back down into Tollymore Forest.

The landscape came alive as gorse flickered in the distance, flocks of sheep clambered up hillsides and natural springs trickled and pooled into hidden pockets throughout the valley.

Waves rolled and crashed into the shore and the air caught a scent of salt as we swept back along the edge of the Irish Sea on a crumbling road through Newcastle, returning to our starting point in Kilkeel with the valley far behind us.