Camp to Annascaul 17km

A wonderful wild day on the Wild Atlantic Way.

We were itching to go but had to wait to get the first bus from Tralee to Camp which was at 11.00 am. You can walk the 18km but we will be walking it on the way back so most people get the bus. At 11.30 we were in Camp and so happy to be underway at last. The first 2 km were a steady climb to a pass in the Slieve Mountains. We would call these hills as the highest peak is only at about 800 metres and the pass about 300 metres. Over the pass it was blowing a gale, about 40km/hr into our face and we had some very heavy showers. But we didn’t mind we were just so happy to be out in the countryside and walking.

Most of the day was on open farmland with horned, and black faced sheep and a few herds of cows. We saw some fields with peat being carved for fuel, with low dark cuttings carved into the moorland and left to dry. The only forest we passed through was a small conifer one with quite young trees. Big enough to protect us from the wind for a while. For the first part of the day we were basically crossing over the spine of the Dingle Peninsular from Tralee Bay to Castlemaine Harbour. After two and a half hours we arrived at Inch which has a beautiful long beach and is where the beach scenes in the epic movie Ryan’s Daughter were filmed. Today the wind was so strong everything and everyone was blasted with sand. We were feeling really battered by the wind and stopped in a cafe for some shelter and respite.

From Inch, having cleared sand out of our ears, eyes, nose, teeth etc we went inland and over a small saddle to the village of Annascaul, where we are tonight at Annascaul House. We only walked 17km but it felt an awful lot further after bashing into the wind all day. The surface underfoot was good. A mixture of sealed narrow roads, gravelled farm roads and stony or grass tracks. No mud or bogs so far. A few gates to get through and two stiles to climb over. The signage was great. No chance of getting lost. There weren’t any other walkers on the bus this morning but during the day we saw quite a few others. Not as busy as the Camino but we are not walking alone.

A wild day but just so good to be on the move.

Tralee (Trá Lí – The Strand of the River Lee) is the capital of County Kerry and has a population of about 23,000.

After breakfast we decided to check out the buses for our transfer to Camp tomorrow morning and walk the Tralee Ship Canal out to the Blennerville Windmill. Our route crossed the Tralee Town Park and we saw that a group of runners were assembling. Turned out it was a Park Run – exactly the same format as Barbara ran at Otaihanga Domain. One of the organisers saw us watching and came over to chat. When she learnt Barb ran Park Runs in New Zealand we were photograhed as “international visitors” and will be posted on their Face Book page.

Tralee is famous for the Rose Of Tralee Festival and in the rose garden in the Town Park we came across a statue of the original Rose of Tralee, Mary O’Connor. The week long festival which is an international celebration of the global irish community, is inspired by a nineteenth century ballad written for Mary, a renowned beauty who was called the Rose Of Tralee. There are about 70 Rose of Tralee organisations around the world including New Zealand.

Tralee is slightly inland from Tralee Bay and the wharf for the town was at Blennerville. However this area silted up and in 1846 a 2km long ship canal was constructed to a new basin nearer the town. This basin also silted up and the canal became disused. In the 1990s the canal and adjoining area were redeveloped with housing and a marina. The tow path to the canal is now a pleasant walk out to the restored Blennerville Windmill.

The windmill is a tower windmill, the tallest of its kind in Europe and was built in 1800 and used for grinding corn. It is now Ireland’s only surviving commercially operated windmill. There is a visitors’ centre, a craft centre, exhibition gallery, guided tours etc. The only thing not working was the cafe which was closed for repainting. As Donald Trump would say – sad!

There is a connection between Tralee and the Camino Frances we walked in Spain last year. The Kerry Camino starts here in St John’s Cathedral and goes to St James Church in Dingle. Pilgrims then took a boat across to Coruna at the Northwest tip of Spain and the pilgrimage continued to Santiago de Compostela. Irish pilgrims still do the land section of this route but I’m not sure if there is a boat service from Dingle to Coruna these days. We will walk the same route from Tralee to Dingle over the next two days.

Purportedly the route follows in the footsteps of St Brendon “The Navigator”. During the years 512 to 530 St Brendon set out from Kerry to spread the Word of God along the coast of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany. There is a 1500 year old Irish legend that St Brendon travelled all the way to America, long before the Vikings or Christopher Columbus. Although this journey was re-enacted in 1976 there is no historical or archeological evidence it ever took place.

Tralee was a very busy town today. A Saturday and lot’s of shopping to be done. A windy day, but warm and although there were black clouds all around, not a drop of rain.

Today was transfer day from Dublin south west to Tralee. We had pre-purchased tickets on the 10.15am big green Dublin Coach. As we usually do, we arrived half an hour early and at the bus stop was a green Dublin Coach with ‘Tralee’ blazing in lights at the front. It was just about to leave but the driver saw us and opened up the doors. We showed him our tickets and he told us to quickly jump on while he stowed our bags. The bus was pretty full and we could only sit together by being in the back row.

