Perhaps Ireland's most famous 'magic road' is in Waterford, located along a country road close to Mahon Falls, in the beautiful Comeragh Mountains.Īnd yes, as this clip shows, if you stop your car in the right spot it will proceed to roll uphill. So your eyes, rather than the fairies, are playing tricks on you.Īround the world, magic roads are known as 'gravity hills' or 'magnetic hills', and there are hundreds of them.įrom the comfort of our desks, and making liberal use of Google Maps, we went to find three of the most famous examples in Ireland. It's an optical illusion, where the layout of the landscape makes it look like the slope is going one way, but in fact it's going the other. The explanations for the magic road phenomenon vary depending on who you're talking to - and either fairies or 'magnetic fields' are often cited - but the real answer is pretty simple. Yes, Ireland's 'magic roads' are 'a thing' - a stretch of roadway, usually well off the beaten track and hidden up a succession of byways and boreens, where if you stop the car and let the handbrake off, the vehicle will mysteriously and eerily roll uphill.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |