Shame

The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose.

Sugar Loaf

An opening from a recently heralded trio of books that were all the more curious for being published posthumously.  And a walk that was just too long for my companion. At ten, following a sleepover with almost no sleep, 7.5 km climbing up towards Djouce from Curtlestown via the Glencree River was just too much. The scenery at the splendid lookout to Powerscourt Waterfall didn't matter once the tiredness took over and that happened at 7.5 km which meant there was still 7.5 km to walk back to the car. Mostly downhill but still way too much especially since it the entire walk took over five hours. Still, we had a memorable picnic in a hollow tree.

The walk didn't kill him but herons, trout in the streams, grazing deer, our first cuckoo and kestrels were lost in his tiredness. I've said sorry. So has he.

There were some shameful things to see in the Glencree River; beer cans, shopping trolleys, plastic bags and assorted discards left by careless people. And then as we were watching little trout darting in the light dappled waters, a rubber suited, river walking troupe appeared - they seemed to be panning for gold - their activity seemed barbaric when you consider the wildlife in that protected beauty spot. 

VS Naipul told us that men who are nothing have no place in our world in opening A Bend in the River (back in blog 12, Forge).

Dandelion

Tom and the Perfectionist sit in the designated waiting area of Gate 23, Terminal two, Lester B. Pearson International airport.

Among the more odd books I've read recently, Tom and the Perfectionist will be obscure unless you've heard about it. Whereas I suspect many have read The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger that opened in the cool marble library that smelled of carpet cleaner back in the Proxigee post in late March.

Today was a short walk to Killiney beach with the dog. Clear and photogenic, I used the iPhone to capture dandelions while Gus was off harrying other walkers by the shore. I was trapped by a problem with my car that prevented a drive to the mountains. There were lots of other things to do so the walk was only five km.

Ballyteige

Robert Frost made his visit in November of 1960, just a week after the general election.

A 30 km walk (without a break) on another section of the Wicklow Way; 15 km each way from the head of the Ow River to Mangans, the car parked in the same spot as the last walk. I have to say it was boring. Very boring. It started with a climb through beech and the occasional azalea in Ballyteige Lodge and then along roads into Coilte plantations of larch and spruce. After that first hour, most of the walk was on sealed blacktop; hard on the eyes and feet, both. There was some respite in the form of the odd pretty glade, some soft views across green fields of sheep with lambs, often framed in yellow blooming gorse. It was not raining; a small mercy. I seem to have climbed 860 m which could explain why it took me thirty minutes more than the five hours I had expected. And I walked the last 30 minutes without GPS - not sure why it was lost again; seems to happen when the iPhone roams to the Vodafone network.

By far the most interesting thing was the diversity of mountain and townland names; Ballinagappege Mountain, Carrigamuck, Knockanooker, Knocknashamroge, Corndog, Ballycumber and Coolafunshoge, where I turned back, just short of Tinahely.

I saw only eleven other walkers, two runners and two cyclists in the whole walk. Proof that it was too boring to waste a public holiday unless of course, you were going from one interesting section to another.

And on closing, another opening: it was in The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale that Samuel and Mary Kent slept through the first line.

Drumgoff

Kilroy was here?

Maria hardly registered what was happening during the funeral.

This, the 27th post opens with yet another Scandanavian crime writer. Robert Clinch, who rolled out of bed to open the 15th post was from Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen.

The goal of this walk was 25 km in 5 hours or less. It also needed some climbs and so I chose the Wicklow Way, south from Drumgoff. To get there, I drove up the Avoca Valley from Arklow to park at Ballyteige, beside the Ow River. And walked Ballyteige to Drumgoff and back. And I did it in 5 hours. Exactly despite the loss of phone and GPS signal that confused the Walkmeter.

I followed a Merlin, or pigeon hawk for a short while. It was flying fast and hugging the ground, trapped by the walled road and the overhead enclosing tree canopy. I hadn't seen one for over thirty years and doubted my recollection of its habits until I checked the books.

I came upon a bus tour of geriatric but cheery hill walkers who all said hello. I lost my enthusiasm for their greetings after twenty-five hellos as they passed me in single file on rocky ground. I saw few other people which surprised me considering how beautiful it was.

Kippure

The August heat was slipping away with the day.

Another crime novel opening. And we can close the heat felt by the Parisians in the opening line of Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky, from the Skyline post in Februrary.

MiniMan checks the compass

Which is not to say the walk up Kippure was on a hot day - it was warm, the gauge in the car registered 23 C. The absolute highlight was the group of a dozen Sika deer that appeared as we crossed a stream. They lay, sat and stood and watched us for about twenty minutes before I got greedy for a closer photo. We watched two head butting and could hear the rattle of their horns though it seemed to be amicable sparring rather than any aggressive dominant male thing.

