Hundreds Flock to Watch an Irish Bog Sliding Into the Sea

DUBLIN, Ireland — Hundreds of sightseers flocked to a remote Irish village Saturday to see a mysterious moving bog slide toward the sea.

“I’m looking at it but I can’t believe it,” farmer Tom Moran said as he watched the oozing quarter-mile quagmire of peat and mud slide slowly past his doorstep. “This is ridiculous. The bog has actually been moving down the road for the past two days.”

Hundreds of sightseers flocked to the scene a mile outside the tiny seaside village of Belderg, about 140 miles west of Dublin.

They took snapshots of the half-foot-deep muck as its leading edge slithered half a mile down a gentle slope, along a country road and plunged over a cliff 150 feet into the Atlantic Ocean.

“It’s the first time we’ve come across an experience like this,” one official said. “We’re not exactly sure why it should happen. It is traveling faster than a man can walk.”

County engineers said that the bog, made of wet, spongy, marshy land, was loosened by heavy rains and that it would probably stop moving when the rain ends.