A relatively short day at 21k but on an aching leg pretty tough. Well, tough for me – Carrie and Darryl skipped along like pixies. We walked from yesterday’s end point outside Jonesborough back to my original Slieve Gullion Park start point. The image shows that in places the route was almost impassable with overgrown gorse; I pushed through it and got a bit scratched, Carrie put up her hood ducked down and made it unscathed, Darryl dislodged a substantial nest of midgies down the back of his shirt where he insists they feasted on his flesh for the rest of the day. But route way-finding apart the first 15k was some of the nicest of the whole Ulster Way so far.
We stopped for a cup of tea in Forkhill where a very jolly young Slieve Gullion Park volunteer in a car pulled up beside us to check we were not lost. Forkhill is one of the few well signposted and slightly larger towns on the route so it’s a slightly unusual place to patrol for lost walkers, but we appreciated the attention. We later though she might have just been checking that we were not thinking of buying property in the area because some local folk hold very firm views about house hunting .. In case you can’t make out the writing painted on the wall of the abandoned building in the photo is says “KEEP OUT, NOT FOR SALE GO BACK, FAMILY HOME”. Estate agents earn their 2% in these parts.
We were perhaps entering deliverance country. My limping pace slowed as the day progressed except for one brief passage when we passed a field containing a trio of devil-eyed donkeys and a cluster of secluded houses where a jolly Santa Clause figure burning either garden rubbish or the clothes of previous hikers enquired if we were heading up the mountain? The neighbouring house contained a small Scottie dog barking with the not uncommon Napoleon complex of so many small dogs, we may have smirked at the diminutive little dogs ambition? However, our attention was immediately augmented when Scottie’s high pitch yelp was joined by a boom from the largest dog you have ever seen. Its head appeared through a neat hole in the hedge and to our surprise and mounting panic the head was in a second joined by shoulders, legs, haunches and tail. My halting progress was in an instant converted to the frenetic waddle of a penguin trying to outrun a pursuing sofa sized dog (but even in my terror I did register through the fence the smug “not so giggly now eh!” face of Scottie dog). Darryl was the object of immediate attention, probably because it could smell the fresh blood oozing from his midgie scarred back. But I’m embarrassed to admit that my waddle turned to a shin-splint ignoring Olympian sprint when Sofa-dog was joined by a wolf and a pure white ghost dog with evil eyes.
I should really have a photo of the dogs but I would have needed a telephoto lens by the time I stopped. Of course, everyone survived the canine attentions and the only casualty was my credibility with Carrie and Darryl who no longer believe I have any injuries at all.
The last few kilometres of the walk are less pleasant as they are on the tarmac roads that snake around the base of Slieve Gullion mountain itself, but the environs of the Park centre itself hosts a permanent exhibition of fairytale houses, giant’s lairs, and magical woodlands. I imagine it makes for an excellent cheap day out for children who have not yet lost the ability to see excitement in the inexplicable, Carrie loved it.
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