Category: Ireland
A new GPS receiver
18th June 2016 Most if not all articles written about outdoors gear usually do not contain any mention of life circumstances, yet they pervade this one. To me, January 2015 brought a life-changing event whose alterations still are ongoing. My father's passing away last year and that of my mother years nearly two years before then now make for a very changed set of circumstances. Not having to deal with my father's fear of flying has meant that I can countenance overseas excursions like those that took me to Iceland and Switzerland last year, together with Austria a few weeks ago.
Motivation & Opportunity
If it were not for last year's trip to Iceland, I may never have acquired a GPS receiver. Apart from an abortive attempt to buy a Magellan eXplorist 100, it stubbornly remained on the nice-to-have section of any gear wish list since I never got to spend the outlay. It was exposure to the shortcomings of maps with a 1:100000 (1 cm per 1 km) scale on a walk around Landmannalaugar that finally convinced me to try again. Even with a subsequent trip to Switzerland and perhaps because of what I spent on accommodation, travel and other things, the acquisition that had to wait.
The deed itself was done in circumstances that one might have expected to produce a different set of priorities, for it was in the time around last Christmas. My plan was to spend Christmas itself in Britain before heading to Ireland for a few days and returning before New Year's Day. That didn't happen, as emotions just were too raw, and I rearranged the trip for sometime in January. One thing that added to my melancholy was how things went during Christmas 2014 when a neighbour of my parents went about planning Christmas 2015 when all I wanted to do was get into 2015 and leave 2014 after me. Now Christmas has lost all its child-like allure for me, I tend to want to get past it rather than bringing the next one closer.
Not travelling to Ireland at the end of 2015 meant that I could get past last Christmas and leave it after me to grow smaller in the rearview mirror of life. Doing otherwise would mean lugging too much emotional baggage through 2016 and that was why that 2014 invitation hurt me as much as it did; that Christmas was one that I needed to leave after me. The extra time at home was put to good use too, for I embarked on a tidying spree that resulted in so many bin bags of items for disposal and recycling that it took a few weeks to clear them. Aside from the last Tuesday of the year or the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the weather had not been so enticing anyway, and it felt like a pathetic fallacy that so much rain fell and the winter generally was a rain-drenched season anyway.
Having bailed out of the planned Irish trip on St. Stephen's Day, or Boxing Day as it is known in the U.K., I decided to book the purchase of the long-windedly titled Garmin eTrex Touch 25 from Go Outdoors' Manchester branch. Perusal of a newspaper on the way there revealed just how miserable some people's Christmas had been, for they were physically flooded while I was emotionally so; the Calder valley had been very badly hit by the weather, and they were not alone.
Early Testing
Time elapsed before I got to testing out the new gadget, and there is more I have yet to get it to do even now. That Christmastime Tuesday trot around Macclesfield that took in Tegg's Nose and part of the Gritstone Trail depended on my local knowledge and a paper map instead. Testing the new acquisition in earnest was to take until the second week of 2016 and various opportunities since then have seen it left at home, so I am far from developing a dependence on the device. These have included a recent walk from Tideswell to Hathersage via Litton, Foolow and Eyam as well as a subsequent one from Leek to Macclesfield that took in the Roaches as well as Tittesworth Reservoir, Gradbach, Wildboarclough and Higher Sutton.
Still, it has been taken outside a good few times. These mainly have been on trots about Macclesfield that include some soggy ones earlier in the year and drier ones more recently. It also has made it to West Limerick in Ireland, Stirling in Scotland as well as Innsbruck and Zillertal in Austria.
As the word "Touch" in the name suggests, this is a touch-screen device and my attempts to keep the screen reasonably clean mean that I use a stylus with it like I do with a phone or tablet. Starting it up brings you to a screen for one of its numerous modes. So far, I have stuck with the hiking one and there is another customised version of this that I created but there others for various forms of cycling as well as hunting, fishing, climbing and geocaching. It is only the hiking modes that I have tried so far but one of the cycling ones (bike, tour bike and mountain bike) could be a possibility yet.
In my experience, this is not a device for spot reading of where you are but one that tracks where you are going. Given that it shows a map underneath, that does help when you are unsure of things though battery usage then becomes a concern as does remembering to enjoy what surrounds you, which is what gets us out and about in the first place anyway. Going about the place staring at a small screen rather defeats the point of exploring the countryside and could cause an accident. As for battery life, my unit is on probation with disposable batteries until I can be sure that rechargeable ones are not getting discharged too quickly.
