A line of stone runs across the whole massif, like something out of an epic. The Mourne Wall is a dry-stone wall over 35 kilometres long and about a metre wide, built over 14 years (1904–1918); it crosses 15 summits. They say it was built entirely by hand, without the use of animal labour. By 2024, more than 900 repairs to collapsed sections had been carried out.
I’ve yet to see a structure so massive and, at the same time, so useless — built in an era that already had aeroplanes and steamships.