Adrigole to Castletownbere

After our goodbyes to Margaret, we started the walk today with a lift to the trailhead by Mr. O'Sullivan. Thankfully, this morning was overcast. This made for better walking, but since the day started with another climb, pretty soon we were in a deep fog. It would be really easy to get lost on the mountain in the fog, so high on the mountain, the trail markers are closer, like every 50 meters. Even so, sometimes we had to guess where the next one was, or look for the person in front of you through the fog. When that didn't work, the next step was to call out to the person in front of you, have them call back, and follow the sound of their voice. Dick swears that one time he called out, and he heard someone in front say “Shhh... he'll hear you.”

The heavy fog lasted most of the morning, as the trail wound around Hungry Hill, the highest mountain on the peninsula.. Fittingly, we stopped for lunch along the side of Hungry Hill. The fog started to lift and we started to get more amazing views of Bantry Bay, the Slieve Mish Mountains we'd been following for the last two days, and Castletownbere down on the coast up ahead.

Finally, we got to a junction where the trail stayed high following the mountain contours, or an old farm road led down towards more backroads into Castletownbere. John and Marty chose the high road again, and Dick and I took the backroads. We got in to Castletownbere late in the afternoon, and the other two guys showed up shortly after.

Castletownbere is the largest town out on the Beara Peninsula (population 900), and his a pretty active whitefish industry. It's got several pubs and around three restaurants, and is a place we're staying two nights. Our B&B (Harbor View) is a nice modern place up on a hill overlooking the harbor (hence the name), run by a very helpful innkeeper, Denis Hanafin. Denis is starting his own little guided tour business and knows this area well.

We started the evening with Murphys (and a Heineken!) at McCarthy's Bar, then went to John Murphy's for dinner. We'd been told by several people that John Murphy had the best fish and chips in the Beara Peninsula. I hate to have to say this, but one or more unnamed members of our group were disappointed when they didn't see fish and chips on the (largely fish) menu. When it was explained that the Fried Haddock and French Fries on the menu was actually fish and chips, they settled down, but I'm not sure they really believed it. The next hurdle was that John Murphy's, which has a nice little wine list, doesn't have beer on the menu. Our poor waitress assured us that if we wanted a beer, someone would go to the pub (Murphy's) across the street and bring us one. Problem solved. Then John asked if there really was a John Murphy. Our new waitress said that sure there was, but he wasn't there at the minute. A couple of minutes later, an older gentleman showed up at the table, introduced himself as John Murphy, told us he had the finest fish and chips on the peninsula (disguised as Fried Haddock with French Fries), and he'd get us some beers. To summarize, then, we had John Murphy cross the street to Murphy's Bar and bring us back some Murphy's to John Murphy's for those funny Americans.

An excellent meal followed (Haddock, Fries, and Salad for 10 Euro), followed by a walk around town, another beer or two (I can't be sure), and a Jameson's nightcap.

Starting to get in the groove now.