Dingle Way - day 9: Camp to Tralee

Our final day of walking seemed to come around rather quickly although I think that both Jen and Sue were pleased that it was the last day and they could take it a bit easier in the days ahead.

Jen lying down on the job ... read on to find out why

After another great breakfast and some advice from our host, John, about the best way to get back on the Dingle Way, without backtracking over the meandering route we took to get to our accommodation the previous evening, it was out on the road again.

Note the lean of the trees. The wind was vicious once we were on exposed ground

Like quite a few of the days we were faced with an uphill stretch right at the start. As we went up we did get some great views. We were not sure how the folk at the nursing home we passed would deal with the gradient. Maybe the placement of the facility was planned to keep them from wandering.

There was low cloud hugging the tops of the ridges and this was a constant feature throughout the day.

We had had quite a lot of stile climbing practice and our last day had lots of opportunities to hone our skills.

Sue descending a stile while Jen awaits her turn

 We had been warned that there was a very boggy section along this section of the track. This could have been avoided by heading cross country "when the track turns left down the slope". Unfortunuately the track just dropped a little with not clear turn so we ended up going through the bog. It wasn't too bad probably the result of the recent dry spell.

The ruins of the small Killelton church, actually an oratory, provided a change to the relentless walking.

This was quickly follwed by the ruins of Killelton village, a short distance along the track from the church.

Along with the stiles there were a wide variety of waterway crossings. Once again we noticed that the "bridges" lost bits, mainly railings, as the day wore on. Here are some of the so called bridges that we used.

This was actually a duck board, so technically not a bridge

In many cases it was rock hopping to get from one side to the other. Picking the best route was often a challenge.

The track varied considerably although long sections were rocky paths requiring considerable care to negotiate.

Once we left the lower slopes we were fairly exposedand were buffetted by very strong winds. It has hard keeping upright and on the track. Jen sucumbed and ended up "lying down on the job" as can be seen in the first photo in this edition. I'm surprised that we didn't have more problems with being blown off the track.

While Michelle and Sue went ahead, Jen and I took our time negotiating the tough terrain. we relished in the number of streams that cut our path, some with waterfalls albeit small ones. There were quite a few babbling brooks which made the walking more pleasurable.

We finally sighted Blennerville, a small settlement which lies about 3km out of Tralee. Seeing it and arriving there were two entirely different things. The windmill which dominates the village was visable for an eternity before we finally got arrived in the centre of the village.

Sue met us on the outskirts of the viallge and informed us that the steam train that we were hoping to ride between Blennervile and Tralee no longer operated. Bother!

While Sue and Michelle headed off for Tralee (was that really where they were going?) Jen and I headed to the local servo for a toilet break, a coffee and a snack.

Suitably refreshed Jen and I headed off towards Tralee. We were surprised to learn taht the windmill had a cafe that served coffee. too bad, we had already had one stop and only had a mew 3km to go.

The final leg of the walk took us over a canel then on a path alonside it right into Tralee. This was easy walking and a good finish to an otherwise arduous day.

Walks End

Jen outside the Imperial Hotel in Tralee ... at walks end

... and ditto for Lorraine

Arriving at the Imperial we were surprised to find that we had got there before Sue and Michelle. when they finally arrived we learnt that they had turned the wrong way along the canel and had managed to walk a couple of miles in the wrong direction before being put right and having to retrace their steps.

I will do a separate post of overall impressions.

All four of the walkers were pleased to have completed the walk. There were some great aspects and some things that did not go as well as they could have but that a story for another day.

Dingle Way - day 8: Scraggane to Camp

After a restless night I was up early and found a spot where I managed to get an internet connection of sorts and cleared my emails.

After breakfast I was packed and ready to go before the rest of the group. Trevor was also leaving early today.

I took some photos of the bay from near where I had taken the sunset photos on the previous evening and then went back to wait for the girls.

Filling in time I decided to cear the 100+ emails that were sitting in my promotions folder. I worked my way through them, Trevor leaving in the meantime, and was a little surprised that the rest of the group had not appeared. I went and checked and finally discovered that they had already left. Not a good start to the day!

I knew that we were going to walk along the road for the first part of the day as we had done the first of the beach sections in our overshoot of the previous day and figured that I could walk them down before we reach Castlegregory. Off I set and then realised that I had put my map folder down when had gone off to take the photos. Back I went and collected it adding almost a km to my walk.

About a km down the road I met Michelle who had come back to see where I was.

The girls had come down, saw that I was doing stuff with my phone and figured that I would see them. I hadn't.

Sue and Jen were waiting for us just before Spillane's Pub and we walked on along the road.

Michelle got some way ahead and at a point where we could have taken to the beach again we could not see her on the beach so we decided to continue on along the road and hoped to catch her in Castlegregory. Finally we saw her on top of a dune waving at us and we indicated that we were continuing along the road.


With the harvest in full swing it was interesting to see the variety of ways the grass is being used.

Big round bales

Sillage

Not sure

An there were the rectangular bales of a couple of days before.

There were also fields of vegetables:

We arrived in Castlegregory at almost the same time and made use of the first place selling coffee that we found. it was good to sit down and rest our weary feet as we still had quite a way to go to reach our overnight stop.

The directions provided for us were less than clear so on leaving the coffeeshop Sue had asked one of the locals for directions and we were directed along the wrong road. Asking which was the road for the Dingle Way got directions to Dingle rather than the directions required to continue along the Dingle Way. Fortunately this did not cause us to have too great a diversion and we were quickly on the correct route.

