Weather: ☁️🌤️🌧️🌤️☁️
Picnic: 🌯🛋️ (2 out of 5, nothing special but on a bench!)
Traction on track: 🍌🍌🏊👟👟👟(2 out of 5 bananas for a bit, then 1 out of 5 swimmers because a portion of the trail was very wet! And further on 3 out of 5 for really walkable, because the track and road were good)
Trail miss of the day: the style over the new barbed wire fence… We now climbed it in stead.
Luck of the day: No pants were harmed in the process!
Broken gear: Marks shoes both have a tear in the side of about 10cm long…
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, sheltered, flat and in the forest)
Campfire:🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 (5 out of 5, warm, with good friends, good conversation and songs!)
Name of followed trail: Duhallow trail
Special thanks to: Linda from Molly’s pub in Bweeng, for the kind advice on where to camp in the forest! (And to the people who installed the benches along the way!)
I start the day a happy person , when we wake up to a sunny day with trees above my head. What a beautiful and peaceful spot!
Mark starts less happy, because when tying his shoes, the side rips open to a tear of almost 10 cm long. And when he does the other shoe, the same thing happens! Poor Mark! This means that after 250 km he already needs to replace them! In a few days we are in Cork, so we hope to find good ones there!
We start our hike in sunshine and keep this for quite a large portion of the day! We hike nice tracks, but o ce again, the trail offers Rein first hand experience of what we meant with ‘the trail was more like a river’, when he needs to climb up a little waterfall that appears to be the trail. After a boggy wet walk (this time in waterproof socks, so no wet and cold feet!) we come to a marker pointing left, across a brand new barbed wire fence, without a style. Well there is an old style, a meter or so outside of the fence….
with no other option than climbing the fence, I use our seatingmat to keep us from harm on the barbed wire. We get across safely and continue our walk.
After this the trail is great and we’ll maintained. We even find a bench for a lunch spot! When we are sitting there, a man comes along who asked about the bench, because he was involved in putting it there! We immediately share our appreciation with him, and the man happily continues his walk.
On the nice trails we make good progress. We use our leftover time well by finishing the day with a drink at Molly’s pub in Bweeng. We have a friendly conversation with Linda, who runs the pub. She fills up our water and tells us what is a good place to camp in the forest. And she’s right!
we find a good spot to camp, and even better, to make a small fire! We sit around the fire with a glass of West Cork Whiskey and sing some songs. What a great day we’ve had!