Croagh Patrick. Photo: Paul McIlroy CC-BY-SA-2.0

As you top another false summit on that seemingly endless slog up your next mountain and ask yourself why you subject your body to such punishment, spare a thought for the man for whom a mountain walk was literally punishment.

Hapless Joseph McElwee subjected a Garda officer to a torrent of alcohol-inspired abuse and told him to ‘Get back to Mayo’.

His sentence, imposed by Mayo-born Judge Seamus Hughes in a hearing at Letterkenny, County Donegal, was to climb the 764m (2,507ft) Croagh Patrick and perform penance at the mountain’s four stations of St Patrick.

The 33-year-old, of Rathmullan, Co Donegal, provided the court with photographic evidence of his visit to the peak, which is topped by a chapel dedicated to Ireland’s patron saint and after whom the mountain is named. He further redeemed himself by presenting the court with a cheque for 2,900 euros (£2,505), raised by getting sponsorship for his climb.

The cash will be split between the Donegal Hospice and Mayo General Hospital. He was accompanied on his trip by his wife and 12 friends. The mountain, with its anglicised name from the Irish Cruach Phádraig, or Patrick’s Stack, is commonly known as The Reek and is climbed as a pilgrimage on Reek Sunday every July by up to 15,000 people.

Judge Hughes said: “I commend you for the way you have turned it around and taken the opportunity to raise money.

“Quite clearly there is a therapeutic exercise in climbing The Reek and the time spent up there to think.”

Saint Patrick is reputed to have fasted on the mountain top for 40 days in the fifth century before banishing snakes from the island of Ireland. The chapel on the summit, near Westport, Co Mayo, was dedicated in 1905.