County High Point: Arderin (11-12/32)
County: Laois & Offaly
Height of high point: 527m
Our total elevation for the hike: 117m
Difficulty: Moderate
This route straddles the easy - moderate line. There is a wear-path up the hill that is distinct and in many places easy to follow. However, the terrain is purely bog, and can be exceedingly wet, which is what has pushed the route into moderate for me.
Learn more about trail and hillwalking grading here.Our route distance: 2km
Views: Imagined
Arderin is the county high point of both Laois and Offaly, sitting in the southerly half of the Slieve Bloom mountains (which it is also the tallest of).
The Slieve Blooms are a lovely set of hills. One of my favourite trails (the Slieve Bloom Way) is a 75km route that loops around these surprisingly steep hills. When we walked it back in 2019, the trail had us constantly climbing up and down forested slopes - so much so, that at the time I remember joking to Carl how it felt like we were on our way to Kerry, and not meandering around Ireland’s boggy midlands.
Having loved the trail so much, we were looking forward to experiencing a new corner of the Slieve Blooms.
For the first hour of our drive down, I could see Carl squinting out the windshield into each volley of rain. It wasn’t until we were crossing out of south Co. Roscommon and into Offaly, that our gradual south-east direction released us from the “west of Ireland weather”, and onto twisting back roads filled with fog.
Our previous evening of research had told us that there was only one typical route up to this peak - to park in Glendine Gap and follow a boggy 1km trail to the summit. As the car wheezed its way up the hill and into the clouds, I could see our proposed idea of also taking in one of the other local hills to make this a slightly longer loop fade away into the mist.
It was reaching the middle of November, and we knew that hiking at this time of year would mean some wet days. The main problem facing us, as we got out at the car park and stretched the legs after the drive down, was whether we’d have anything to film or say about this particular journey.
After checking weather apps again, and waiting an extra while to see if the clouds would clear (they didn’t), we finally left the car park through the almost invisible trail in the corner - the small path descending steeply down a few meters before our uphill battle began.
The route to the summit is clear enough - the bog worn bare in a twisting trail of mud and heather roots. At this time of year the ground is very soft, each footstep squelching down (and then occasionally suctioning into the bog on the up-step). Most of the hike up we spent tip-toeing through wet sections, and slightly sliding down the steeper sections.
We didn’t realise how quickly we were getting to the summit as the side of the hill we were approaching from was mostly sheltered from the buffeting winds. As we began to crest onto the top of the hill, I set up the camera and tripod for one of our final “approach” shots. We walked our walk, turned around … and the camera was gone.
I’d had some expectations of this happening (while also strongly hoping against it); the tripod had finally been caught by the wind, and as we walked away the camera pitched backwards and fell into the bog.
This camera (affectionately named Arthur when we started Tough Soles, as we decided that speaking to a camera with a name and googly eyes would be less intimidating) has been through everything. He has lived most of his life attached to the outside of one of my hiking packs, without a lens cap in sight. He has been through wet weather warnings and sunny beach trips.
As I jogged after Carl to assess the damage, I watched Carl pull the camera out of the wet ground and take a picture. “We need to be cleaning him!” I try to shout over the wind - to which Carl sends back a reply along the lines of, “he’s already soaked, these 3 seconds aren’t going to change that”, as well the implied look of “and we both know that if I tried to clean the camera, you’d be snatching it from me to do it again yourself.” I’d like to write that I gave Carl a rueful smile, or some other acknowledgement of his very true assessment, but I’m pretty sure that I was already fixated on assessing the camera, removing the larger clumps of bog out of the viewfinder.
Pulling the buff off my head, I scrape the worst of the wet off and make sure the camera is still powering on and off - which he is. We leave the camera off for the next few minutes - the silver lining of the even windier summit being that we could try to believe the wind was drying the camera off.
Wandering around the summit area, we could see nothing beyond thick white walls of cloud, the intangible barrier between us and the views to the world around us. We sit at the summit marker and chat, and then head back down again.
In Ireland, an Arderin is “a mountain of 500+m with a prominence of 30m”. At the time of writing, there are 408 peaks with this qualification. The word ‘Arderin’ was chosen as it means ‘Ireland’s height’ in Irish, as well as being the name of this particular hill, close to the geographical centre of the island.
Choosing to name this (relatively) new mountain list after a hill is a departure from the unspoken tradition of naming such lists after outdoor pioneers, or after those who create the catalogue (The term Vandeleur-Lynam is based on a list originally compiled in the 1950s by the Rev CRP Vandeleur and the late Joss Lynam). Having such a list named after a person is often a great sign of respect, and acknowledgement of the work that they have contributed to the outdoors.
But personally, I see something really beautiful in naming this set after the sense of place that comes from being here. There is something both encompassing in it - in the sense that you are in the geographic heart of Ireland, surrounded by every other hill, mountain, lake and riverbed - and something very ordinary and grounding. This is just another normal, Irish hill. There is bog and heather, varieties of small wild flowers and grasses that I’ve yet to learn the names of, but appreciate and admire on every other waterlogged hike. It is both special, and completely and utterly ordinary.
We get back to the car, pile our wet layers into the boot, take a quick look at the commemoration marker beside the car park, and set off home again. As the car descends out of the clouds themselves, the views back up look beautiful - tendrils reaching out between trees, soaked leaves glistening in the dusk-like light.
We spent about an hour in total on the hill, with only a little over 30 minutes of that was us actually hiking. We qualified this as a “medium“ on our little scale as it doesn’t have a trail, but is also quite a short walk, with only a little over 100m of elevation to it.
I’d recommend waiting until a drier time of year if possible, unless you like wet feet. Boots were necessary.
Here is our video of the hike.
If you want a full overview of the County High Point’s project, click here.
If you want to learn more about trail and hillwalking grading, click here.