After being almost frozen solid on the cliffs in Achill, myself and Diarmuid decided that we would hit the road, come back inland and visit a location that he hadn’t been to before, Pine Island which sits on Derryclare Lough, in the heart of Connemara. Travelling in the dark towards our location I let Diarmuid lead the way, he had sat nav after all, so what could go wrong?

Sleep that evening was a strange one, I had wrapped up well for the imminently chilling conditions, however, I woke a number of times during the night, not because of the cold directly, but instead because I was too warm. I didn’t want to remove the layers I had on as it was in fact very cold outside, -5 is what my phone told me and the thermometer in the van was reading 0 degrees, best stay as warm as I could I decided.

As we began our final day of this trip we were all filled with excitement heading to photograph one of the icons of icons the dark hedges. Now it may not have been a seascape location however it certainly was a location that was personally on my list to photograph having first seen an image of this many years ago by a photographer Peter Cox as one of the images he featured in his calendar, I had want to visit here right from that moment, firstly to experience it and secondly to get my own shot of it.

According to legend, the columns are the remains of a causeway built by a giant. The story goes that the Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn MacCool), from the Fenian Cycle of Gaelic mythology, was challenged to a fight by the Scottish giant Benandonner. Fionn accepted the challenge and built the causeway across the North Channel so that the two could meet. In one version of the story, Fionn defeats Benandonner. In another, Fionn hides from Benandonner when he realises that his foe is much bigger than he is. Fionn's wife, Sadhbh, disguises Fionn as a baby and tucks him in a cradle. When Benandonner sees the size of the "baby", he reckons that its father, Fionn, must be a giant among giants. He flees back to Scotland in fright, destroying the causeway behind him so that Fionn would be unable to chase him down.Across the sea, there are identical basalt columns (a part of the same ancient lava flow) at Fingal's Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa, and it is possible that the story was influenced by this.

It was time for anther photography road trip with my wingmen Diarmuid & Patrick, and .for this one we were about to head back up to the north of the Island, but stead of grabbing a ferry were going to stay on the land and explore the top of Ireland and all among the causeway coast.We had a number of locations in mind and had some unfinished business of our own for two of them after being beaten back by driving rain during a horrendous storm when. we had tried to fist visit many years back

When a moment occurs and you wished you had your camera is when you think I wish I had brought it with me. for me I have my camera with me most of the time and it allows me to catch fleeting moments or opportunities if they occur near where I am at a particular time Today was one such occasion while working in Tralee it was close to sunset and looked like it could all kick off, and kick off it did.

We start this edition of the blog at the end of Day 4 as we had reached the stunning location of Elgol, the quite hamlet sits on a glacial loch and is surrounded by the most incredible mountain ranges off in the distance, I had only seen a handful of images of here before and one of those being Diarmuids, so I had little expectations other then wild waves and finally I would get to take some seascape shots, but seascape with a difference. Normally my horizon is clear with the odd ship sitting of crossing in my path, this location promised peaks to die for and the clouds that were building looked like they were going to be dare I say EPIC

As we started into day 4 of our adventure, spirits were high and we woke at 5am to prepare for the hike up towards the stunning Old Man of Stor, which was still being covered by flowing clouds just like the evening before, now Diarmuid had warned me that it was quite a considerable hike and not to under estimate it, so with this in mind I was up and ready before both of them and headed off in earnest towards the destination, with the words of advice from Diarmuid ringing around in my head, “when you get to the fork in the path, turn left “

Day three started in the same way as day two had begun, we had arrived at our destination of choice Neist Point at Sunset the night before and after another night of great food, company and a couple of drinks we were treated to an unmerciful wind that at times felt like it was going to knock us over the edge, thankfully it didn’t however when we we we even found it hard to open the van doors, the wind what that powerful.