And back to Camp

This was the last hiking day. And the longest in terms of mileage. We left  Cloghane right around 9:00 ang got to our B&B in Camp at 5:00. This was the same B&B we stayed the first night, and where we left the car. Pretty good feeling to know we were through hiking.  We took the car back to Castlegregory, one of the villages we went through, and had a great meal in a little restaurant there.

The Way took as a long a long beach for several miles today, then through a couple of  great little villages. We made friends with a setter (a real Irish setter) along the way. He ran down the lane ahead of us and made sure we were following. He led us down the trail for over a mile. , then disappeared over a hill. When we got to the top of the hill, he was gone. I’m guessing he turned off and headed back home. He probably provides this guide service to a lot of the walkers that go by his house.

Bother Bui to Cloghane

This was the most grueling day. Total of around 15 miles, but the Way took us over the shoulder of Brandon Mountain. Brandon Mountain is around 3100 feet in elevation, but the trail took us over a saddle several hundred feet below its peak. Legend is that Saint Brendan the Navigator climbed to the top of the mountain around 530 AD, saw the Americas, and set out for them. The weather must have been different in 530 AD. Based on what we saw, Saint Brendan would have been lucky to see his feet.

We had several miles of walking to get to the base of Brandon. By then, the rain had started and we had our rain gear on. As we went up the mountain, the rain increased, along with the wind. By the time we got close to the top the wind gusts were easily 60 mph. We looked like those newscasters on the coast in a hurricane, only colder.

But we crossed the  shoulder and started down the other side. Going down was tougher than going up. In places it was almost steep enough to be going down facing the mountain. And for the first few miles there was no trail to speak of, only deep grass and a lot of mud and a lot of hillocks and rivulets to step over and around.  For much of the way there were places where the grass was flattened down as if something had slid down on the grass. We learned later that a lot of locals find it easier to “slide down on their bums.”  We should have tried that.

But we got down. After walking through the village of Brandon we got to our B&B, where we were welcomed warmly in spite of the rain and mud we brought along..

Ballyferriter to Bothar Bui

This was a mostly level day, and relatively short, but with spectacular scenery. Around 12 miles. A lot of the walk was along a  beach, and then along some cliffs, until we got to our B&B in the village of Bothar Bui, a little north of Balllydavid.

Don’t you love the names of these Irish places?

Good to have a short day today. Chance for a nap, and to get the  feet off the ground.

Cork Wins!!!

Sunday was Ireland’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. Teams from Cork and Down played in Dublin for the Irish football championship. Cork won by one point, after a twenty year championship drought. Down had gotten to finals by beating perennial champion Kerry.
Marty and I learned about this when having dinner (great meal) at the Ballyferriter Hotel pub and restaurant, where our B&B host had dropped us off at for dinner. Turns out the pub was full of Cork fans, wearing Cork red and white. Kind of like walking into a bar full of  Ohio State fans, except these fans were celebrating pretty peacefully.

So Marty and I got to watch a replay of the game, and learn a little about Irish (Gaelic) football.

If you remember the early days of ESPN (before ESPN invented replays of Sportcenter to fill up their air time), they used to show Australian Rules Football. A lot. Well, Irish football is similar like that. Some characteristics of rugby, a bit of soccer, and some things unique. It’s continuous play, but you can carry the ball some. There is passing, but scoring is done only by kicking the ball. One point for kicks over the goal posts, three points for kicking it under the goal posts past the goalie.

It’s fun to watch. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t require players to develop the skills necessary to be an NFL quarterback.   Matt Moore may have played Irish football.

Irish football also differs from American collegiate and NFL football in that the players are amateur. They all have other jobs. Or attend class.

    

Benji's Game

Benji belongs to the owner of the Café at Slea Head, in the far corner of the Dingle Peninsula.

Benji’s job is to teach Benji’s game to the visitors at the tables outside.

Once he decides who he wants to teach his game to, he’ll bark at you, walk up to you, and drop his tennis ball at your feet. When you reach for the ball he picks it up and runs to the corner of the building. Your trick at this point is to follow him to the corner of the building. When you get there he plays hard to get with the ball for a minute, then drops the ball in front of you and runs out into the field. Your next trick  is to pick up the ball and throw it so Benji can find it in the tall grass. When he finds it,  he comes back to the corner of the  building, plays hard to get, drops the ball in front of you, and he’s off again.

This is a pretty complex game, and it took Marty and I a while to learn it. But once we picked up the nuances, Benji let us play it with him for as long as he wanted.. When we got tired, and after Benji tried enticements like dropping the ball really really close to our feet, he just moved on to the next table.

With Apologies to Zac Brown

At Slea Head, after a long rainy morning and miles of boggy fields:

Got my boots full of water
Got my ass in a chair
Got a Guinness nearby
That’s Great Blasket out there
Life is good today
Life is good today

Dingle to Ballyferriter

When we left Dingle, rain was threatening, and by the time we were 10 minutes outside of town we put on our rain gear. For the next hour the rain intensified, and by the time we got to Ventry the wind was blowing and the rain coming down in sheets. And that was too bad because we  didn’t want to take the cameras out to capture our classic encounter with a herd of cows.

