Yesterday we took another walk in the countryside. This time down by Roundstone. A walk to a mountain called Errisbeg.

A quick note about walking in Ireland. Most of the land is privately owned, few parks. And so most walking is dependent upon the graciousness of the land owners who are mostly sheep farmers. A few rules are in order:

Open a gate, close a gate.
Leave no trash.
Don’t bring dogs (sheep and dogs have a long and complicated relationship.)
Know how to use a compass (I do not…)

And also, don’t expect to find well-worn paths in most places. It’s heather jumping and scrambling from rock to rock with your eye on the prize up above. And a fixed point to return to on the way back.

This last part we learned yesterday. The hard way. Which is to say we did not have one.

So we drove an hour or so to Roundstone passing streams and lakes overflowing (literally, on to the road…) from two days of hard rain. A gorgeous drive (Ron is getting tired of my exclamations of “gorgeous!” and appreciates an occasional “stunning!” or “fabulous!”).

The town of Roundstone is small and gorgeous (!) with pastel colored two story buildings located on the bay and surrounded by lakes, stunning (you’re welcome) beaches and mountains. We decided that a lovely summer could be spent in a rental cottage here. Make a note.

We followed the directions in our 15 year old guide book “five kilometers westward from town to a sharp bend in the road, just before a rock quarry”.

Nothing was marked. No sign “Errinbeg Trail”. No “walkers welcome”. No “here ya go, Ron and Sara”. But there was a gate and there was a sign that said No Dogs. That sign is what assured me we had the right place.

So we opened the gate (closed it carefully) and began to walk down a rocky dirt road. Under the watchful eye of red and blue sheep.

I’m not exactly sure why the sheep are spray painted in Ireland. A Google search found a suggestion that the blue ones are boys, the red ones are girls and the pink ones are gay. This sounded reasonable enough to me.

After 40 minutes of walking it was time for our first “discussion”. Ron insisted that we needed to leave the rocky road and bushwhack our way to the top. Raised as a hiker in Appalachia, seasoned in the Rockies, I had learned that bushwhacking is never a good idea.

But I had yet to write the fourth paragraph in this blog and thus had not yet read it.

Finally, I was convinced that walking over rocks and heather (called “bog hopping” in one of our books) would be our only way to ascend the mountain. So after fixing our eyes on a rock outcropping above (the Stonehenge Thing Up There) we walked up.

This is where I should mention that one of us was wearing waterproof hiking shoes. The other was wearing tennis shoes (ones actually used to play the game of tennis…) that had been retired due to holes in the toes from serving. I’ll let you figure out which was which. Needless to say (but I shall say it, over and over and over…) one of us had warm, dry feet while the other spent the entire day with cold, wet feet.

We reached the goal (The Stonehenge Thing Up There) and were rewarded with a gorgeous (well, it was) view of the cold Atlantic, and many lakes and bays. And down below were old, old rock walls and rolling hills of yellow (I think it was…) heather.

When it was time to descend, that’s when we realized that we should have picked a landmark to direct us back to the road. But alas, I had not yet written paragraph four, let alone read it.

So we picked our way using the sheep as markers. Bad idea. They kept moving away from us… Finally we saw a little sliver of the road and made some assumptions about where it might be going. Thankfully our assumptions were right (phew) and we were rewarded not only by the road itself, but several small waterfalls.

With only one fall each, mine resulting in a wet knee and Ron’s resulting in a skinned hand (it shall be noted…) we were quite proud of our 60 year old selves and our hiking adventure. But then pride turned into humility when a turn in the road revealed an elderly gentleman in a wool cap using a cane. No, not a hiking stick, a cane. For support.

When we got within hearing distance (which was quite close as this gentleman wore two hearing aids) we learned several things. One, the road ended a mile ahead at a river. Two, the gentleman was retired after working at Guinness in Dublin. Perfect. He had “made the dark brown stuff” for thirty years and retired to his birthplace “just a wee bit” down the road.

Back in the car (gate opened and carefully closed again) we drove eastward with the mountains and lakes directly in front of us. Poor Ron had to watch the (wee) narrow road carefully while I looked around and gasped as each bend in the road revealed something else more amazing than the view before.

That’s when we came upon Dog Beach. A beautiful stretch of white sandy beach made entirely from the shells of 1000 year old crustaceans and now containing just a few walkers. But, alas, no dogs. A stop, a walk, a conversation with a couple of Brits and we were back on the road in search of a pint and a bowl of stew or chowder.

We found it at a hotel in Roundstone. The stew was made of lamb (neither red nor blue) and root vegetables. The pint was VERY cold. And the bar contained a British traveller sharing his photos of Texas with a very bored couple, also from England.

Back on the road and the views just kept getting more and more gorgeous.

Why would anyone leave this I’ve-run-out-of-synonyms-for-goregous country? it would need to be an indisputable reason. Like starvation. The great motivator of masses.

With crops being ruined and large families to feed, even the sea could not keep up with hunger and the people fled. To America, to England to where-ever they could to stay alive.

But some stayed. And many more returned. Even if, like me, it was four or five generations later.