We drove south for about 2 hours and came to Limerick. Here the driver started calling out instructions and people started to get off. We couldn’t hear (or understand him anyway) so Barb went up front to say we are going to Tralee. He then informed us we were on the wrong bus! He was going to Killarney.

He said however this was okay as the Tralee bus followed largely the same route and he would drop us off where the routes diverged. So we drove for another hour until we reached the small village of Abbeyfeale which had a bus shelter but not much else. He said wait here and the Tralee bus should be along in about 20 minutes. As he left he appologised for having Tralee on his sign instead of Killarney.

After 30 minutes we were getting nervous and wondering about a taxi to Tralee when a beautiful big green coach came down the road. The driver was a very young black guy with super cool sun glasses and a very non-regulation uniform cap. He asked us if we were the couple who had got on the wrong bus. He was polite enough not to say ‘old’ couple, or ‘odd’ couple. He had been told about us and was looking out at every stop along the route.

No further dramas and we arrived in Tralee on the correct bus that had left at 10.15. The moral of this story? Never, ever, get to the bus stop early. Well maybe just a minute.

We are now in our first B & B in Ireland. The very cosy and comfortable Willows and our hosts are Tim and Mary. There are four guest rooms. It is a 2 storey + attic Georgian townhouse beautifully over decorated with period stuff. One of those places where you stand in the middle of the room with your arms tight at your sides, too scared to move in case you knock something over and break it. The wifi is good so it’s all okay.

Had a delicious meal off the Grand Hotel bar menu and we are quite relaxed now after a slightly tense day.  Tomorrow we have a ‘rest’ day here in Tralee before starting walking on Sunday. It was a beautiful sunny day all the way to Tralee but when we went out to dinner this evening it had started to, you know what, rain. Forecast for tomorrow is good though.

In Dublin’s fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheel barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying cockles and mussels alive a-live O!

This popular song is the unofficial anthem of Dublin and June 13th is Molly Malone Day. The song tells the story of a fishmonger plying her trade on the streets of Dublin but who died young of a fever. There is no evidence that the song is based on a real woman. She is sometimes portrayed as a hawker by day and a part-time prostitute by night.

Dubliners like to give nick names to statues, monuments etc. For example the statue of James Joyce I had in a post the other day is “the prick with a stick” and that of Oscar Wilde is “the fag on the crag”.

Molly Malone is nick named the “tart with a cart”.

We also came across a charming statue of two ordinary women who had been shopping, sitting on a bench resting. The nick name of this is “the hags with the bags”.

Before leaving home we booked a half day guided bicycle tour of the highlights of Dublin. We did this on the assumption that Ireland was an intelligent and educated society and being part of the European Union would have the sophisticated and mature attitude of Europeans to the peaceful co-existance of cyclists and motorists. Wrong!

The Irish have a total disdain toward traffiic rules, traffic lights, red man/green man, pedestrian crossings, one way streets and speed limits. When it rains everyone goes a bit faster. Afterall, you wouldn’t want to get wet would you? For every man woman and child in Dublin there is a huge yellow and blue double decker bus and these are all moving or parked on narrow medieval streets. There is a light rail transport system, DART, Dublin Area Rapid Transport. In Irish it is called Luas which means speed.  It is a silver serpent slitthering through the streets frightening the old and the young.

So two seniors from the quiet seaside village of Paraparaumu are going cycling in this. We awoke to steady rain again and the forecast was for showers all day. Many of the streets in the older parts of the city are paved with cobblestones which we haven’t ridden on much, especially when they are wet. We were talking ourselves into cancelling the ride but decided to go down and meet the guide anyway and see if we could postpone until another day. When we got to the meeting point we found that four people had cancelled but a lady from Perth (Barbara) and a couple from Melbourne (Sylvia and Gerald) were wanting to go. It had rained all the way from the hotel but when we met up it had stopped and was clearing so we decided to give it a go.

The guide was Brian, a 37 year old Dubliner and co-owner of the company. Man he could talk. He knew all the history and stories of every point of interest in the city. We were given a lesson on the long, complicated and brutal birth of the Republic of Ireland.

The riding itself wasn’t difficult and in the four hours we probably did less than 10 kilometres. The bikes were strange. Small wheels, heavy and only three gears on a twist grip on the handlebar. They did have bells though, which I used often. Brian had us lined up like ducks in a row and we just blindly followed him when ever he said go. Some was on cycle lanes and shared paths but we seemed to go through dozens of red lights. I didn’t dare look at the cars, buses and trams around us, I just concentrated on following his rear wheel. We were all competent cyclists so we could all stay as a tight group and keep up a steady pace.

