The waters
of Mourne
An awful lot of water falls onto the Mountains of Mourne. Sweeping 3,000
feet up from the sea and the low plains of Co Down they create their own
winds, bring their own clouds - and it seems there is nothing they like
more than a good soaking!
With an average rainfall of 50 inches - and passing 80 on some of the
western high ground - even the 95  per
cent water holding capacity of their peat blanket is stretched to its
limits – and beyond.
The peat and its main constituent, the brightly coloured sphagnum mosses,
form an effective natural flood-control system, absorbing millions of
tons of water in the rainy times and releasing it gradually downslope
over days or weeks to be drained away to the reservoirs and the sea by
the streams whose constant chattering is cheerful company on every mountain
walk.
For their area the Mournes boast an exceptional number of streams, now
spilling and splashing in exuberance down stony cascades, now winding
with deep clear stillness across peaty mountain terraces, joining with
each other and then with others, gathering the waters from neighbouring
hillsides as they grow to riverhood.
Crystal water and crystal rock, together shaping landscape; the streams
sparkling in eternal youth as the mountains grow smooth and sage. Few
places in the mountains are far from the sounds of the waters splashing
down their stony courses, drumming into deep pools or gurgling unseen
through the tunnels they carve through the peat. The streams are guides
too; follow them up their busy ways and they can reveal some of the most
exquisite secret places of the mountains, magic moss-fringed pools in
many-hued rock, silver cascades in purple heather, never to be seen by
the walker on the path.
The busy streams fill some ten rivers that through the valleys they themselves
helped shape, drain the mountains, coiling away, twisted shining ribbons.
Some like the lovely Shimna or Spence’s River, have hardly bid the
hills goodbye before they enter the sea, others ramble through miles of
farmland, ducking under tracks and roadways, paying their respects to
the fields and homesteads that greet them on their way. The longest, the
River Bann, is born on the reedy slopes of Slieve Muck and takes their
peat-filtered waters more than 100 miles to Ireland’s northern coast,
but most of the rain that washes Mourne returns to the ocean within sight
of the hillsides on which it fell.
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