A pilgrim's progress — the salutary tale of a failed penitent on Croagh Patrick

TWO subjects I avoid in Opinion are sport and religion. Not because I know little or nothing about either â€â€ if I used those criteria I'd be out of a job â€â€ but because even though neither interests me, I recognise and appreciate the way they glue us together, especially now when we need all the glue we can get. So who am I to mock or sneer? Politicians, lamebrain bigots, bodhrán players and sociologists are all fair game in my book, but religion and sport pay their way and deserve a free pass. As a total non-believer, I take comfort from other people's beliefs. So, good on those who took part in the traditional annual trek up 'the Reek' last Sunday. I wasn't with them on the day but that holy mountain once played a formidable role in my own coming of age â€â€ it may even have saved me from turning out far worse than I did. The first time I stayed out all night was while 'doing the Reek'. The first time I got drunk was while doing the Reek. The first time I claimed â€â€ boastfully but, regrettably, untruthfully â€â€ that I'd had my evil way with a girl was while doing the Reek. The Reek and I go back a long way.[private] My earliest memory of the Reek goes back to my childhood. In one of those tricks of light and atmospheric conditions, Croagh Patrick seemed to me to be so close to our back garden in Castlebar that I could have sworn it was just beyond the lake over the fields. Being an intrepid little man and accustomed to a level of freedom that today's children could only replicate online, I announced to my mother that not only was I going to find that mountain â€â€ I was going to conquer it. So she packed up my standard expedition fare of sardine sandwiches and a bone for Prince, my cherished canine companion on all such campaigns, and waved farewell to her second-born as I trudged off over the horizon. Never was the phrase 'the heir and the spare' so appropriate. As was so often the case with my expeditions, the spirit was willing, but the body was weak. After an hour following the railway track I sat down to assess the situation. Not wanting to make an important decision on an empty stomach I had my sandwiches and my two Marietta biscuits and like Scott before me, weighed up the risks. Selfless martyr that I am and was, I no doubt came to the conclusion that I could have made it there and back but it wouldn't have been right for me to put my team-mate, poor old faithful Prince, through such an ordeal. After all, if things got really tough I might have to eat him. I was already casting covetous glances at his ham bone. So we turned back and by a magnificent stroke of luck, arrived home just in time for dinner â€â€ Papa Galvin's Saturday dinner special. My Daddy was renowned for his spaghetti Bolognese, Mayo-style: 90% mince, 6% onion and 4% spaghetti, the latter thrown in for a bit of exotic sophistication. Mammy told me not to worry, as I horsed into my dinner. The Reek wasn't going anywhere, she said, I'd have plenty of opportunities to climb it. And, as Irish mammies always are â€â€ she was right. While still in national school we'd press gang anyone who could beg, borrow or steal a bike, and set out for Westport. By this stage I had forsaken sardines for banana sandwiches. We'd pedal furiously, in convoy, sometimes up to 20 of us, until we reached Murrisk. Then we'd hit the Reek like recruits on an assault course and hare up it as if it were no more than an anthill. From the summit I'd wave my jumper in what I assumed was the direction of Castlebar and home. I must have had a remarkable aptitude for geographical coordinates for when I eventually got home, my mother always confirmed she had seen me waving. I grew from boy to spotty adolescent and my relationship with the Reek took on a new twist. Back then Reek Sunday was Reek Saturday night. The climb was made in darkness and on a clear night, from our house in Castlebar, you could see the pilgrim trail lit up with fires all along the route, marking the way like an illuminated rosary beads. On one such night, soon after my 14th birthday, some older local lads came to collect my big brother. They intended to do the Reek in the dark. Relays of buses left the centre of town, as they did from most towns in Mayo back then, and delivered pilgrims to the holy mountain as soon as night fell and on through the night. I pleaded, cajoled and nagged until finally herself relented and I was allowed accompany them on the adventure of the summer. Could life get any better than this? Orgies, not indulgences, were my concern BY THE time the next summer came around I was working and considered myself a man, so there was no need for pleading â€â€ I was doing the Reek. By this stage I'd begun to hear the stories of what really went on in Westport on Reek night. The pubs had a special dispensation to stay open all night and my teenage self was more interested in Bacchanalian orgies than plenary indulgences. This time I travelled with my own gang of reprobates, lads who knew a thing or two about how the world worked, as you do at 15. No cissies mumbling the Rosary were we as we made our way to the summit but hard men â€â€ bent on taking all the fleshpots of Westport had to offer. Girls â€â€ there was an abundance of girls going up that night such that I had never dreamed of. Here was our opportunity to enhance the county's gene pool by seducing damsels from as far away as Ballina, even Belmullet. They were there in all shapes and sizes, mesmerising lovely girls in need of a strong arm to assist them on the ascent. I recall my own chivalrous assistance of one ravishing beauty along a steep section of the slope â€â€ she sweetly balancing herself on my sinewed arm, my fantasies about my upcoming reward in danger of tripping us both up, until she mentioned a boyfriend. At the first opportunity I slunk away into the darkness, seeking out a more unencumbered prospect, which, in truth, never materialised. Not that any of us admitted this when we regrouped. Going by our vainglorious accounts of conquest and colonisation, the Reek that dark night would have made the worst excesses of Caligula's Rome look like an altar boys' outing. And so, without gaining an indulgence, or accomplishing anything that would require us to gain one, we band of bawdy brothers made our way back into Westport. Now this was more like it. The town in the early hours of the morning resembled a fleadh cheoil on mute. The pubs were thronged and the streets were clogged, with some revellers sleeping off the drink and others making their way towards it. After a few refusals we finally found a blind publican willing to serve us and got down to the real business of the night â€â€ getting drunk. I had my first ever drink in a pub that night and got stupid drunk for the very first time. After slobbering my way through a few pints of beer, someone introduced me to what was regarded as the ultimate in cool at the time, vodka and orange. This was vodka with undiluted Miwadi, the height of sophistication in 70s Mayo. Best of all, it was easy to knock back and had little discernible effect. Little, that was, until the drinks were coming back up a lot faster than they had gone down, in what Billy Connolly so graphically describes as a 'psychedelic yawn.' This hard-man lark wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Because of the antics of the likes of me, the night pilgrimage was abandoned. Maybe, though, thinking back on it now, my forays into the world of the Catholic pilgrimage may have done me some good, because all through the hard years that followed â€â€ I could never stomach the hard stuff. In fact a quarter of a century elapsed after that dark night of the soul before I acquired a modest enough taste for good whiskey. I've never touched vodka since and the thought of concentrated orange still makes me gag. If there is a spirit of the mountain up there on that summit it's either deeply benevolent or well up for the craic. Either way, I'm not complaining. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ Quote of the Week 'There's a remote tribe that worships the number zero. Is nothing sacred?' [/private] â€â€ Les Dawson