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| Sue, Michelle and Jen striding up the road |
Leaving the village of Annascaul behind we followed a number of increasingly small roads up and over a ridge before descending to a small cove fringed by shingles. Actually, they were huge smooth rocks rather than stones. More shortly.
The views across the valleys were lovely with stone walls aplenty, brilliant green fields and the odd section of trees.
Standing just above the cove are the ruins of Minard Castle, a tower house built in the 16th century and destroyed by Cromwell's forces in 1650.
From Minard Castle we climbed up onto a ridge and walked along a number of tracks and minor roads.
Our lunch stop was at Katie's just before we reached Lispole. Katie's had been recommended to us as the sandwiches were fresh made to order. Which they were. The coffee was not all that crash hot, though.
After lunch we walked along a road above Lispole before dropping down to cross the Owenalondrig river before heading up, yet again. We were quickly learning that walking in Ireland means up and down aplenty.
We passed along a number of farm lanes, called boreens locally.
After quite a long haul up slopes we then did a transverse and then managed to do a wrong turn. By the time this error was discovered we had walked quite a way down, and I mean down, a road. Retracing our steps did not seem like a good option. We were pretty sure that there were other approaches to Dingle than the planned one.
Our detour did have one positive. We passed a fine example of a medieval stone bridge on the Garlinny River.
Our deviation added some 4kms to our walking distance and we were really pleased to finally make it in to Dingle.
We used a range of styles of stiles today as we made our way over walls:
The flora along the tracks and roads continued to impress.
There was also some stunning coastal views:
In the end we walked 23km instead of the scheduled 19km.
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