The Kerry Way (Ireland Weeks 3 and 4)

Hello all. Looks like I'm a week behind with the blog update! I'll try to catch you up here. Most of this blog will be focused on two days of the Kerry Way that Clare and I walked this past week. If you want to see a smattering of all of the stuff that we've been up to, check out Morgan's Instagram page. One of the highlights for me from Morgan's posts is an opportunity to listen and play some traditional Irish music with a friend of our host's Wally. Another of her posts talks about her and Clare's trip to see Skellig Michael, the Western world's oldest monastic site, where the recent Star Wars movies were filmed.

Not sure how many of you have heard of the Kerry Way. It's about a 200-km walk situated in Ireland's beautiful southwest. You can read more about it HERE. Clare and I just did two days of what typically takes eight. A big reason that we did this was because we are planning to do a seven-day pilgrimage walk in Italy in November. This was a bit of a trial run.

Our walk started at Derrynane Lodge, where we've been staying this past month. You can see a map of our route below:

At the bottom of the map is a place called Derrynane. That's pretty much where we've been living this past month with our generous hosts. We started at Derrynane and then headed east through Caherdaniel. At above Westcove we headed north on the smaller red line path up into the mountains. Great views from here, including this one:

After a long incline, around Kilbaha North, we reached the Windy Pass between two mountains where we had lunch. Here's the view from where we had lunch:

Above is Clare walking down the steep descent towards Isknagahiny Lough (seen on the left of the photo). I believe Iskna is the Irish word for water. While the views were beautiful, the hike turned out to be very challenging (this two-day loop that we did included one of the most difficult hikes on the whole Kerry Way). Clare was a champ and handled it well (for the most part!).

Clare and I with the freshwater lake in the background. Here we met a friendly sheep farmer who let us wander on to his property to go for a dip in the lake. At this point our legs and feet were feeling it and we were only about halfway through the eight hour hike.

You can see the kind of terrain that we were walking on here. Pretty challenging stuff!

From the lake we continued our hike, our goal being to reach Dromod by the end of day one, which is at the top of the map that I posted above. We were getting close to our goal, when I thought came to my mind, "Maybe I should just check that our hostel is at the right place." When I checked I realized that our accommodations for the night were in a town called DROMID, not DROMOD. Dromid was another 1.5 hours away!!! After 8 hours of a difficult hike, we were pretty much knackered (as they'd say here). We were really sore and walking another 6-km would be tough. We were in.a rural area, so I decided to stick out my thumb to see if someone would stop. It was about 7:30 PM. Clare was pretty upset. I knew that we could make it, but it would be really challenging. Kind of desperate I asked Clare if we should say a prayer asking for help. Sidenote: during our walk that day I had told Clare various stories of challening times in my life when my faith became a lifeline. I sensed that Creator was waiting for us to ask again for help. So, at the road side Clare and I said a little prayer.

Clare, just before our discovery that Dromid was not Dromod.

Not long after our exhausted prayer, another car approached, going our way. I flagged down the driver, a great lady named Mary. We explained our dilemma and she asked us to hop in. What a relief! Thank God (literally!).

When we got to the real Dromid, we discovered that they had forgotten are booking because of a mishap in their system. As a result was got massively upgraded from a couple dorm beds to our own house!!!

Outside of our house!!

We had a great sleep and were treated so well by the folks at Dromid Hostel (highly recommended). We continued our walk that day through Waterville and back to our home at Derrynane Lodge. While there were some beautiful scenes, the thing that I will most remember are the talks that Clare and I shared and the help that we received! Before leaving, my mum sent us wishes that we would grow closer and that our girls would grow in wisdom. I feel like this walk was a great opportunity for that. This is definitely one of the goals of our trip!

Stay tuned for my next blog where I plan to talk about the other big goal of this trip—connecting with our ancestors. Tomorrow and Tuesday, we will do a short trip to Kilkenny and Macroom, where Morgan and I have Irish ancestry connections. I plan to update you on that next!

Sheep chillin in ancient burial site along the Kerry Way!