Once clear of the town we walked along a relatively quiet road which eventually finshed and we continued along a gravel track. The Dingle Peninsula is a summer destination for many families and we came across quite a number of caravan parks and camping grounds.

During the day we had a variety of "bridges" for water crossings:

Our notes informed us that there was a 5 metre high standing stone in a field tht we would pass. There was a standing stone however the notice on the gate made it very clear that no-one was to walk through the field to get a closer look.

I took the next photo as I was surprised to find such a low speed limit posted on a road. The reason was not immediately apparent but it could have been to do with cattle movements across the road which would have been dangerous as the bend in the road would mean that the driver would be unsighted.

As much as we would have liked to have avoided beach walking this was not to be. Not only did we have a reasonable length of beach but also a creek crossing that meant that our boots got fille with water.

Yet another beach

Jen crossing the creek

We were pleased to finally have our very last beach behind us.

Jen making her way off the final beach of the walk

As it turned out we would have reached our overnight accommodation a lot quicker and with less hassle if we had been instructed to continue along the beach for a realatively short distance and then take a track up almost directly to where we were to stay. instead we were sent on a meandering route that included additional climbing and double backing as well as dealing with some rather busy sections of road.

Once again there was insufficient thought about the best way to reach where we were staying.

Dingle Way - day 7: Cloghane to Scraggane

Our room had a view over the estuary and when we awoke the tide was very much on the wane. There was more sand than water visible across to the far side of what had been water the previous night. The sky was gray but the forecast was predicting a fine day.

After another pleasant and filling breakfast we headed off for what was to be a day of much beach walking. Was there a beach in Ireland that we did not walk along, apart from Inch beach which we somehow missed?

From Cloghane we followed a number of roads before arriving at the beach at Fermoyle.

Sue walking along one of the pleasant contry roads ont the way to Fermoyle

There were some good views across to the mountains, too, some of which were shrouded in cloud.

One thing that had struck during the walk was the use of blue rope and twine. It appeared everywhere and was the dominant colour by far. If Bunnings was evident in ireland I would have thought that they only offered one coloured twine and string across their stores. It almost seemed like a conspiracy. How do you get everyone to use a particular colour rope for almost everything they do?

Blue twine was used to hold gates shut and amost every other thing that twine would normally be used for. Here is an example of the use of blue twine.

Just before the carpark at Fermoyle there was a humped back bridge.

Jen heading over the humped back bridge leading to the carpark at Fermoyle

Sue at the start of the long beach walk from Fermoyle to Fahamore

From Fermoyle it was some 12km along the beach. Fortuantely, much of the same was firm otherwise this section would have been very unpleasant.

Indications were that there would be a string of endlessly breaking thunderous waves crashing ashore along the strip of beach. Oops, someone didn't tell the waves although there was some white capped waves from time to time. They still were pretty small fry.

The sand was wide although the incoming tide kept eating away at the strip of sand between us and the sand dunes. We managed to complete the section before the incoming tide was an issue. There were a number of streams that needed to be crossed, too. Fortunately we got across without getting our boots filled with water. That could wait for another day!

Sue approaching one of the creeks running across the sand

Walking along the long expanse of the beach

The beach was edged by sand dunes

We had seen hoof prints in the sand and near the end of the beach walk a number of horses were riden along the sand.

A couple of the horses we encountered on the beach

There were great views to be seen but mostly these were behind us.

Once off the beach we headed along the road to the small settlement of Fahamore where we stopped for a coffee in Spillane's Pub. It was good to sit down and the coffee really was a pick me up.

By the time we reached Fahamore we had covered about 16km. According to our notes this should have been a 21km day. On leaving Spillane's we continued on our merry way following the directions in our guide.

The trail headed up to a point on the tip of the peninsula before turing back towards Castlegregory. We did visit the ruins of an ancient church but did not find the gravesite that dated from 600AD.

This area was home to many horses and we delighted in seeing some lovely animals as we passed by their paddocks.

The local fishing fleet was in and bobbing on the light waves.

After some more beachwalking we got concerned that we did not seem to be anywhere near what should have been our stopping point. Out came the ordanance maps, the guide was pored over as was the information about the location of our B&B. Our conclusion was that nothing lined up. Once again the distances quote were way off the mark. The references did not match the ordinance maps we have been given. Named landmarks were not sign posted locally. All in all we were some 5km beyond where our B&B was - and we needed to somehow backtrack without stomping across loose sand.

Approaching a local it was confirmed that we could get across to the main road with a short backtrack. Roadwalking seemed a much better option than walking over more sand.

When we reached Spillane's we were able to confirm that we should have left the Way right outside their door. Why the directions did not say something like ... "When you reach Spillane's Pub continue along the road rather than turning right as indicated by the waymarker".

By the time we reached our B&B we were all weary and very pleased to have finally made it.

All up we walked over 25km when, by what we discovered, it should have been around 18km.

We were not happy vegemites!

After dinner Trevor and I went out to see if we could capture the sunset. There had been very little cloud until well into the evening when, unfortubnately, a bank of cloud came through.

We stayed at the Hharbour House B&B in Scraggane. The wifi was only available in restricted areas and was very unreliable. At night the door between the the accommodation and the reception area was locked meaning that the area with the best wifi reception could not be reached.

The passageway had floating boards that made a horrible ruckous whenever anyone walked along the passage.

This was the worst of all the places at which we stayed during our walk and isn't one that I would recommend.