We started at 10 and finished at 2, which included about a twenty minute stop in a pub for a drink. In that time it never rained a drop but as we pulled into his depot at the end, the rain started again and didn’t stop for about 2 hours. So we were lucky. We saw a huge amount of the inner city and it’s a good way to quickly get your bearings other than going in a bus.

Late in the afternoon between showers we went out to walk along some of the Grand Canal. This 132 km canal starts at the River Liffey in Dublin and ends at Shannon Harbour. It was started in 1757 and opened in 1804. It closed to commercial traffic in 1951 but is still used by pleasure craft today. There is 117km of walking trail along the canal and locks and lock-keepers cottages etc have been refurbished/restored. There is a sister canal going north out of Dublin called the Royal Canal. It is a beautful walk along a linear oasis untouched by modern agriculture.

Prior to leaving home we had booked two one day coach tours out of Dublin. Today was the first of them to the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough. A 9.15 start in an almost brand new Mercedes with driver Richie and 36 passengers from 16 countries (Australia, England, Ireland, USA, Canada, Chile, Spain, Finland, Japan, Germany, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Israel, Nepal and us).

The Wicklow Mountains are the largest area of continuous high ground in Ireland and are now a National Park and a Special Area of Conservation and Protection under European Law. The’re not very high, the highest peak is only 926 metres. The mountains are all very rounded and although there are forests of introduced spruce from North America at low levels, and some forests of birch, beach, oak, holly and ash, the uplands are dominated by blanket bog, heather and grasslands. Today was overcast and so it all seemed quite bleak and the heather was brown although it becomes purple later in the summer and with red berries from other plants it becomes more attractive.

For a large part we followed 60km of the Wicklow Military Road, built at the beginning of the 1800s by the English army so they had access to root out rebellious insurgents hanging out in the mountains. Four barracks were located along the road and we stopped at the first, Glencree, for coffee and scones with jam and cream. The road is narrow, often single lane, twisting and undulating with many blind corners. The coach driver knew the size of his vehicle down to the inch as he squeezed past, cars, trucks, tractors and other buses.

There was a special photo stop at a rather picturesque stone bridge where apparently in the movie P.S. I Love You, Holly and Gerry kissed. Some couples wanted to recreate this ultimate romantic moment. If you were single and female then Richie would help out in the magic moment.

Then on to Glendalough and the ruins of a monastery founded in the 6th century by St Kevin. Kevin was a descendant of one of the ruling families in the area. The monastery is in a beautiful forested valley with two lakes. For six centuries the monastic settlement flourished as a centre for religious study and pilgrimage. In 1214 the dioceses of Glendalough and Dublin were combined and from then Glendalough declined in status as a centre of cultural and ecclasiastical study until it was destroyed by English foces in 1398 and left a ruin.  Today over a million people each year come to visit the jewel in the crown of the Wicklow Mountains.

We had a very nice walk up a parrallel valley and over a ridge to the upper lake and then along a boardwalk down to the lower lake. On the uplands it had been windy and cold but down in this valley it was warm and still. The monastery buildings are set in a large cemetery with many large and ornate head stones. We explored The Gateway – two fine  arches now totally unique in Ireland, the Cathedral – the largest structure, the Round Tower – 35 metres tall and used as a bell tower, food store and place of refuge, the Priest’s House – a small reconstructed stone building, St Kevin’s Church (“The Kitchen”) – it has a steep roof of overlapping stones supported inside by a stone barrel vault, and the remains of about four other churches. Overall a very special and serene place.

A late lunch at 3.15 in a traditional Irish pub in the tiny village of Avoca, famous in the past for its copper mines, hand-weaving mill and being mentioned by the Greek mathematician, astronomer and astrologer Ptolemy (AD 100 – 170) on his early map of Ireland.

Just as we left Glendalough a few drops of rain began to fall, and by the time we got back to Dublin about 6pm it had well and truely set in. Overall a very good day. A bit of exercise, some good company, and we learned a bit more about the people, history and landscape of Ireland.

The capital and largest city of Eire, the Republic of Ireland. Located on the eastern seaboard, separated from the United Kingdom by the Irish Sea. The name comes from the Irish word Dubhlinn, “dark pool” referring to a dark tidal pool where the River Poddle (now underground) meets the River Liffey.

Population is about 1.4 million in the urban city area and about 1.9 million in the greater metropolitan area.
Dublin has had human habitation from Prehistoric times but the first settlement is recognized as the Vikings in the  9^th and 10^th centuries.

The Normans invaded in 1169 and starting in 1204 built Dublin Castle (the seat of English rule for seven centuries). This remained the small walled town of a narrow strip of English settlement on the east coast until the Tudor invasion of Ireland in the 16^th century.

