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.

Climb

View: Sugar Loaf to Killiney

A radiant late afternoon.

My companion (9 and 363/365ths) had this to say about climbing the Sugar Loaf: we parked the car in the car park and we we could see the mountain and the tiny figures already on top. We started to walk to the shoulder. We had to climb because it was so steep. It was very rocky. We saw a raven. And larks ascending, singing all the way until they went invisible, though they kept singing after we couldn't see them anymore. And a fierce mountain dog - he was shrunk to handbag size by starvation; he was looking for inattentive children to eat so he could become a big dog again. And three motorbikes racing and we could smell their oil. And so many people walking that it was like a shopping trip because the parents were carrying their kids. Then we went home to play with Lego Minotaurs. You can make your own dice.