Mourne Mountains

There was something magical about my first sight of the Mourne Mountains. Or rather, about the moment they tried to withdraw from my gaze. As if they didn’t want to be seen. Thick sea mist was their accomplice that morning, veiling large stretches of the range beyond Carlingford Lough. But it was this first impression that truly sparked my curiosity. I simply had to see these mountains that served as the inspiration for Clive Staples Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. And even if that meant stepping through a wardrobe to get there.

In the end, it was all much simpler. But no less magical. The Mournes feel different from many other mountain ranges, more like rolling hills from which individual jagged peaks suddenly break through. As if the landscape were caught in a quiet struggle between gentleness and wildness. The valleys give a sense of expanse, and in many places you catch glimpses of the sea, which never seems to be truly far away. Everything is wrapped in an unhurried stillness, a calm that is rare to find. This feeling is difficult to put into words, which is why I’d rather let a few shots speak for themselves here. What they all have in common is that they were taken in the evening. In the evening light, the Mournes show themselves at their most beautiful. The hills then cast long shadows, somewhere in the distance the Mourne Wall becomes one with the mountains, and in the warm light the landscape feels a shade more magical than it already is.

Incidentally, I captured the Mourne Mountains’ game of hide-and-seek that I mentioned at the start in a photograph that appeared as the very first picture in my 2017 photography book ‘Irlands Ostküste‘. Back then it carried the caption ‘A warm welcome to Ireland’s east coast…’, without me going into any detail about where exactly the shot was taken. Now that little secret is out too.