Dublin prospered up until the end of the 18^th century and for a while was the second largest city in the British Empire. When the governance of Ireland was moved from Dublin to London in 1800 and with Dublin not having a major role in the industrial revolution (no large source of coal) there was a period of decline.

In the early 20^th century there was a significant amount of physical damage during the Easter Rebellion of 1916, The Irish War of Independence and then the Irish Civil War. Following the partition of Ireland in 1922 it became the capital of the Irish Free State (1922-1937) and then the capital of Ireland (1937 – today).

Dublin is at the mouth of the River Liffey which divides the city in two. Traditionally the Northside is working class and the Southside is middle to upper class.

Dublin has a significant literary history and produced many literary figures including William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker (Dracula), Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, etc. We have a week to explore this lively and historic city, four days before we head down south west to Kerry and then three days after we return.

This morning we woke to blue skies, some clouds and a strong cold wind. But no rain – so this can’t be Ireland then ! Yesterday coming in on the airport bus we noticed that there was a “Riverfest” at  the port end of the river, so today we walked along the river bank to check it out. Over the holiday weekend there had been Thundercats and sail boat racing, Jet Pack Man, water rescue demos, kayaking, stand up paddle boarding, and on land heaps of entertainment with carousels, wire walking, zip lines, a circus, a drive-in cinema, a food village, music and drink etc. All this was now gone but moored along the river walk were 10 magnificent tall ships and this is what we wanted to see. Wonderful examples of original and replica sailing ships: a Russian ‘man-of-war’, square rigged sailing vessels, an arctic trawler, a traditional Baltic Trader, a West country trading ketch, a three masted schooner.

There are many, many statues in Dublin and today we saw three of the most notable. The first was of the acclaimed Irish novelist and poet, James Joyce. He is leaning on a stick looking upward as if in thought. Earlier this year I tried to read his “Ulyssess” but had given up after about 10 pages – just too difficult. I did read “Dubliners” and “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” . This was the extent of my cultural preparation for Dublin (apart from drinking Guinness).

The second was on the river quay where the famine ships used to depart for New York. The Famine Statues, a memorial to the victims of the Great Famine of 1841-1849 in which 1 million died and 1 million more forced to emigrate due to the failure of the potato crop – the staple diet of many poor Irish. This statue was very moving, with gaunt almost stick like figures, and faces full of pain and suffering.

The third was the extremely realistic statue of Oscar Wilde, located in the corner of the park in Merrion Square, just across the road from the witty writer’s former home. Wilde is lounging on a rock with a smile on one side of his face and a frown on the other, representing the different sides to his character. The colours of black, grey, green, pink and fleshtones are achieved by a careful selection of polished granite and coloured semi-precious stones. The statue is flanked by two polished granite plinths engraved with quotes from Wilde’s work.

We also went to the excellent EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum which tells the story of the 10 million people of Ireland who have emigrated to other parts of the world. Why they left, where they went, and how they influenced and changed the places they went to. Apparently 70 million people today claim Irish ancestry. State-of-the-art technology creates a powerful and moving experience. There are 20 themed galleries, each like a tunnel of brick with a vaulted ceiling – very dramatic.

We felt really good this morning, lots of energy and get up and go. But by early afternoon were pretty zonked out. Suffering from jet lag a bit. So we had a quiet time at the hotel resting up.

After landing in two continents (Australia and Asia) and crossing a third (Europe) we are now on the island of Ireland.

Ireland, also known as Eire, The Republic of Ireland, The Emerald Isle, Land of Saints and Scholars, Erin’s Isle. For a few years before the Global Financial Crisis also referred to as The Celtic Tiger.

A population of about 4.8 million on a land area of 70,000 sq km. (This does not include Northern Ireland, a different country altogether). New Zealand has a similar population of 4.6 million but nearly four times the area at 268,000 sq km.

And it is raining.  Of Course. We had been warned. After checking into our hotel we were desperate to stay awake until at least 7pm so went out for an exploratory walk. It was very grey when we started and soon it was persisting down, so have retreated to our room. The hotel is one of a row of large Georgian houses built in the late 1700s in Parnell Square. We have a lovely large, redecorated room overlooking the street and the Garden of Remembrance opposite. This is the national site commemorating  the 1916 Easter Rising that led to the founding of the Irish Free State.

It was thirty hours exactly from take off at Wellington until landing in Dublin. Only three or fours hours of fitful sleep so we are a bit shattered. All flights on schedule and Emirates are an excellent airline so it was as good as a long haul flight in economy can be. Our bags were checked right through from Wellington to Dublin so had very easy and quick transfers at Melbourne and Dubai.

The streets around the hotel are full of women all in their running gear. Today was a bank holiday in Ireland and also the 35th running of the VNI Womens’ Mini Marathon. A 10km run through the streets of the city. 33,000 entrants!

Only took a few photos in the immediate vicinity of the hotel.