Day 3, Derrymihin East – Sugar Loaf mountain

Weather: ⛅🌥️🌬️☁️☁️
Picnic: 🌯🌯(2 out of 5, wraps behind a rock, sheltered from the wind)
Traction on track: 🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌🍌(7 out of 5 bananas, we might need a new scale…)
Trail depth: deepest step was 30 cm deep in mud. Deepest hikingpole about 50 cm into the boggy ground.
Gear miraculously replaced: 1 hikingpole, gift from the lady at the Adrigole grocery store, The Pass!
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, sheltered and sloped, dry-ish ground)
Name of followed trail: Beara way
Best sight: the style leading to the road! I gave it a big hug to thank it for it’s existence!
Irony of the day: after a while day of soggy trails where we sometimes went in over our shoes, I had a hard time pitching the tent, because the tent pegs hit rock… Stupid ground…

We get up after a good night of sleep. We want to leave at the first light, because we hope to catch up a bit of the distance we couldn’t do yesterday. The trail is again beautiful but hard. We are so happy we stopped for the night when we did! It was definitely a wise move. The 5 km to the planned campsite take us almost 2 hours. We would have never made it, and our spot was better anyway 😅😁

We hike the wild rocky, boggy hills and enjoy another dry day of hiking! Everything, except our feet (ok, and the lower half of our legs after some iffy steps in the mud) is dry! We love the views, but could do with some easier tracks. By now we are wondering which country cares less for their hikers; Ireland or New Zealand. They both seem to have a habit of randomly putting up markers and call it a trail…🤔

after a long walk through the hills we get to the road close to Adrigole, where there is a grocery store that doubles as a café. The lady in the shop sells great scones, and some goodies to upgrade our noodles tonight! In the cafe we tell our story and the lady is amazed and super helpful in letting us have a seat in the back, where we can take a rest and try to use some internet connection.

Internet connection out in nature is a bit rare in this part of Ireland, so we can’t post or check the weather as often as we would like. But being offline is also nice and peaceful, I have to admit 😁

When we leave the store, we tell the lady of our broken hikingpole. And she says:”well I have a pair of those in the back!” Apparently they were already there when she bought the place and nobody came to collect them. We now own one of these! So happy with that!

With a big grin on our faces we leave the store. Who would have guessed?! Trail magic truly is a thing. Or it’s the shamrocks that Adrian gave us..

We hike up Sugar loaf hill, and the trail seems to have changed. This trail seems to be made with the intention to be hiked, in stead of: “here you have some markers, good luck”! Of course it’s still wet, but Ireland has had rain everyday for months…

We like this new trail quality (although we are slightly worried that were just getting used to it). Although the trail is better, it is quite steep up, and we have had a long day. Around 17.00 we find a reasonably flat grassy spot that is out of the wind, and we stop for the night. Not the prettiest, but the best we can find (since solid ground is scarce here and we don’t fancy a waterbed)

Progess was good today, but we didn’t make up much of yesterday’s delay. Tomorrow should be an easier day, so that will get us back on schedule.