Mourne Seven Sevens - 2nd Aug 2014

[kingsley]

I am planning on trying this.  I am a wide load who will be aiming to just complete the bloody thing - I don't care at all about my time!!!

I have walked various sections of it but never the full thing.  I have done the trek along the Ben Crom river in both directions (when deciding which was was best way round to do the course).  If you do it the way round so that you end up heading from Ben Crom to Meelbeg then finding the paths is obvioulsy very easy, but I have to say walking up that valley really pissed me off :-)  Walking down it is much easier, but finding the path takes a while.  There is a path that appears somewhere halfway up Meelbeg that you can follow down to the river, and then when I did it I actually followed a path on the right hand side of the river whcih then crossed over to the left somewhere further down.  That may sound complicated but basically as long as you hit the river you will find a good path.

LandyLiam - that map is good, is it from GPS when you actually walked that?  As for where to cut off for the dam..... last weekend we were walking this route and asked a guy we met who runs the route..... he said you follow the path by the river down until you get to a point where you are directly between the top of Doan and the first crag you can see on the left of Binnian (it looks like a clump of rock with a gap in the middle).  Again I am useless at explaining, but its actually a very handy way of working out where to go (and this is all the explanation I had last weekend and worked it out OK when you see the actual trerrain in front of you - it was a clear day obvioulsy :-).  You end up on a very good path that leads you all the way down to the dam.  Also I noticed at one point someone has piled up a few white rocks that sort of marks out that section of path :-)

[LandyLiam]

Good on you for having a go, sure if things get too tough you can always skip out Binnian quite easily. The map I posted is mainly from my gps, the bit down from Meelbeg summit was estimated though, from the river onwards was my actual track. Good tip on where to leave the river, just be wary about following someone, I have led a few people the wrong way before 

[seanbranagh]

Guys, Thank's again for even more detail.
I am going to be giving the 7's another go either tomorrow or Saturday and I just got that Viewranger app for my phone to record so hopefully I find the right track this time..

[LandyLiam]

Well tomorrow's the big day, weather looking ok for the morning, possibly cloudy which could make the navigation tricky in places, afternoon could be wet with wind picking up , I might just try for the 6 of them 

[LandyLiam]

Looks like the forecast was a bit off  and a heavy rain warning has now been issued, think i'll stay at home today

[RedLeader]

So did anyone have a go?

[kingsley]

Yep I did it. Seemed a bit mad starting off as I knew it would be raining all day, but did it with a few others and they all wanted to go ahead anyway.  Totally soaked but ended up being a better day than expected :-) Cheated by landing in with another group getting between meelbeg and Ben crom - it was really misty but they seemed very confident and were happy to adopt us for a bit :-)

[Rumblebum]

Well done Kingsley, I'd say you were ready for a pint and some dry socks by the end of it!

How'd you find the walk?