We came over a  rise in the narrow road we’d been walking down and there was a herd of about 20 cows walking toward us. By themselves. Now, this road was  barely more than one lane wide, with hedges on either side, so we were going to have to share this space. We were all surprised and not sure what to do. So all of us, cows and guys, stopped. The cows milled around, waiting for Marty and I to make the next move. We moved over to the right side, and walked forward. Reluctantly, the cows moved over, and started to walk past us.   With one exception. The last gal in back really didn’t want to move over. But after everyone else had gone ahead, and after staring us down for a minute, she walked around us and moved on. Several minutes later the farmer and his dog rode  by on an ATV, on the way to catch up with the herd to move them into a field down the way. Wish we’d been able to get a picture.

After a couple of hours the rain stopped, and we ultimately dried off. The walk took us through several mile of sheep fields around the edge of Slea Head, the mountain at the SW corner of he peninsula. Then, it was several miles up the Western coast of the peninsula with great views of the coastline and the Blasket Islands offshore. After passing Dunquin, and going over the saddle of another mountain, we wound up at  the  B&B farmhouse where we were staying for the night.

A long, 15 mile day.

Anascaul to Dingle

This was a longer day than the first, 14 miles in all.. We got away from Anasacul a little after nine, on a windy, threatening morning. But it never rained, and even cleared up later on.  The walk out of Anascaul took us around the side of a series of mountains on a country lane, then dropped down to Dingle Bay at Minard Castle. Minard Castle is an early Irish fortified tower, that was taken by Oliver Cromwell’s English forces  after a siege. Cromwell tried to level the castle by putting charges in each of the four corners of the tower. It didn’t work, and Minard is still there today, with small damaged areas in each corner of the tower.

From Minard, the trail worked it’s way up from the bay, across a long valley, and up the side of a mountain range on the other side, until we got below Conor Pass. From there, it was down the far side into Dingle.

Dingle is a great place.  It’s on a small bay, and has been around since the Middle Ages as a fishing village. It’s a small town, probably 5 blocks square. Lots of colorful  buildings, it’s what you would picture as an old Irish town. Kind of like an Irish Sausalito, but with no pretense and with an end of the world feel. Out in the Bay lives Fungie, a friendly dolphin who took up residence  in the 80’s and has  been the object of boat tours ever since. Marty and I decided seeing the dolphin might cut into pub time too much, so maybe I’ll see Fungie next time.

When we checked in at our B&B on Main Street, the proprietor asked if we were good sleepers. Our room was upstairs at the front of the house and on Saturday nights in Dingle the party spills out onto the streets from the Main Street pubs.   And it did, until way past midnight.   But this was a tough hiking day so the party went on without us. 

Camp to Annascaul

Today was the first day of our hike. From Camp to the village of Anascaul, 12 miles down the Way.

The day started with an Irish Breakfast. That started with yogurt, and was followed by sausage, ham, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms, tea/coffee, and toast.  Kathleen, our proprietress, was disappointed that I didn’t want cereal as well.  To avoid further disappointment, I hid the blood sausage under my napkin. Marty, in full Irish breakfast mode, had both the cereal and the blood sausage.

We got away a little after nine. Sunny skies, high clouds, and temperature around 60. For the first couple of miles the walk was uphill on a single lane back road. The road was edged with hedges of fuschia and other flowering bushes well over our heads.   At the top, the view opened up to the Bay of Tralee behind us, and green mountains and valleys ahead. The green in the valleys and part way up the mountains was broken up into patchwork patterns created by networks of old stone walls.  A lot of the patchwork was flecked with white dots. Grazing sheep.

This countryside is gorgeous.

The path turned off the back road onto a farm lane, and for the next several miles went down one of these large, open valleys, past a peat harvesting area, and through several farms. The farmers in this area “brand” their sheep with a spot of color on their backs. This led Marty to observe that we had gone through the land of red sheep, were now in the land of blue sheep, and up ahead we could see the land of green sheep.  After this observation, I let Marty walk ahead a little ways by himself.  
  

At the end if the valley, the trail crossed the Emlagh River, then climbed again and headed west around a long ridge. We were now at the south end of the Dingle Peninsula, and the view  down below us was of a long white beach (Inch Strand), Castlemain Harbour, and Dingle Bay  heading west. Off in the distance was the Atlantic.  Further south across the bay was the Kerry Peninsula.  Awesome.

After following the ridge west, the trail turned inland to climb behind Knockafeehane Mountain before dropping a couple of miles down an arrow straight one lane road into the village of Anascaul, our destination for the day. We got to the Four Winds B&B a little after two. We made great time today.

We had dinner tonight at the South Pole Inn in Annascaul. More about that in a different post. But I wanted to mention that Marty had lamb chops.  He did not ask the waiter if they came from the land of blue lambs, red lambs, or green lambs.  But he thought about it.

