Dave Byrnes

Round Ireland - 2016

Overview Planned Schedule Map Diary Pictures

Day:	007
Date:	Thursday, 31 March 2016
Start:	Borris
Finish:	Inistioge
Daily Kilometres:	31
Total Kilometres:	218
Weather:	Cold and sunny in the morning. Cool and partly sunny in the afternoon.
Accommodation:	Woodstock Arms B&B
Nutrition:	Breakfast: Full Irish Breakfast Lunch: Muesli bars, Snickers Bar and chocolate Dinner: Baked fish pie and rocky road slice
Aches:	Feet very tired by end. Hopefully they will start adjusting soon.
Highlight:	Discovering I had arrived in Inistioge 30 minutes before the only place in town where food could be bought closed for the night.
Lowlight:	The roadwalk for the first few kilometres out of Borris in the morning was a little tedious because of the amount and speed of the traffic.
Pictures:	Here
GPS Track:	Here
Journal:	Yet another hearty Irish breakfast, during which my hostess, Brenda, was surprised to learn I had seen a fox from my bedroom window last night. She had never seen one locally. After breakfast, she offered to drive me back into town where I had been picked up the previous night. I accepted though was starting to wonder whether it would have been quicker to walk by the time the thick layer of frost on the car windows was sufficiently melted to drive. Borris is a long thin historic town with the village mostly on one side of the main street and the ancient high stone wall around Borris House on the other, and it took a long time to reach the countryside again. But it was another beautiful clear sunny morning and I wasn't complaining, though I didn't enjoy the couple of kilometres walking along a busy main road after Borris before I reached the River Barrow. The South Leinster Way then followed the river bank for the rest of the morning. It was a nice grassy track and I had it almost entirely to myself. Beautiful and peaceful. There were a few unmanned locks along the way and quite a number of barges tied up at the picturesque village of Graiguenamanagh which I reached around midday. The trail then crossed the river, passed through part of the village, and began a long gradual ascent along a quiet lane to the shoulder of Brandon Hill. The higher I got the better the views were, and once the trail levelled out, it was thoroughly enjoyable. Soon though, it moved into the inevitable working pine plantations that seem to exist on all of the mountains encountered so far, and the views were less frequent. When I had called and booked a B&B in Inistioge for tonight, the hostess had warned me that there was nowhere to buy food in town after 6:00pm, so I should get there in plenty of time. Given I knew it was roughly a 30km day, I was confident that I could make it in good time, though my third 10km stint of the day seemed to drag on forever. My feet were tired and the scenery less interesting, which didn't help. Eventually, I reached the historic village of Inistioge about 4:30pm and quickly found the pub where I had booked a room. Annette, the hostess, spotted me as soon as I walked into the bar and seemed relieved that I was early. As it turned out, the only cafe in town was closing at 5:00pm and not 6:00pm as she had thought. I was really glad I didn't take any extra breaks in that last 10km. (It seems there are at least two pubs in the town, none of which serve food.) I left my gear in my room, changed out of my boots (always one of the great moments of each day!), and hastened over to the cafe where I had an early dinner of the scrumptious fish pie meal of the day before purchasing a couple of slices for a later dessert. The cafe owners were very friendly and quizzing me about the coast road between Melbourne and Sydney, along which their daughter was currently travelling solo. I tried to be reassuring. After a shower, I took a wander around the very historic little town which had a history possibly dating back to St Columba in the 7th Century, and was likely a Viking village in the 9th and 10 Centuries. An Augustinian priory was established in the 13th Century and some of the built-over remains can still be seen. After the walk, I booked my accommodation for the next two nights. The weather is going to take a turn for the worse with widespread heavy rain forecast for tomorrow, possibly continuing over the weekend. Oh well, I've had a pretty good first week weather-wise.