Landscape as Witness - Field Trip: Day 35
The weather looked slightly more promising today so I made my way down to Mullach Mór once more to see what sort of images I could get of both constructions. I decided to go to the famine road first, as I had scouted out a couple of different viewpoints there yesterday. Strong winds occurred throughout most of the day, resulting in the sunny spells being interrupted quite frequently by short showers and overcast skies. Because of this a lot of time was spent finding a location and then waiting for the clouds to roll in, giving me a short window of opportunity to get the shot that I was hoping for.
Firstly I went to the viewpoint above the road that I had picked out yesterday, and set up my camera to record about 20 minutes of footage. The weather was ever-changing throughout the recording, with the clouds casting shadows that swept across the landscape at speed. Afterwards I made my way down the side of the hill to the road itself, attempting to capture images that highlighted the scale of construction that had taken place.
After spending a few hours photographing the road (or more accurately, waiting for the sun to be obscured by clouds), I thought it would be best to spend the rest of the day photographing the area around the ditch, of which I had no usable images as of yet. I left my bike locked up at the entrance to the Burren National Park near the famine road, rather than locking it to the landowner's gate like I had done before. As I walked towards Castle Lough, I noticed an area where the ditch passed under the road that I was currently on. I attempted to make my way through some undergrowth to see if I could follow it up to the clearing, but it wasn't long before the route became impassable.
Upon eventually arriving at the site, I knew that I needed to climb down into the ditch itself to get a decent shot. The area around the ditch was so overgrown that I wouldn't have been able to get an image that highlighted the scale of the embankments effectively. Luckily I spotted a relatively easy route down, and I set up my camera so that both sides of the embankment were in shot. Before doing so, I was surprised to see a swing attached to one of the overhanging branches. I had noticed that there was a small community living down the road, so I guess that this was used as a play area during the summer months.
After filming another 20 minutes of footage, I made my way up on top of the other side of the embankment to see what I could find. I came across the remnants of some sort of shelter that had presumably been built for the workers, similar to the constructions that I had found alongside the famine road in Poulaphuca.
