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You come to Cooley , east of Dundalk, for the raw beauty of its mountains, to walk and to experience a life where the twenty-first century intrudes only rarely. Indeed when you get up among the bare hilltops the peninsula's links with legend seem at least as strong as its grip on modern reality. For above all this is country associated with the Ttel in Bo Cuailnge ("Cattle Raid of Cooley"), and in the mountains many of the episodes of the great epic were played out. Its plot (set around the first century AD) concerns the Brown Bull of Cooley ( Donn Cuailnge ) which is coveted by Medb, Queen of Connaught, in her envy of her husband Ailill's White Bull ( Finnbenach ). In their efforts to capture the bull, Medb and Ailill, who come from the west, effectively declare war on the east in general, and Ulster in particular. All the men of Ulster - save one, Cuchulainn - are struck by a curse which immobilizes them through most of the tale, leaving our hero to face the might of Medb's troops alone. The action consists largely of his (often gory) feats, but the text is also rich in topography and placenames, many of them still clearly identifiable. A single road runs around the peninsula, leaving the N1 to trace the southern slopes of the Cooley Mountains and then cutting across country to Greenore, Carlingford and Omeath on the north shore. It is here, facing the mountains of Mourne across Carlingford Lough , that the most beautiful scenes lie, with forested slopes plunging steeply towards the lough. The southern slopes are gentler and lazier, making a far more sedate progress to the water's edge. The exact location of the border, visible on the map as a dotted line bisecting the lough, has been in dispute since 1922. Once, it was continually patrolled by British army helicopters; now, there is little evidence of army presence. Before you reach any of this, however, only about a mile down the peninsula road, there's a short and rewarding detour. From the back of the Ballymascanlon Hotel , a footpath leads to the Proleek Dolmen (from Proilig , meaning "Obscure") whose massive capstone balances with far more elegance than its 46 tons ought to allow; to reach the Dolmen take the path that runs from the hotel car park through the courtyard of whitewashed cottages along the fringes of the hotel's new golf course. On the path just before the dolmen, a Bronze Age wedge-shaped gallery grave can be seen, though be aware when visiting it of stray balls from the golf tee behind.
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