Climbing Carrauntoohil 16-8-2007

Myself, Rob, John and Jim headed of to climb the tallest mountain in Ireland - Carrauntoohil. The mountain isn't far from Killorglin in Co. Kerry. There's two routes up the mountain. We decided to take the 'Devil's Ladder Route'. The devil's ladder is a small but very steep ridge that you have to climb at a certain point in the hike. The scenery here was spectacular - you wouln't think you were in Ireland at all. It took us 3 1/2 hours to get up and 2 1/2 to get get back at a fairly easy pace. I must try it from the other route the next time - the Carra Route. Beautiful!












The very top of the mountain was cloud covered and made the whole thing very errie. Somebody had managed to haul a giant, iron cross and haul it to the top at some stage over the years.

Puck Fair 10th to 13th -6-2007

A few of us headed down to Puck Fair, in Killorglin, for the weekend. The Puck fair is a bizzare festival which kicks of with a goat, captured from the Kerry hills, that they hoist up onto a giant pedestal for the duration of the fair. Between putting him up and taking him down is three days of festival in the town. Here's a video of the goat (Jimmy) going up with "Puck ar Buile" theme tune being sung.







Killorglin's actually in a pretty beautiful part of the country. Not far away was Rossbeigh where we went for a swim on the second day.



The town is also on the edge of the Magillycuddyreeks mountain range, where Carountoohill, Ireland's tallest mountain is ... Very beautiful.

Sneem

The hike to Sneem didn't have the same great views as the first day, but the terrain was just as hard! We finally got there after 8 eight hours - making much better time than the day before. Sneem, funnily, seemed like a smaller version of Kenmare or an even smaller version of Killarney. A nice town, good atmosphere, especially during the day as a constant stream of tour buses traffic people through the town.

Pub? Church?

On the road to Sneem we passed this unusual pub made from a converted Church of Ireland church. I'll let you form your own opinions :-)

From Hike from Kil...

Kenmare

After 9 hours our first days hiking finished in Kenmare. Quite a nice place - a bit like a miniature version of Killarney. We rested up big time for more of the same tomorrow, when we'd hike to Sneem.

From Hike from Kil...

The Windy Gap

After a steady rise for a couple of hours, we got to the top of the windy gap. Looking back you can see the the entire Kenmare road, back to the national park. Looking the other direction you can see Kenmare and Kenmare bay, several miles ahead.

From Hike from Kil...

From Hike from Kil...

Oh, and yes, it is very, very windy!

The Old Kenmare Road

The Old Kenmare road begins at the top of Torc Waterfall. It's a narrow windy track, over the mountains to Kenmare and is long closed to traffic. The trip affords some spectacular views and is very much untouched country. Lakes, waterfalls and freshwater streams dot the landscape and harly an animal is to be seen. No farming seems to be underway here now - all we saw was the occasional, ancient farm wall and at one stage what seems to be a graveyard with lots of burial mounds.

From Hike from Kil...

From Hike from Kil...

Occasionally you pass another hiker (usually German or Dutch the day we went), but apart from that you're on your own. Very quiet, very realxing. We had lunch beside a waterfall in the middle of nowhere ... say no more.

From Hike from Kil...

From Hike from Kil...

Torc Waterfall

A little further on from Muckross was Torc Waterfall. Very pretty. After a steep climb to the top there was a very nice view of the lakes behind us. This was also the start of our trek up and over the mountains to Kenmare.

From Hike from Kil...

From Hike from Kil...

Muckross

Muckross and Killarney have almost grown together at this stage and after a short stroll we'd arrived at Muckross Abbey and Muckross House. This was only mildly impressive - Far nicer were the lakes of Killarney that they stood beside.

From Hike from Kil...

From Hike from Kil...

From Hike from Kil...

Killarney

Killarney, to me, seemed like one big Irish theme park. Lots of fun - carnivals, parties, street entertainment, cheap accomodation. We stayed in cheap hostel to get a comfortable night before setting off on our hike.

From Hike from Kil...

From Hike from Kil...

Hiking Killarney to Sneem 23-7-7

Myself, Jim and John set off to hike some of the Kerry Way. The whole route is over 200km, but we only did about 60km, taking us from Killarney to Kenmare.






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The Lake and a Hike

When we got to Lough Gur we hiked up a nearby hill to get a better view. Pretty spectacular, and a beautiful day for it too. A group of kids were kayaking on the lake below. Might be a good idea sometime. You could see the Galtees (I think!?) in the distance ... very nice.

From Trip to Lough...

From Trip to Lough...

The Old Wedge Tomb

This is another 5,000 year old monument. Even more amazingly, an old woman lived in this tomb until the mid-eighteen hundreds. Another nice diversion on the way to the lake.

From Trip to Lough...

From Trip to Lough...

The Stone Circle

'An Cloch Ciorcal' is about 5,000 years old. It's only amazing when you think of it that way, ... otherwise it's just a circle of big stones. Cool.

From Trip to Lough...

Lough Gur 15-7-7

It's 20ish mile from Limerick to Lough Gur. Myself and John headed off on the bike for the day to see the lake and other bits and pieces along the way ... stone cirles, wedge tomb, the lake, lookout from an adjacent hill.





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"But trust me on the sunscreen."
- Baz Lurhman

Finishing Up - 4th July 2007

Wow, ... five and a bit months gone! That was quick! Can't believe we're just about finished. We fly back to Ireland for a few weeks on Thursday. The trip has done nothing for my travel bug, I'm afraid - Something tells me I'll start saving pretty much straight away when I get back for another expedition :-) ... anyone interested in coming? ;-)

Route Through Australia

Here's a map of our route through Australia ...





