THE BURREN!

When people ask me what was most memorable about Ireland, it was a day. Scott and I had to catch the 8:45 bus. We made oatmeal and mixed in peanut butter and jam for breakfast. We drank tea as we made our sandwiches for lunch. We each made 2 sandwiches and packed along bananas and an apple apiece. As we were preparing, Scott told me to look at the map on the wall of the hostel. "Try and memorize this," I believe I can quote Scott telling me.

We knew the bus would take us to the Blackhead lighthouse, we were to walk to a ring fort, find a cairn and then make it to the first peak, hike the saddle to the next and then make our way down to the green road that will take us back to Doolin. Karl recommended hiking to a coastal pub or Ballyvaughn and waiting for a bus there. Scott and I said,...noway. We are going to hike the entire 16 miles.
We climbed on the bus, each of us with shoes, shorts, rain coat, hat, cameras, and Scott had a small pack for our lunch and water. We told the driver Blackhead, and he said ok, but reminded us that no bus came back through there; we knew.
We were dropped off at the lighthouse. Before he let us exit, the driver, in a tone that expressed concern, asked if we had a map. Scott simply without blinking said, "It was explained to us." The driver reiterated, find a fort, a cairn and then the peak. We smilingly exited and waved.

We were alone. The was no village nearby, only donkeys with their tales to the driving rain.

We exited into a rain shower. The wind was blowing fairly strong and the rain was almost stinging. We were loving it! We ran up some rocks smiling the whole time. THIS is what we were looking for. A month earlier Scott asked me if I wanted to join him for 6 days in Ireland, I said yes. He told me he wanted to drink beer and walk through the country side. We were doing it.

We started following a grass lane, and knew we had to go up. We crossed a fence and found what we thought was the ring fort. It was actually neolithic ruins. We kept hiking up and across the hillside. The hike was beautiful. We saw the ocean, farms, fields, and stone. We were in a place called the Burren. It is characterized by rocks sticking out of green grass... Lots and lots of rocks.

We finally saw a small cairn and thought we should just go straight up from there.

We came over a small knoll and saw the fort. It was awesome.

I could see that it would be a great lookout on the hillside, for land and sea. At that point, the rain started coming pretty hard. We looked up and it appeared we were going to hike up cliffs.

As we hiked closer, it was apparent that the cliffs had lots of places to walk up.
We got to the "summit" of the first "mountain" fairly quickly. We were both surprised. On top, the wind was whipping our clothing and we were shouting to try and understand each other. We finally made our way, behind a cairn and laughed. I told Scott, "At least we won't see anybody else today. Nobody would be having as much fun as we are!"

We made our way through the saddle and up the other hill. As we approached the top of that one, there was no shelter. I looked out and saw a man hiking. He was followed by a group. We decided to hike to them. We started crossing on slick rocks and grass. We made jokes about twisting ankles. As we approached, the man came over and told us he was a tour guide for 15 dutch hikers.

He joked that we were experiencing a great winter storm. He told us how to go down and we parted ways. Scott and I started walking toward the next fence to cross. Somewhere on the top, my foot slid into a hole, my toe went between rocks, and I walked through my ankle, hyperextending my foot. I felt as if I had just twisted my ankle.

We kept walking, as the storm was fairly nasty (meanwhile we were laughing the whole time) until we found some trees. We were headed down the hill right into somones yard. We were trespessing to we decided to avoid their yard by walking through their shelterbelt. We found lots of briars and Scott put his legs knee deep into a mud puddle, MUD puddle. His first reaction was," s^&$! that was my only pair of shoes for this trip!"

We made it to the road and found our "green road" that was to take us home. It was also called the Burren Way. We stopped there and ate our first sandwich.
We started hiking up the road. My foot was doing ok, but I could tell it was going to be sore. I figured we had about 7km left on the hike(we had almost 20 km left). We hiked along an area basically between farmers pastures that was assigned as a hiking trail. We saw old cemeterys, corrals, and stone fences. We passed a place with pipes that sang in the wind.
We finally made it to a paved road and hiked along it for a while. My foot went from being painful in the front, to the back, to the side, etc. I kept changing my walking motion to correct for the pain. We were still making it back at a fairly good pace.
We hit another fork in the road and decided to take a left. I am not sure if we would have made it back to the right (I was voting left here and at the next place we turned). The left simply took us around a castle.

We then took a right turn at the next fork. At this point my foot was killing me and we were 5 km from Doolin. We then hit the last fork at 3km away. I felt a pop in my foot and had to stop for a while. I limped the last mile and a half and it took longer than the initial 5 miles to the peaks(or so it felt). Scott limped me into the hostel and then went to find me ice. I don't know what I would have done without Scott. I took a shower and sat by the fire. It was still raining hard and wasn't a very warm day. I sat at the fire and iced my foot. It was about 4:30 pm. Other guests checked in and looked at me in my pitiful state.

A woman from Australia and one from Canada talked with us for a while and Scott also secured a place for us to stay the next couple of days in Kilarney. That night I wanted to hear music, so I hobbled to the nearest pub (one block away) and sat at the bar. We heard an accordian and guitar that night. Thank you Scott for being patient with me. We went back and played some cribbage. That night we packed and I limped around the hostel. We caught the bus early the next day to go to Kilarney. It was a great day.