Eyeries to Lauragh 27km

Fran cooked us a wonderful meal last night. We had preordered these over the internet and Barbara had a chicken fillet stuffed with local Mileens (smoked) cheese. I had a chicken fillet burger but the best part was all the home grown vegetables. The best tasting vegetables we have had in Ireland. Potato, beans, peas, brocoli, lettuce, tomato, spring onion. It also came with a complimentary Smithwick’s Red Ale beer.

As I said yesterday Fran and husband Kevin are rugby mad. They were at Soldier Field Chicago last November for the historic match when Ireland beat the All Blacks for the first time. In the dining room there is an eleven shelves high book case with probably every book that has ever been published about rugby. There is a large section on the All Blacks with autobiographies on Grant Batty, Stu Wilson and Bernie Fraser, Murray Mexted, Ian Jones, Buck Shelford, Andy Haden, John Gallagher, Graham Mourie, Inga the Winger, Frank Bunce and Walter Little, etc, etc. There were also dozens and dozens of the programmes from all the matches they have been to. I was quite impressed.

As has become usual for us we first headed into the village of Eyeries for filled rolls, fruit, cookies and a recent addition to the diet: a bottle of Lucozade (the bottle says “a performance partner”). Eyeries is another of those lovely little villages with all the gaily painted buildings. The road out of the village took us along the coast to a tiny fishing community in Ballycrovane Bay. In a field overlooking the bay is a standing stone. We could see it in the distance but couldn’t find a way of getting close to it. The stone has distinctive Ogham markings along its side and at 5.3 metres high is believed to be the tallest Ogham Stone in Europe. The stone is from the bronze age but the inscriptions are from the 3^rd to 5^th century AD. Ogham is an ancient Irish alphabet consisting of twenty characters formed by parallel strokes on either side or across a continuous line.

From here we climbed a small hill to a plateau with a long narrow lake, Loughfada. This was the best part of the day, a nice grass path alongside the lake for about two and a half kilometres. A steep climb up to a saddle and below us in the valley was our lunch destination, the village of Ardgroom. Lauragh, our destination tonight, has no nearby places to get an evening meal so we planned to have a large lunch and just snacks for dinner.

Just out of Ardgroom we did a 1km detour and hike over some fields to the Ardgroom Stone Circle. It was very similar to the one we saw the other day near Castletownbere. This one has a diameter of 7.25 metres and once consisted of 11 stones. One stone has fallen and one is now missing. There is a tall standing stone off to one side, a sentinel stone, which appears to draw attention to the stone circle.

In order to bypass another boggy walk across a hillside we stayed on the R571 road for the last 10km. This is the main road around the Beara Peninsular but it carries very little traffic. It has no shoulder and 99% of drivers are excellent and slow down and pull over, well away from us. Only one driver refused to move an inch and at 100km/hr missed our elbows by about 50mm. We became very adept at jumping into the hedgerows.

Tomorrow is our last walking day and our feelings are mixed. We are looking forward to some recovery time but we are sure that in 3 or 4 days we will wish we were back in the hills again.

Irish saying of the day: Being a bit Irish: You don’t know the words but that doesn’t stop you singing the song.