If the deer were a highlight, the dumped computers and other appliances on the edge of the Wicklow Mountains National Park was a disgraceful nadir. I thought we'd tidied this up and moved on.

At the summit, we crossed the county border between Dublin and Wicklow several times. We admired the hazy view as we snacked on BLT sandwiches (which is when I learned that MiniMan would not eat lettuce or tomato). The huge communications antenna fingered the sky above us, tethered by some serious cables, all of which is the ugly side of being in a wilderness that is only 15 minutes from a city of one million people.

We covered 10 km in about 5 hours, an ascent of 350 m. The deer reappeared on the descent as did some snipe, several we heard creeching on a skylark sound stage, one we saw zigging and zagging away from us.

Lug

Pereira maintains he met him one summer's day.

Ballinaskea

This opening line includes an eponymous clue - Tim Winton's Cloudstreet, back in the fifth post, engaged us by asking that we look at them by the river.

For this walk, we were three and had parked in Glenmalure just below the Youth Hostel and headed up towards Lugnaquillia, the Lug, Ireland's second highest mountain, 925 m amsl. We found a red flag to indicate live firing in Glen Imaal Artillery Range so we chose to walk under the cliffs in Fraughan Rock Glen.

It was a spectacularly beautiful day with a vista limiting haze but windless and warm. Warm enough that we worried about the tadpoles being boiled alive in the evaporating puddles on the loggers road. Warm enough that sunscreen was required after we took our jackets off. Warm enough that Red Hugh's frostbitten toes seemed unreal as did the methods we imagined might have been used to remove them, without anesthetic, all relevant because it was to the sanctuary of the O'Byrnes here in Glenmalure that he was brought that winter in 1593.

We clambered up beside the falling stream,  framed by fallen, logged timbers. It was ankle twisting and knee jarring both up and down but quite manageable if you kept your eyes on the ground. MiniMan did a deal and we stopped shortly after the Walkmeter angel announced the two hour mark. Which found us just below the North Prison at the Lug, bracketed between Benleagh to the north and Corrigasleggaun to the south. We'll be back one day, maybe soon. 

Spink

I'm going to die.

Confuse the colour blind

Which is what the MiniMan said while we did an 8 km walk up the Spink. The Spink is the well known mountain in Glendlough that overlooks the Upper Lake, where we first wandered to watch mallard. Our real attempt at the Spink started from the Information Centre, where we saw foxes, mink and a host of other stuffed animals illustrative of local fauna. We were already about 100 m above mean sea level and followed the red trail up past Pollanass Waterfall. The walk is not hard but the very steep steps are tiring. Old railway sleepers, laid end on end like overlapping dominoes - we decided that Domino Spink was the name of an arch criminal, punishing us cruelly.

We reached the Spink and carried on along the white trail to the 4 km point, where we had a picnic at the highest point, about 500 m amsl according to WalkMeter. The haze restricted the views but the lake was very pretty. We could see to the reservoir at Turlough Hill but not much more than that. Our binoculars were worth the carry when we watched some deer grazing on the other side of the valley and my companion even saw a fox go into a hole, presumably its den. A raven was quartering the area, gliding in the light airs and seemed to be keeping a careful eye on our fruit.

No Walking on Water

We talked about Red Hugh O'Donnell from Donegal and Art and Harry O'Neill from Ulster who escaped from Dublin Castle in January 1593, the only people ever to do so. We were looking down on the place where it is said that Art died of exposure and Red Hugh got frostbite that took his big toes. 

We finished after three hours with a well deserved 99, the ice cream cone and chocolate flake embellished with both lime and raspberry ripples.

Today's opening line comes from a Scandanavian crime novel that was written in 2002, translated in 2009 and published in English in 2009. And back in the February post called Aftershock, it was Margaret Foster who was trying to understand in her novel Over. 

Sunday

A splash of light from the late-afternoon sun lingered at the foot of Nariman's bed as he ended his nap and looked towards the clock.

This starter is an opening line from a four time Booker short lister. By the way, it was Anne Enright who told us about what happened in her grandmother's house the summer she was eight or nine in The Gathering, for which she won the Booker Prize in 2007.

Gorse and sea

We walked from Greystones fire station around Bray Head and back - about 8.5 km. It was another glorious day and there were lots of other Sunday walkers dressed as Sunday walkers do, in contrast to our hill walking, back packing practices. We were adorned with whistle and compass, booted and carrying rain gear. Their men were carrying children piggy-back, many of their women in pumps and tights, their dogs running free.

