Tales From The Travels

If the rest of this trip sucks it'll still be worth it. This hike has been that good. The views have been beautiful and the Irish I've met along the way have been positively charming. This has been Ireland that you'd expect from watching shows.  The trail is 80 miles long and goes through the Wicklow Mountains and the national park of the sane name. These are real mountains and it took some effort to hike up them. No climbing, fortunately. They are working to restore the depleted forests and I've been going in and out of forested areas. The old woods were so dark  even in the middle of the day, that it was easy to see why they used to think they were haunted. Then I would go through mountaintop bogs that went fir miles and required bog boards to get through. If you stick your pole in it won't reach the bottom. And, all along, are these fabulous views. Being spring, the flowers are in bloom. My wife, Sherry, loves flowers so I send her a picture every day for her wak...

I was talking to an Irish guy, a local Dubliner, when he asked me what I thought of Dublin. To his obvious pleasure, I said I'd never seen a city like Dublin before. I said it to be courteous but afterwards I realized it was true - I have never seen a city quite like Dublin. I like to walk around cities and get a feel for them, sometimes walking for miles over a period of hours. I enjoy this as much, or more, than going to all of the museums and sites. Cities have their own character and there is only one way to get a good feeling of it. Go out there and experience it. I still go to museums and sites, but I see things many visitors never see. You will not get the feel of a local bakery or pub while riding by in a taxi or tourist bus. Rubbing shoulders with the crowds in the streets is vastly different than hanging out in the hotel. After five days of walking I feel I can say Dublin is unique. At this point you're probably going, "Okay, so what makes it so different?"....

I arrived in Dublin this past Wednesday and have been getting ready for my next adventure - hiking Ireland. I've spent the last year on this trip. I spent months thinking about it and working to decide if I wanted to do this before finally committing to it last fall. I've been preparing since then and am now on the verge. This coming Tuesday morning (in two days) I and three others will transit to Marley Park in south Dublin and head out on the Wicklow Way, the oldest official long-distance recreational trail in Ireland. The other three will be leaving after that but I will continue to do five, or six (depending on weather) more trails, or ways as they are known as here. All total, I'm planning on about 600 miles of trails over the next seven weeks. Sherry will join me here in Dublin in June and we'll set out on some other adventures, but more on that later.  Posts to come.