The story of a supreme tragedy staying behind the Doolough Valley gives it a power which touched me beyond of what I could imagine.

A cross, that stays at its northern edge, is dedicated to the victims of the ‘Doolough Tragedy’. During the Great Famine in 1849, hundreds of people made their way from Louisburgh to Delphi Lodge, threatened by starvation, to ask their lord for food. Their suffering was ignored, they were turned away and a lot of them died from malnutrition in Doolough Valley on the way back to Louisburgh.

I stood and watched for a moment, my heart was bursting with a sorrow profoundly affected by the emptiness, the silence and the feel of hundreds of spirits drifting around.

Places like this one deserve to be contemplated. It serves as a reminder of one of the blackest events in Irish history.