At one point, we sat high above railway tracks, near the Brandy Hole where smugglers did their thing all those years ago. We had a snack and watched fulmars and kittywakes glide up the cliff faces on the up-draughts from the sea where cormorants, shags and maybe guillemots (but perhaps razorbills) busied themselves on the flat water. 

Ten year old curiosity seemed satisfied after we discussed how a marina ended up in NAMA, using the purchase of a DS to illustrate how easy it is to suddenly owe 40 euro (or 40 million). His experience doesn't yet comprehend how hard he will have to work to pay these debts.

Greystones

In the early hours of Friday, 29 June 1860 Samuel and Mary Kent were asleep on the first floor of their detached three-story Georgian house above the village of Road, 5 miles from Trowbridge.

By the way, it was The Reader by Bernhard Schlink who got hepatitis within the opening line.

I decided to walk to Greystones and this time I did. I took some time out to lie on my back at Hackettsland beside a colony of sand martins. Industrious colonists, they nest in burrows on vertical sand faces. Not a recipe for long term survival you'd think until you realise how many glacial moraines there are in northwest Europe. I realised that I was watching their courtship rituals in full swing. The females fly into their burrows, high up on the sandy channels preserved in the vertical faces of eroded terminal moraines, where they are joined by a few hopeful mates. The males fly to the entrances where they hover, their wings almost invisible to me in the blur of the effort needed to keep them in a stationary position. Then they land on the vertical face, often holding onto fine rootlets that drape down like a natural chiffon, invisible from almost any distance. The females seem to watch and before they get too far, the whole colony takes to the air. This happened so often that I realised it was the planes passing overhead that was spooking them, not the sound but their peregrine like shape.

And I walked on to Bray and had a snack at the end of the pier watching the swans. And then a latte at the other end of the famous promenade before taking off up the hill and across to Greystones. The failed marina, the undeveloped prime development properties, the hoardings that cordon them off from the Excalibur Drive, a 50 km route supposed to take you through some of the most spectacular Wicklow landscape, all degrade the Blue Flag Beach and seemingly affluent main street. Greystones has signs that promise they will be tidying up the town soon - how terminal and depressing. Then I bought a train ticket to go home, 15 km added to the 25 yesterday, except there was no train for 45 minutes. Terminal (pun intended).

Harbours

The blow catches him from the right, sharp and surprising and painful, like a bolt of electricity, lifting him up off the bicycle.

I decided to walk to Greystones and instead I walked to Bray, a lot closer yet I walked further than I intended. Why? Because it was such a beautiful day that I decided to change my walk when I looked over the sea from the top of Dalkey Quarry. I realised the tide was going out and I could cross the beaches more easily at low tide, so I needed to delay an hour or so. Which gave me the idea to have a walk that included five harbours. I headed north to Dun Loaghaire Harbour and walked out to the lighthouse at the end of the east pier. And then back south to Bulloch Harbour and up through Dalkey where I stopped in Muggs for a 10 km break, a latte and a rocky road on the side. I sat outside in the sun, watching the occasional nice car drive by. Then after some Vaseline for the chaffing, I was off again to Coliemore Harbour.

Hitchcock?

The weather was spectacularly hazy yet opulently shimmering in the effulgence of Spring, twinkling brights added by the budding rhododendron candles and blackthorn confettis. All the time, the sea was like glass, rippled by the sea birds, the shrill crys of the terns of counterpointed with the muted sounds of the oscillating waters lapping on the beach.

I had done 24 km by the time I reached Bray Harbour and decided to take the train home. The railway station had four huge billboards but only one carried an ad.

It was David Park's book The Truth Commissioner that opened saying he'd never been where he'd never been in the first post on this blog. 

Flowers

In the beginning there was a river.

Another Booker winner opens this, the twentieth post. An earlier post, starting with 'a radiant late afternoon' was written in 1932 by Georges Simenon; an interesting Maigret novel, The Bar on the Seine. Not that it was easy to work out but it was translated and re-issued in 2006. I used it to defeat the googlers among you.

A day after getting rain gear and making 'Taranaki' mackerel for dinner, we walked about eight kilometres amid the bursting colours of spring. The virtual flowers shown here are for Mother's Day. Even Gus, that enthusiastic hound, got out for a run, reined in by a short leash to keep him from going under passing cars.

There were lots of families out walking. Spring or Mother's Day rewards, who knows? The route was positively mall-crowded by comparison to recent weeks.

Down at Coliemore Harbour, the neoprene brigade were snorkling back and forth across the sound to Dalkey Island, all done safely at low tide, avoiding the dangerous tidal rips.

Fund raising update: we are close to £10,000 and certain to exceed it. Car washing, henna tattoos, the curry quiz night and overeating at the bake sales have all done their part.

All blog photos are originals, taken with my iPhone, edited with Camera+ and posted through Picasa.