THE FIRST THING THAT STRIKES ME IS THE SILENCE.
Driving from Dublin to Davagh has been a journey from city to villages, motorways to country roads, from four bars of phone reception to — depending on the hollow I’m entering — zero bars. A hen harrier floats over an old shed with a rusting, corrugated roof, and when I park my car in a forest in the thick of County Tyrone, the door shuts with a beautifully muffled thump. It feels like audio made in a recording studio.
The pines and spruce and mosses and blanket bog here, together with the bowl-shaped depression in which Davagh Forest Park sits, all seem to contribute to this unearthly soundscape. When I point it out to Seán Clarke, a farmer and part-time guide I’ve arranged to meet for a walk through the trees and the forest’s archaeological treasures, he smiles.
“You can hear someone hammering a fence post for a mile here, or the cry of a calf or a lamb,” he says. And, after a pause: “For an unusually long distance, you know.”
This bowl scooped out of the landscape (Davagh means ‘cauldron’) blocks out something else, too. ‘Sky glow’ is a term I learn at OM Dark Sky Observatory, newly opened in a forest clearing here. It refers to light pollution, and displays inside explain why this remote area, secreted away in Northern Ireland’s Sperrin Mountains, recently became the world’s 78th International Dark Sky Park. “The 77th was in the Grand Canyon,” guide Erin Lennox tells me proudly. There’s an image of the planet Saturn on her name pin.
この記事は National Geographic Traveller (UK) の October 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は National Geographic Traveller (UK) の October 2021 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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