Glengarriff to Adrigole

The first day of the hike, from Glengarriff to Adrigole turned out to be a tougher day than we anticipated, for two reasons. First, there was a lot of elevation gain, about 400 meters in total, up a long valley, across a ridge, and down the other side. The set of maps I had showed the Way cutting south from Glengarriff and foilowing a flatter route. John's maps showed the newer route, the one the current waymarkers follow. The newer route was a lot more scenic, and a lot more work. It gave Dick an opportunity to jump right in to some serious hiking.

The second issue, oddly enough, was the fine weather. Ireland is experiencing it's best summer weather in years, and every day has been beautiful. But some people said that today's weather was the warmest in 30 years. Mid 80's F. For hiking up a mountain in the open sun, it made the day tougher.

We started out with a full Irish breakfast (hold the puddings), and walked out of Glengarriff around 9:00. The trail took us through a wooded area for a few miles, then started following a back road up the Coomarkane Valley. Immediately, things started to feel remote and the tree cover lessening. At the upper end of the valley was when the climb started, the trail winding up open slopes to a pass in the distance. This was really hard work, especially with the clear skies. Never thought lack of cloud cover would be an issue in Ireland. It took several hours to get to the top of the pass and a remote lake down the other side. But the views were awesome all along the way.

Once over the pass, it was generally downhill for several miles into Adrigole. But Dick and I were both low on water (and energy), so at a trailhead around 4 miles from our B&B, Dick and I took a side trail down the side of the ridge to a public road. John and Marty stayed on the main trail. Our trail wound down through a farmers field and took us to his house at the bottom by the road. He was home, and we got some badly needed water (each of us drank a liter and a half), and called the B&B to come give us a lift.

Along about now is when everything started to feel real connected.

Remember, we were at a remote farmhouse still several miles from civilization of any kind. When we told the farmer where we were staying, he said “Oh, that'll be Margaret O'Sullivan, I'll give her a ring.” He came back a minute later and said that he'd gotten Margaret's daughter Kathleen on the phone and she'd be right along. He would have taken us, but his wife was off to Castletownbere with the car. So we talked about sheep and walking and a lot of other things until our ride showed up. Turns out he gets a lot of folks coming down the trail off the mountain, most of them in bad weather. Last week they had to take someone to the hospital with a broken ankle.

Pretty soon Kathleen and a friend (Deirdre O'Sullivan, no relation) arrived and we loaded up. They had seen Marty and John along a back road on the way over, but the guys declined the ride they offered. They knew, of course, that we were coming from Glengarriff, and Kathleen asked us how we'd enjoyed our dinner at Casey's. Kathleen and her family had been sitting at the table next to us the night before. She was the one that told John that the lasagna was good, before he ordered Beef and Guinness Pie. They'd also witnessed our Guess the Porter contest. Kathleen said that her daughter (8 years old) had thought the Americans at the table were “funny.” We discussed later what “funny” might really mean in Irish.

Then the conversation turned to where we'd been before we got to Glengarriff. When we said we'd been to Kinsale, Deirdre said that's where she lived, and asked where we stayed. We said we'd stayed at the White Lady, but were up part of the night from a loud party across the street. She said “That's amazing, I live in the next to the apartment that was having that party and they kept me up most of that night as well. We had just met the loud Irish woman who had been yelling “Shut the f***ing door!” outside our room two nights ago and a hundred miles away.

Margaret O'Sullivan, who runs the Bay View B&B, is the quintessential Irish grandmother. We got hugs when we arrived and when we left, and the whole time we were there we felt like we were in her care. Because there are no restaurants nearby, Margaret makes dinner for her guests as well as breakfast. We had a great pork roast. She made pork, because when she learned from her daughter that one of the funny Americans had Beef & Guinness pie in Glengarriff the night before, she didn't want him to have beef two nights in a row.