The Irish hills are complex enough that however much wandering around you do amongst them you still keep on finding new corners to surprise and delight you. Every so often you come across a place that absolutely blows you away and you come away thinking “How on earth has it taken me so long to get round to visiting here?”. Sugarloaf in the Cahas did that for me in 2019. It’s no great distance from my 90’s hangout in South Kerry but I suppose I was finding enough objectives in the Kingdom without needing to venture across into the Other County. I finally made it to Sugarloaf last year and boy had I been missing out. The round of it and Nareera is as good a half day as you’ll find anywhere. There are six jaggy rock peaks (well, five-and-a-lump) and a maze of nicely perched lochans, the whole place being scattered with rows of sandstone slabs in classic south-western fashion, as wild and rugged a spot as any mountain addict could wish for.
Toberavanaha from Nareera SW Top
Access is easy though, with space for a couple of cars by the standing stone at Leitrim Beg (V894 512) from where a decent track leads high onto the south west shoulder of Nareera (thanks to Liz Ashton for the route). Even above the track the going isn’t too bad up to the first top, with useful sheep tracks leading up to the tiny Lough Keel. The re-routed Beara Way passes just to the north so getting to the main summits from here can be easy. The temptation to go exploring is strong however, and takes you into much more challenging terrain. Once off the track it’s impossible to walk in a straight line for more than a few yards without meeting a rock slab, a pool or a bog. I loved it!
Toberavanaha from Nareera SW Top
The summits themselves are dramatic places, with spiky rock crests just asking to be perched on and the feel of much bigger peaks. The exception to the rule is Nareera North Top, which is a bit amorphous and off the obvious route but is in a nice wild area and being an Arderin Beg has to be visited (once a mad bagger….). Nareera is a rounded dome when seen from a safe distance but close up it definitely growls at you, with snarly rock teeth all over the place. Some of the minor summits are quite tricky to reach and an overgrown kid (who, me?) could spend quite a lot of time scrambling around.
Lough Toberavanaha
Between Nareera and Sugarloaf is a fairly separate hill with three main tops (plus the predictable throng of minor ones). All the tops are spiky and it would be a very confusing area in mist. OSi maps don’t give the hill a separate name and both Mountainviews and the UK databases call it Sugarloaf West Top, which is odd as it’s closer to Nareera in distance and the col with Sugarloaf is much lower. Apparently it’s sometimes referred to as Toberavanaha from the nearby loch and this makes sense to me. It’s a splendid hill and surely deserves a name of its own! Just to confuse matters further the north-western summit counts as an Arderin Beg (“Sugarloaf Far West Top”) but the equally separate-looking south-eastern one doesn’t. I suspect that a survey here might add a new top to the list.
Sugarloaf from Tobaravanaha SE Top
Ultimately it doesn’t matter whether something features on a list or not, the only sensible question is whether it’s fun to climb and all three summits definitely qualify on that score. Beyond them you drop a good 90 metres to a boggy notch below Sugarloaf and from there the going eases. You are now heading with the grain of the land so can follow a grassy runnel up between the lines of slab. There’s even a bit of a path, quite a rarity in Beara. Being off to the side of the main range the view is more extensive than from the other tops, with the sweep of Bantry Bay spread out below you. Given what you’ve crossed to get there it’s difficult to believe that you’re only just over 2km from your car in a straight line - it certainly doesn’t feel like that!
Descent presents a dilemma. The obvious route from the map is to head south to join the old route of the Beara Way, but there have been access problems here and the route is decisively blocked off at its western end. I didn’t fancy retracing my steps over all the lumps and bumps around Nareera so from the notch west of Sugarloaf I decided to go up and round the south end of the ridge ahead then drop into Curraduff coum and traverse round to meet the starting path. This started off nicely, with a grassy ramp leading up to a scenic notch on the ridge, but getting down into the coum was a different matter. The face was a mass of slabs, ramps and steep walls running across the direction I wanted to go, with the slabs being just at the angle where you think “I could get down that” but then find it trickier than it looks. It would be a fun scramble going upwards but was a nightmare to descend. Even once down on the floor of the coum it’s a much more up and down affair than it seems from the top. It may be less distance than retracing your steps along the ridge but it certainly isn’t quicker and involves much more effort.
The east flank of Curraduff. If I had known that it looked like this I would never have chosen to descend it!
Even taking into account my poor choice of return route this was one of the most enjoyable short days I’ve had on Irish hills and I can thoroughly recommend it, especially if you enjoy playing around on rocks. If you’re in the area for a few days then there are a whole load of other great walks nearby. The Cummeengeera horseshoe is a superb day out, wild and rough (but not as hard going as Nareera). I actually met someone on it once, the only time that’s ever happened to me in Beara. Turned out he used to be the shepherd on one of my local moors in Derbyshire – it’s a small world sometimes. Droppa is a lovely narrow ridge, easy walking but “droppa” is certainly what it does on its north side. Hungry Hill is another great rugged top - I’m told it has an excellent view but sadly I’ve yet to see it. There are also the delightful pointy summits of Knockatee and the wonderfully-named Knockanouganish, both of which make ideal trips if you only have an hour to spare. Although Beara is largely County Cork I’m afraid I can’t resist pointing out that most of the last few are actually in Kerry!
Knockatee from the south
A previous version of this article was published in the 2019 Mountainviews Annual
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