Camp

Our flight from Charlotte to Dublin was uneventful, got in early around 9:30 am, and thanks to Marty’s supply of Ambien, we both got some sleep on the way.  

We picked up our car, dialed in the GPS, and got into Camp in the middle of the afternoon.  Our first night and last night on the Dingle Peninsula is in Camp, at Finglas House, a great B&B with a terrific owner.  Marty’s room looked out over Tralee Bay, with North Kerry off in the distance. My room did not. But the TV room we shared did.

We had a couple of choices for dinner in Camp that evening.  Ashe’s. Or not.  Turns out Ashe’s was an awesome choice. From the outside, Ashe’s looked like a sleepy little pub, with one or two cars parked out front. But the minute we walked in the door, we were in the middle of a small room with 40 happy souls singing Happy Birthday to one (or more) of the folks present. The music was being led by a couple with a box (accordion) and a hand drum, and it looked like the whole village was there. After the last “… happy birthday to you”, the  couple continued with traditional Irish music, led by the husband’s great tenor voice. And the dancing broke out.

Before we could work our way up to the bar, Marty and I were stopped by two ladies  who asked us to dance. Marty politely declined. He said later that he was a couple of Guiness’ shy of dancing. I tried to decline, but didn’t want to run afoul of what I thought might be local custom, so we whisked out onto the dance floor.

I need to clarify a few things at this point. My dance partner was not the young Irish lass you might be picturing. She was, as were most of the folks in the party, of an earlier generation. Substantially earlier. Than me. So we didn’t “whisk” out onto the dance floor so much as shuffled. And the “dance floor” was about a foot away from where Marty and I were working our way to the bar.

So, I jigged this way a couple of times, and jigged that way a couple of times. Now certain that I had been socially correct, I smiled, nodded my head, and went to meet Marty, now armed with a couple of Guiness.  But as I was leaving, my dance partner said her first words to me over the music. In perfect English, she said, oxymoronically: “I only speak French.”

Turns out this was not a group from the village, but a bus load of French Canadians touring Ireland, and they were here for an hour just to hear an hour of traditional Irish music before going back to Tralee for dinner. And it was great music. And it was serendipity to have walked in.  

But I think this group from Canada were probably confused about where Marty and me were from as well. As my dance partner was leaving, she waved and said “Merci Beaucoup.” In French, I think that means “be seeing ya, you tall,  handsome, Irish lad.”  

Off to Ireland, and the Dingle Way (Sli Chorca Dhuibhne)

This trip has been under discussion for over a year. For a time, all of the members of the Carolina Breakfast Club (our backpacking and breakfast bud’s) were considering going. For a while, our wives were thinking about going. The trip itself has been defined as narrow as a quick trip to hike the Dingle Way over spring break week , and as broad as a three week trip to include Ireland, Scotland, and a visit to Sizergh Castle in England, the historic home of the Strickland clan.

In the end, the participants are the two of us, Alan Strickland and Marty Szabo. And the heart of the trip is an eight day, seven night,  100 odd mile trek of the Dingle Peninsula in SW Ireland. 

The Dingle Peninsula is one of the most scenic and historic areas of Ireland, with hundreds of ruins of buildings and castles going back to the Stone Age.  The trek is over a combination of country lanes, moors and fields, beaches, and back roads. Tailor Made Tours (www.tailor-madetours.com) has made the arrangements for our overnights. Overnight we’ll be staying  in B&B’s in villages along the Way. Our bags will be transferred to the next B&B’s for us, so we’ll be hiking in hiking gear and daypacks. And Tailor Made has noted locations of pubs along the Way for lunch and other refreshments as required. Pubs in the villages we overnight in are up to us to find.

Marty and I both think the best part of this trip is going to be meeting the people along the Way. In many of the villages we go through, Gaelic is the preferred language.  Maps and road signs are bi-lingual. And everyone says we can expect to see warm Irish hospitality.  Needless to say, we’re pumped!!

It looks like the weather right now is roughly 60 degree highs, and 50 degree lows,  and we should expect rain along the Way.  We’ve waterproofed our hiking boots, and we’ll be carrying some pretty good (read: expensive, so it damn well better work) rain gear with us.

After living through this summer in Charlotte, that’s perfect weather.

Hey,  did I mention that along with everything else, this is the land of Guinness and some fine local Whiskies?  And that there are pubs along the Way?

We’re leaving Wednesday afternoon for Dublin (via Phila), and driving to the village of Camp  (in Gaelic: an Cam) on the Dingle Peninsula. We’ll overnight in Camp Thursday night, and start our hike Friday. The hike is a loop of the peninsula and ends in Camp seven days later. From there, we’ll drive to Galway for two nights. Turns out the International Oyster Festival is taking place in Galway that weekend. And we do love a good Oyster Festival.  

After Galway, we’ll go to Dublin for two nights, then back to CLT.

I’ll try to post regular updates on this blog along with verbose comments from the two of us.  I’m not sure if we’ll have Internet access every day on the Dingle Peninsula, so hang in there.  And, the blog is open for comments. Frequent comments are welcome – and expected from all.