Day 8, Millstreet – Rylane Cross

Weather: 🌤️🌧️☁️🌤️🌨️🌧️☁️
Picnic: 🌯🌯(2 out of 5, nothing special but good to have lunch!)
Traction on track: 🏊👟👟👟👟(1 out of 5 swimmers because the trail parts was very wet! And further on 4 out of 5 for really walkable trail, because the track and road were good)
Special moment of the day: 🌨️snow on Musheramoore Mountain
Kindness of the people: ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️ (5 out of 5, we met so many kind and interested people so far! Thank you Ireland!)
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, sheltered, flat and in the forest)
Name of followed trail: Duhallow trail
Special thanks to:with the lady who offered us help because she really thought we were in need, and to Patrick from Capabu shop, who told us where we could find toilets and the best coffee in town!

After a windy and somewhat restless night we wake up to a sunny day! After 5 minutes, when we have put our gear outside to pack up, it starts to rain again, so we end up eating breakfast in the tent. Irish weather…

A lady comes up to our tent asking if we need help. We tell her we don’t, but she clearly doesn’t believe us. She offers to take us to the store for hot coffee, and points us to the council building where they can help us. We obviously don’t understand one and other. Yet it was touching to see how a person can care so much for the wellbeing of 2 strangers in a tent. So many people look away at misery of others, including myself. This lady didn’t. It was a lesson in humanity that I will remember, before we even finished breakfast♥️.

when we pack up we meet the groundskeeper, Patrick, who seems to understand our situation a bit better. He tells us where to find the public toilets, and points out that the shop he and his wife owns, has the best coffee in Millstreet!

after some shopping we wait for our co-star for the next week. A man that is brave enough to hike with us for a week in Ireland in March deserves a proper introduction:

Some say he enabled the Russians to make Yuri Gagarin the first man in space, and others say that he is the inventor of the contour line. All we know he is called Rein!

Rein finds us at the cafe and together we start our day from Millstreet. We have a great day of hiking with lots of good road and track, so we make decent progress. We also have some parts of wild boggy hills, so Rein can enjoy the trails of our stories first hand. At some point at Musheramore mountain we get rain. Rain becomes sleet and later snow! All three are happy as kids, because…SNOW!!!! (And because we know we’re not setting up tent here…)

We get back down and continue on reasonably good tracks and roads until we get to a spot where we can pitch. Shortly before that, we ask for water at an old farmhouse. The lady is very kind, but shakes her head at the foolishness of camping out tonight. Whod want to be outside in Ireland in March? We also shortly meet the farmer, who soeaks kindly to us in (we think) Irish, so it soon becomes a one way conversation for the both of us. He speaks, I speak, but the sentences probably aren’t related to one and other…

In the forest we don’t see many options for camping, so we decide to go for the first decent spot we find. And we actually find quite a decent one!

Due to our late start today, we haven’t made it to the point we’d have liked, but we are happy with our first pitch in the forest! It feels really comfortable and familiar, because we mostly camp out in forest areas!

Happy to be there, we pitch, eat and say cheers to our first day of hiking together!