Weather: 🌧️☁️☁️🌥️☁️
Picnic: none, but good (though late) lunch in Baile Bhuirne with fresh bread and goodies!
Traction on track: 🍌🍌(2 out of 5 bananas for a bit, then 👟👟👟👟👟 5 out of 5 for speedy walking, because most was paved road)
Styles on track: too many for our liking, some very steep, some really useless
Place to stay: the Mills Inn 🛌🛌🛌🛌 (4 out of 5 beds, really nice beds, super friendly staff (even though they called us daft for walking this far..and great food!)
Name of followed trail: Sli Gaeltacht Mhuscrai
We got up in time to miss out on most of the rain. The plan seems to work when we wake up, because it’s nearly dry. When we leave it starts to rain again, so raingear gets put back on again. We’ll keep it on for the rest of the day. Our 2nd day completely in raingear. Not too bad at the beginning of March in Ireland!
We get out of town, after refreshing ourselves at the public toilet, and onto the road. Onwards and upwards!
Soon we get to our first style of the day, into the field. We’ll be walking a lot of pastures and farmland today, with a mix of track, trail and road. A mix of everything, yet slowly the landscape is changing. I’m not sure how long the change will last, but a friendlier, less wild countryside part of Ireland seems to be coming up.
we enjoy the walk with beautiful old trees and a church ruin with a big mossy tree in the middle. We seem to go into another boggy landscape, but when we get to the style, it leads onto the road! That’s a surprise! We make good progress And around 13.00 (and 20 km done!) we enter the village of Baile Bhuirne (Ballyvourney). We can go left to our hotel, or right to the supermarket. We decide to start with the supermarket and get some lunch, before we get to our final stop of the day. The village is long, and the supermarket slightly further than we’d have wished for. We get some nice bread, bananas, ham and cheese and take a sneak preview at the options for our resupply tomorrow.
we hike back to the crossroads and onwards to our hotel. The hotel is also a bit further than we wished for. But the Mills Inn is well worth the walk!
We get greeted at the reception desk by Mary. Who is a bit flabbergasted by our story and claims we are a bit daft for doing so (with a bright smile and a twinkle in her eyes). We head up to our room and first have lunch!
after that we have the afternoon to ourselves, spend by taking a shower, drying our gear, doing our laundry and drinking a well deserved pint from the local 9 white deer brewery!