Annascaul to Dingle 22km

A very undulating route today, we always seemed to be going up or down. Nothing too steep or long, just gently climbing in and out of valleys. I think we climbed over at least 25 stiles.

The first hour was on narrow sealed minor roads. A steady climb through farmland and then a quick descent to a small bay with large smooth round boulders. Overlooking the bay are the gaunt remains of Minard Castle. A sixteenth century tower castle partly destroyed by Cromwell’s forces in 1650. We spent half an hour there sitting on the stones having a coffee from our Kleen Kanteens  and a muffin we had brought with us from Annascaul.

From here more climbing and descending, still on minor roads to the hamlet of Lispole which has a stone church with a bit of an odd bell tower made of four buttresses, and an abandoned  old stone railway viaduct in fields. A bit of a diversion here was the only available place to get refreshments all day. We didn’t go through any other hamlets or villages today.

From here we left the nice clean sealed roads and were on gravel, stone, grass or mud farm lanes. Opening and closing farm gates and climbing stiles. Most of these lanes were used for moving cattle and were just rivers of muck. The brown mud and puddles weren’t too bad, it was the yellow and green ones that stank to high heaven you had to avoid. It wasn’t nice for clean city bred folks but there was no alternative and we just had to press on, getting more and more covered in muck.

Fortunately for the last hour of the day we were back on sealed minor roads as we descended from a saddle down into Dingle. We started at 9.00am and finished at 2.30pm with a half hour break at the castle, otherwise pretty much nonstop. We are not yet fully walking fit and into the rhythm of it yet, that will take another day or two, so we are a bit tired tonight.

We have decided the red poppies of the Camino have a slight edge in the ‘wild flower stakes’ over the purple fox gloves which are the predominant wild flower here so far. The edges of the lanes have the usual daisies, buttercups, blackberry, ferns etc but also masses of fuchsia hedges with their red tear drop flowers. These were introduced from a New Zealand species in the nineteenth century and have proliferated wildly in Ireland and are now considered an invasive pest.

The weather was just okay today. Windy again but not as strong as yesterday. Cloudy, looked like it wanted to rain, some drizzle, light rain in the afternoon but not enough to get really wet. A nice temperature for walking.