So I am back on the road again. Two days rest has helped my feet recover a lot and I was able to fulfil my commitment to work as an assessor for a hill-walking course over the weekend without taking out my grumpy discomfort on any of the candidates. This may not be their view of course.
Planning this sort of long distance hike is a logistic challenge, the difficulty is principally securing overnight accommodation especially on the sections which are long and don’t touch on centres of population. Arrangements need to be made many weeks in advance so to honour my future accommodation preparations I have picked up my walk in Newcastle county Down and will return to back-fill the missed two days hike along the Lecale Way at the end of October. (I’m making this clear in an attempt to prevent any of those litigiously inclined donors who might be considering a small claims action against me).
It was a relief to get off the tarmac today and into Tollymore forest and the low Mourne Mountains. The vast monotone almost lifeless Sitka Spruce plantations around this country has numbed our appreciation of real forests but Tollymore still just enough deciduous canopy to let us know that real forests are vibrant and majestic and playful. I tried to photograph a reassuringly un-tame red squirrel I saw burying nuts in the ground (unfortunately the photo is so poor that what I know to be a squirrel actually looks like an exceedingly large dog turd, so I’ll post a photo of the large Larch felling operation currently under-way in the forest – I think even this industrial forest operation has a certain grandeur about it).
Having just spent the weekend in the Antrim Hills I was struck by how different they are to the Mourne Mountains. If landscapes were soundscapes the Antrim Hills would hum and possibly giggle a little but the Mournes would grumble and occasionally bark. They are not un-beautiful but even in the bright light of a late September day they seem to scowl a little.
I covered a modest 22k route from Newcastle to Spelga Dam today – the dam amenities have had a revamp in the last month with new carpark, signs and bins, but the same closed toilets, which my female walking friends would probably consider an odd priority. The route was really nice and though WalkNI’s placing of Ulster Way signs is generally good they do on occasion post waymarkers in locations where the route is strikingly obvious but omit a direction arrow post where a change of direction both is cryptic but critical e.g. the sharp right turn off the Meelmore/Meelbeg valley track to Fofanny Dam. (I need to reassure my French friends that these are all real place names and not gynaecological euphemisms)
I attach a photo of a part of the official Fofanny Dam track, I assume the purpose of requiring travellers to push through these gorse bushes is to emphasise to any walker foolish enough to be wearing shorts that they should remember they are walking in Ireland not bloody Bermuda. Or maybe its to compensate for those many miles of wide busy roads.
I hope these relatively short distance days succeed in toughening up my newly cosseted feet, I’ll keep you informed.
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