Zeroday 4, Tinahely

We slept really well, and no alarm at 6 every once in a while is quite nice too!

We got ourselves a healthy breakfast from the supermarket, got to do some chores and resupply and went for a late lunch. Unfortunately we were too late, so we went to the supermarket a 3rd time, now for lunch 😅. Luckily it is only 100 meter from our hotel.

A day of nothing much, but still full of chores. I did some needlework on my shoes, Marks pants and my shirt. Mark got a new pair of shoes (online) because the ones he got in Cork are working well!

Our routine on a zeroday starts to feel like a routine again. Yet it has so many things that are actually quite odd to do. So this blog is about what nobody tells you about when they talk about hiking long distance trails. Yet they are an important part of what thru-hiking is like.

We do our dishes, because they’re never really clean on trail. We do our laundry one way or the other, so either in the sink or we find a way to get our clothes machine washed. Hand washing takes us a few hours, so we are really grateful that Cathy from housekeeping comes and collects our laundry this morning!

We plan how much food is needed until the next supermarket. This time that’s 5 days, all the way to Dublin. After a resupply we repack everything into portions so it’s easy to use on trail. Mark usually is ‘breakfast Manager’, calculating how much, granola, oats and milk powder goes into the breakfast-bags, to make our own instant-porridge. In the mean time, our clean clothes are returned to us.

After repacking the food, cleaning and repairing gear, it’s time to look ahead. Where are we going to camp in our next section? Where will we stop to ask for water? I put all the waypoints into the phone and then onto my watch. Time for diner!

And after diner, it’s time to get all the gear ready to be packed again, because tomorrow we’ll start our final section to Dublin!