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.