“Sunday - last day in Dublin:
Yesterday my mum came and took away clothes, furniture, pots and pans, plates, forks, spoons, shampoo, books ... you get the idea. The apartment has reverted to how it looked when we first moved in: not great.
We had our first test pack three days ago, and it went surprisingly well. Looking at everything that's still here, I'm now venturing a guess that it went too well, and tonight's pack will contain a lot more cramming, and a lot less smiling. The plan for our first week is to walk out of Dublin along the Royal Canal. At 144km long, it'll take us about six days to get to Cloondara, just outside of Longford”
The Royal Canal Way, trail 1/42
It’s five years to the day since Carl and I started walking Ireland’s National Waymarked trails. This anniversary always sneaks up on me, the long wait of winter having only just given way, life all of a sudden finding the cracks in the ground and burst through, growing a foot in a week.
These kind of dates often inspire reflection, which nowadays often sparks the not-so-meditative task of attaching random hard-drives and clicking down through folders in an ad-hock and disorganised memory trip. Below are a selection of the memories that such images sparked - some of them stories we may have told before, some not.
The Royal Canal Way
From our first day of walking, this a when we found our first way-marker, who shortly after this, we named “Elvis”.
The Táin Way
That little jar with the yellow lid (Coleman’s Mustard), became our coffee jar on day one, and we still have it, and still use it as our travel coffee jar. We also gave up on the plastic travel cutlery and just carried the two metal forks.
The Monaghan Way
A trail that’s now closed, this is one of my favourite photos from that trail. Horse riding was my first love when it comes to sports. By the end of all the trails, Carl knew all the horse terminology, having had to listen to me describe the features of a horse stream-of-consciousness-style hours after passing it.
The Sligo Way
A trail that almost broke us, for no real reason at all, we were just exhausted and the wind never relented.
The Dublin Mountains Way
Carl trying to teach me how to be an influencer.
The Hymany Way
The selfie at the top of this post - and that resides behind the feet logo we use on most of our social media accounts. We took this at the start of our our final day of the Hymany Way, not knowing that we were going to run out of water that day and get mild heat stroke before making it to Portumna. The gratitude I feel to the ESB worker who gave us some of his bottle of water has only grown with time.
The Duhallow Way
On reaching the end of the Avondhu Way, you can immediately start the Duhallow Way (the two together are often called the Blackwater Way, even though you only meet the river once). At that end/start, there was a sign for a motor rally starting in 14hrs in the forest we were walking into. We’d already done a days worth of walking that day, but instead walked until 11pm, and then up again at 6am, to try and walk through that whole stretch fast enough. In this photo we’re eating some biscuits for breakfast just after an inspection jeep drove past. Instead of stopping and getting us to leave/giving us a lift, they just waved very enthusiastically.
The Dingle Way
I feel such strong dramatic irony when I look at this image - on the same day, I fractured my right foot in three places, and damaged a lot of tendons in the process. Would we have finished the trails a whole summer earlier, if I hadn’t had that injury?
“Tough Soles” eh?
The Slieve Felim Way
I’m pretty sure this photo is from a video still. Who doesn’t love the post-tent-sleep-eye-puff, and a breakfast of bananas? This photo makes me smile because it reminds me how each season of hiking, there’s always a little while where you might be self-conscious walking through places. But eventually you don’t care anymore, and can happily take naps on public benches or take off boots and socks and assess the state that the feet are in.
The Barrow Way
This was the trail that I learnt the whole Moana soundtrack, and Carl learnt it by proxy as I sang “You’re welcome!” over every bridge and rise, regularly changing the lyrics to reflect what I was thinking about most (salad, clean socks).
SlĂ an Earagail
This photo is from the top left corner of the trail, if you’re looking at an overview map of the whole route. We didn’t expect the bogland section of trail up there to be so close to the coast, and had stunning views. If we hadn’t had a friend offer us a lift for that evening from the end of the trail we would have camped somewhere along here. Donegal is one my favourite places.
The Kerry Way
We walked the Kerry Way in August 2018. One of the questions or comments we get most often is “when did you walk X trail? I’m hoping to do it in X month, do you think the weather will be okay”. August should have been a good month to walk this trail in, but we didn’t see the peaks of Ireland’s highest mountains once as they lived in rain clouds. In general, any month from May - September should be good, but good is sometimes also wet.
I think all I really want to say today is a thank you to those who’ve followed this project, however much of it you’ve read or watched. I love the creative process, and I love the outdoors, so what more could I ask for than doing something like this, and meeting the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. Below are a few more photos from this random archive dive - they’re not in order, because over the years I’ve not settled on one file naming system, so everything just goes where it wants.
