May 1st 2025
And the weather looks greyer and cooler.
The cuckoo continues to call.
A two-cups-of-tea-and-delay-getting-up day.
Then out for a walk, which turned into about 6 miles. Much pleasanter walking weather today, cooler, some cloud, and a breeze.
We follow the same route as I took yesterday as far as Loch Altencar
and Meenbanad.
We chatted briefly to a man with a fishing rod, near Lough Altencar. “are you lost?”
“Not yet.” Then I ask him, “Do you catch much in here?”
“We took a house up here years ago - my mother came from a few miles down the road - and I tried fishing and caught nothing. I thought I’d try to get my revenge. That was in, the sixties or seventies. Things have changed a lot since then.”
I told him I’d visited Ireland in the sixties. “County Kerry”
“Ah you mean the Kingdom of..”
“Ha? Well I think things are very different here now “
“Ireland has grown up.”
We leave him and walk a little way down the road opposite, but can’t find the railway track path, so we change plans and decide to follow the busier road towards the shore, passing a memorial to two men who died in the Irish war of Independence against the British in 1918.
For a mile or so we dodge the traffic - busy enough, but nothing like on some English minor roads.
As we reach a junction, a youngish woman slows her car to ask if we’re lost. This time, I smile and say,”no, just mad”.
We miss the turning on to a smaller road, and walk beside the R259, partly along a low sea wall structure to the next turning. This is a small road with grass growing in the middle, a few houses, a couple of ruins, some conifers, some flowering horse chestnuts. It goes down steeply, then climbs up again.
We see one car on this stretch.
When we reach a junction we turn right, and perch on some boulders in a dried up (ish)bog, for a drink of water, our mini-packs of biscuits - and we share an apple.
A woman is walking her dog along the road below.
Houses become more frequent and eventually we meet the railway track again, and walk the last mile to the cottage.
Total of about 6 miles today.
Another dramatic sunset, unexpected as it was cloudy just before. Plus the newish moon.
No comments:
Post a Comment