But back to Ireland, and more specifically the beautiful Gleninchaquin Park. As we said last time, there are a number of waymarked trails to choose from, and we chose the yellow one, a fairly high level 4 hour route.
But first we had to get to the start, and this involved a heart pumping climb which we thought would never end.
We did get a chance to recover our breath when we reached this lovely lake, which provided not only something beatiful to look at, but also a nice, big, flat rock to rest on.
It was only a temporary rest though, as our path continued to climb, until we got almost to the height of the hill tops you see at the back of the photo.
At this point we reached the official start of the yellow walk; up til now we'd been following markers for the shorter red route, which, at the point it met the yellow route, was about to descend. Despite the hard climb, we were by no means ready to go back yet, so it was full steam ahead on the yellow route.
As you can see from the sign, at this point we were already 1 hour into our walk, with just 3 hours left to go.
You will also see, from this photo, and our next one, that we had all this lovely scenery almost all to ourselves. There were only 2 other people on the route while we were there.
We were quite reliant on the yellow paint blob markers on the rocks, as there wasn't really a path on the ground. However, as there was always a yellow blob in sight we weren't in any real danger of getting lost.
Our way undulated a fair bit, but the hard climbing was over. We stopped for lunch at a spot which gave us a great view over the terrain we had just walked ...
... at the back of the photo you can see the lake we'd rested at before walking all along the ridge to the left of the picture.
The chaps were very pleased with me for showing them that there are some good walking opportunities in Ireland if you know where to look. And it wasn't over yet; we were only half way round.
Back soon,
Lots of love Patrick & friends xxx
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