Hog’s Back

There’s a typo on our recently published Dingle maps, I spotted it after printing and it’ll be updated. If you walk the popular Faha pilgrim route up Mount Brandon, you climb steeply up and then across the slope of the hill. You then round a spur at the engine remains of a German WW2 airplane, to enter the great com leading to the final steep ascent. This spur is named Hoga Back on the print map, a name that came from a local 1976 guidebook via the Áitainmneacha Chiarrai collection. Where it’s described as a grass spur crossed on the pilgrim route.

It appears though that this name should be the Hog’s Back. Richard Hayward in his 1946 book ‘In the Kindom of Kerry’ describes being guided by a local man up this route. He talks of setting out from Faha, crossing over the “green Hog’s Back, a triangular landmark known to all travellers along the road from Camp to Cloghane”. Judging by the landscape in the image, the Hog’s Back is in fact another name for Binn Faha and possibly the long ridge that trails eastwards.

So please take out your pen and change Hoga Back to Hog’s Back on your Dingle West and Dingle Central maps!

#eastwestmapping #thedingleway #visitkerry #reeksdistrict