Dave Byrnes

Round Ireland - 2016

Overview Planned Schedule Map Diary Pictures

Day:	024
Date:	Sunday, 17 April 2016
Start:	Sneem
Finish:	Waterville
Daily Kilometres:	34
Total Kilometres:	705
Weather:	Cool and mostly cloudy, with one brief shower in the morning and a cold westerly wind in the afternoon.
Accommodation:	Klondyke House B&B
Nutrition:	Breakfast: Full Irish Breakfast Lunch: Muesli bars and chocolate Dinner: Egg sandwich, tuna sandwich, corn chips and chocolate
Aches:	None really
Highlight:	The lovely coastal walk around Derrynane - white sand beaches interspersed with low rocky bluffs, a grassy plain behind and interesting rocky islands of all shapes and sizes, near and far, offshore.
Lowlight:	On leaving the Derrynane coastal walk, I seemed to end up at a dead end on a small stony beach and decided I must have gone the wrong way. I then retraced my steps for about 15 minutes before deciding that I must have been going the right way after all. I returned to the beach and after looking around for a while, discerned faint wear marks on a bare rock sloping down to the beach, and sure enough, it was the correct trail. Wasted at least 30 minutes.
Pictures:	Here
GPS Track:	Here
Journal:	I left a very quiet Sneem at 9:00am and was soon following a long straight country lane. The Romans never colonised Ireland, but it still seems to have a number of very straight old roads, a trademark of the Romans. It was easy walking and I made good time, partly to try and warm myself up. In an hour or so the sun broke through and an hour later I was stripping down to T-shirt and shorts again. As usual, this was the signal for it to cloud over and begin raining, but the shower was brief, and I toughed it out in my T-shirt. In the last few days, I've had a number of comments about how tanned I look, so I must be getting some sun. My good progress continued all the way to Caherdaniel, a small touristy village I reached in the early afternoon, whose main claim to fame would seem to be its proximity to the nearby Derrynane House and grounds. Here the Kerry Way split with two options - the beach route or the higher (shorter) route. A couple of hours earlier I had met a Swiss woman hiking the Kerry Way in the opposite direction and during our chat, she had said I must go the beach route, so that's what I did. (Unfortunately for her, a knee problem was likely to make this her last day of hiking after having completed most of the Kerry Way and only having a few days to go.) The beach route followed the beautiful coast on a series of paths, part of it across a vast grassy plain behind the dunes. The beach itself was white sand and this contrasted with the dark rocky headlands and shoreline surrounding it, while offshore, across the calm sea, were numerous rocky islands. The last part of the coastal path was quite technical and slow in parts and I lost time at one point retracing my steps when I thought I had missed a turn, but the views continued to be spectacular. From Derrynane, there was quite a long climb over the shoulder of Farraniaragh Mountain, and it got a lot colder as the Kerry Way became exposed to a westerly breeze. There were some good views of the Skelligs, two pyramid-like rocky islands way offshore, one of which served as a location in the recent Star Wars movie (I coincidentally saw a brief TV documentary on it a couple of days ago). The last hour or two passed quite quickly and I was soon in Waterville, which had the feel of an out-of-season beach resort. I was disappointed to find my B&B was about 10 minutes hike out the other side of town, and I didn't check in until 6:15pm. After a shower I then had to walk back into town for some supplies and dinner. On discovering they made fresh sandwiches in the small supermarket, I bought some for dinner, rather than go for a more expensive pub or restaurant meal, and returned to my B&B to eat. Apart from the Swiss hiker mentioned earlier, I also met a young American couple hiking the Kerry Way in the late afternoon. They said they were telling people they were Canadian, so they didn't have to deal with Donald Trump questions.