Dave Byrnes

Round Ireland - 2016

Overview Planned Schedule Map Diary Pictures

Day:	003
Date:	Sunday, 27 March 2016
Start:	Laragh
Finish:	Drumgoff
Daily Kilometres:	19
Total Kilometres:	81
Weather:	Mostly overcast and cold in the morning. Cold with rain and hail squalls in the afternoon and strong winds at altitude.
Accommodation:	Coolalinga B&B
Nutrition:	Breakfast: Full Irish Breakfast Lunch: Muesli Bars and Chocolate Dinner: Hamburger & chips, and chocolate
Aches:	Stiff and sore with right heel very sore again by the end of the day. I'm not going to talk about the right heel any more since I think it is going to be with me for the whole trip.
Highlight:	An early finish due to the location of available accommodation (pre-booked).
Lowlight:	Slipping backwards into a bog as I sought to close a gate without getting too muddy! With my heavy pack on, the only way I could extricate myself was to roll over onto my front supporting myself on my hands in the mud.
Pictures:	Here
GPS Track:	Here
Journal:	Clocks moved forward an hour during the night, but I still got nearly nine hours sleep (which I needed). I have pre-booked accommodation during the Easter period because I thought it would be scarce, and the only reasonably-priced B&B I could find tonight was at Drumgoff, just 20 kilometres down the trail, so I knew it would be an easy day time-wise. Therefore, I ate my big breakfast (setting off the smoke alarm while I toasted some bread!) while reading my book and set out on the trail at 10:00am in cold overcast weather. I enjoyed some very nice single-track trail early on, winding through wooded glades, before the Wicklow Way climbed gradually through a pine forest and over a ridge before descending into Glendalough. Glendalough was a bit of a jarring culture shock after the peace and solitude of the early trail. It was a major tourist destination with a hotel, a visitor centre and tour buses disgorging excited visitors. Apart from the beautiful natural scenery of the glaciated valley with two picturesque lakes at its base, there was religious history dating back to the time of St Kevin in the 6th Century. An area known as the Monastic City developed in the valley with many ancient buildings, some dating back to the 10th Century. I confess to admiring the ancient buildings from afar as I followed the Wicklow Way through the park-like valley populated by walkers, families and tour groups. My trail climbed out of the valley past the Poulanass Waterfall, the crowds were left behind, and normal peaceful solitary service was soon resumed. There followed a seemingly endless gradual climb along a forest road through a pine forest with occasionally excellent views and the odd hail squall. At the top of the climb, the trail moved into open moorland as it crossed Lugduff Gap which the guidebook warned could be "exposed in poor weather", and it was. As if on cue, the icy gale-force headwind was augmented with driving horizontal stinging hail. I barely made forward motion along the narrow boardwalk trail as I tried to protect my hands and eyes from the hail. Finally the trail turned left to make it a crosswind and then, as quickly as it had started, the hail stopped. It was as though it had been waiting for me to cross the Gap. There followed some boggy trail including the slip and fall referred to in the daily "Lowlight" above, and a steep and technical descent before a long walk on a forest road through another pine forest. There were more hail squalls and I could see patches of winter snow in places on the surrounding mountains. It certainly felt wintry. I reached the tiny settlement of Drumgoff, where my B&B was located, just after 3:00pm and killed the hour until it opened sitting outside the nearby pub finishing off my snacks for the day. On a quieter day I would have adjourned to the pub for a hot chocolate, but it was very busy with a car-park full of Sunday day-trippers. I knew I would be coming back for dinner later, so decided to leave dealing with the crowds until then. I returned to the still-crowded pub at 6:00pm and was given a small table in a backroom - appropriate for a shabbily-dressed Diet Coke drinker - where I compounded my sins by going for the burger and chips rather than the much more appealing, and twice as expensive, Wicklow Lamb Roast. I also ignored the tempting dessert menu in favour of a budget block of chocolate back in my B&B as I try to keep my travelling costs under control. Not sure I will always be as disciplined.