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The Well Worn Shorts

These aren't actually my shorts, they're John McCormack's. I'm not exactly sure how I got them but they've served me well. I think now, however, that they approach their end. Sometimes, no matter how good you are, you just can't sow a thing back together.

From Australia, Qu...

Green Shorts, 2000-2007

Brisbane 1st-4th July

Our last stop. We have a couple of days here to get ourselves sorted out, tidied up, meet Nici's friend Shane and fly out! Where did the 5 months go!

Apart from that, there really isn't a whole lot to see in Brisbane - the XXXX Brewery, a few nice going out spots, but nothing you'd cross oceans for.

Fraser Island

All over the country people had been saying Fraser Island was brilliant, so we had to make a stop here on our way down the east coast. The place did not disappoint! Fraser is the largest sand island in the world. The main highway on the island is actually a 75 mile long beach of beautiful powdery sand. My favourite spot there was lake McKenzie - It was a beautiful, crystal clear, freshwater lake nestled in the hills and swimming in it was so refreshing.

From Australia, Qu...

From Australia, Qu...

Fraser is particularly recommended for it pure bread dingos. Here's one digging for a buried fish.

From Australia, Qu...

Surfing

I had always wanted to try surfing and where better than Queensland's sunshine coast. Noosa was a lovely spot for beaches and surf and there was a surfing school there run by a former surfing world champion called Merrick. Myself and Nici took a two hour lesson one of the mornings while we were there and it was absolutely great fun - I never expected it to be such a laugh. I can see why people get addicted to surfing! The instructors were quite good and both us managed to get standing up on our boards in the couple of hours we were there. I really want to try it again! I might even try it at home ... although I might have to suffer colder water.

Back in Noosa

This is the only place in Australia I'd been before. I was sent here with work back in 2005 and it was the reason ever since that I'd wanted to come back to the country. I had wondered, after seeing so many other amazing things along the way, would it still seem as good - fortunately the place still held its own. The town has a national park right on its doorstep, there's several world class beaches, great weather, a lovely town ... and so on. We camped here in the campsite for a few nights and just enjoyed view.

From Australia, Qu...

From Australia, Qu...

The Ron of Argyll

From Airlie beach we set sail for the Whitsundays Islands on the Ron of Argyle. It was a lovely, small, 2 masted Ketch and only had 12 guests on board. It was really special to travel around purely by the power of the wind (although we did have a motor for whenever the wind was too light). The boat is 80 years old next year and hosted famous guests such as King George V and Marylin Monroe. Our crew were really sound too - real stereotype surfer dudes.

From Australia, Qu...

From Australia, Qu...

Whitehaven Beach

One of our stops around the Whitsundays was here at Whitehaven beach. From the lookout its one of the nicest beaches I've ever seen. The sand here is so pure and fine that it was used for making the lens on the Hubble Space telescope and this is still the sand that is used to clean its lens - Amazing!

From Australia, Qu...

The Wet Season that Never Ended

The weather in the planet seems a little topsy turby this year. In Saigon the wet season came 2 months early and here, in tropical queensland, it hasn't stopped raining yet - well in to June. Some of the weather we've had around Cairns and Magnetic Island was cat! Things look like they'll clear up for Noosa and Brisbane though.

Magnetic Island

We were unlucky with the weather here. Magnetic Island normally gets sunshine for 310 days of the year or something ridiculous like that. Didn't like the hostel place we stayed in either - unusually, the fact that we were camping in their campgrounds made it better not worse!

We left after a couple of nights - you really couldn't do anything here with the weather wet!

Cairns

Cairns was an okay place, but it was really all the things that you could go see near Cairns that made the place. I really didn't like the hostel we stayed in there - really big, lots of rules, deposits for everything, staff hated their jobs ... Seems to be the way things are run here on the east coast, and I don't really like it ... no more really cosy, small hostels, lack of atmosphere, companies begin treating you like a child along with the other, younger, 18-20 year old backpackers. Hope things improve as we head down towards Brisbane.

Aherton Tableland

A little bit inland from Cairns you have the Aherton Tablelands - A huge area of tropical rain forest. The weather was really, really wet so it was just how you'd imagine a real rain forest being. We went to see a curtain waterfall there called Millaa Millaa - It was where some Timotei shampoo commercial was filmed as well as the video for Peter Andre's song 'mysterious girl' video. Very nice, and got to swim in around it and even do an imitation of the Timotei ad.

From Australia, Qu...

Great Barrier Reef

We headed out on a small boat to the Great Barrier reef for the day. It was a lot of fun. Despite the cloudy weather the water was still quite warm for snorkeling. The boat parked just off Green Island where we got to hang out for a couple of hours too. All very nice, but the snorkeling was no better than the reefs we saw in Ningaloo or in Thailand. The only difference, of course, was that you were on the largest reef system in the world, but it's very hard to get a sense of scope for this. I didn't get a marine camera this time, so no cool underwater photos. I was hoping to see really brightly coloured corals on the reef, but I didn't and was told why later. It turns out that red colours don't travel that well under water, so everything turns up as shades of blue and green and it isn't until you bring really strong lights down underwater that you get to bring up the colours - in other words the reef will only ever look colourful in photographs ... what a disappointment!