Available Maps
By default, the Garmin comes with its own maps for eastern and western Europe. For places without alternative coverage like Iceland, these are a good substitute for the walking maps that are available. In fact, having the gadget with me around Landmannalaugar last year would have been a big help for it shows that trail at higher magnification than the 1:100000 scale map that I was using at the time.
However, there are other maps available with the BirdsEye Select series offering 1:25000 Ordnance Survey data for Great Britain as well as its equivalents for France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria (including part of Italy). Holiday destinations like Madeira, the Balearic and Canary Islands together with the Azores see inclusion in this series too. Along with the OS, you get data from Kompass, France's IGN and Germany's BKG. The advantage of these offerings is that you choose the area for which you are buying maps and not the selection decided for you by a provider. Garmin offers other series, and there is a one called BirdsEye that appears to do the same for the U.S.A. and Canada.
To get coverage beyond the aforementioned countries, you need to look at Garmin's other offerings. These differ from the above in that these are preselected areas rather than self-selected ones from the BirdsEye series, and cost more for higher definition maps because of the amount of coverage that is included. For Great Britain, there is the Discoverer series and both TOPO US 24K and TOPO US 100K series just cover the U.S.A. Country coverage for the other mapping series (there is one in the BirdsEye range for satellite imagery, but I am less interested in that) is below.
TOPO PRO:
France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czech, Finland, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Norway, Sweden, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mozambique, Namibia, Reunion, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Denmark.
TOPO:
U.S.A., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Tunisia, Hungary, Mexico, Chile, Norway, Argentina, Bolivia, Morocco, Greenland, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Ceuta, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Melilla, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Réunion, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Bahrain, Ceuta, Gaza, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Melilla, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, West bank, Western Sahara and Yemen.
TOPO Light:
U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Belarus, Israel, Poland, Portugal, Turkey, Romania, Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan South, Tanzania, Uganda, Turkey, Romania.
Aside from the BirdsEye range, where the Basecamp PC or Mac software is needed, maps can be purchased and downloaded to your device from the website. However, the browser plug-in does not work in the current versions of Firefox or Google Chrome at the time of writing because it has not been digitally signed by Garmin. On Windows PC's, that leaves Internet Explorer as the only option, and I needed to try it more than once to ensure that Basecamp registered the new map. Finding out what happens with Safari is not something that I have got to doing yet, but it is a possibility.
Storage
With all the downloadable data, it is just as well that the eTrex Touch 25 takes a microSD card; the default maps and software leave just over 2 GB free out of the 8 GB of internal storage. The slot is in the battery compartment underneath the batteries and I have added a 16 GB one. If my needs extend beyond that, a bigger one can be added in its place. It is possible to buy data on SD or microSD from Garmin, so there could be the temptation to use one of these in the same slot. A limited number of packages come on DVD and I wonder how they get transferred, even if this is a legacy format nowadays.
Software
Sessions exploring the available computer software followed suit, and Garmin's BaseCamp is what's required for managing any data. Exports to GPX files meant that routes could be seen in Mapyx Quo and Anquet's OMN too.
Precious Gifts
11th February 2015 After a break needed to care for their own older relatives, my parents started to go exploring Ireland again. Early memories of this involved evening drives after the cows had been milked. Places like Springfield Castle, Cahermoyle House and the last resting place of William Smith O'Brien still reside in my memory. Somehow, I also seem to recall that the evenings were clouded and dull when we made these excursions, but my father retained an interest in history for much of his life and a few of these outings stemmed from that.
That is not to say that places were not frequented for their scenic worth. After all, my mother enjoyed flowers and shrubs with many a pot plant about the house, while shrubs and trees made mowing the lawn all the more interesting. Trees were favoured by my father, so places like Foynes Wood, Curraghchase Forest Park and Doneraile Park also saw visits and the Ballyhoura Mountains were not ignored either, especially given my mother went on Sunday drives around there with her own mother. Visiting gardens open to the public was more my mother's interest, and she found ones like Annesgrove Gardens near Castletownroche in North Cork or Derreen Gardens near Lauragh in Kerry through the pages of the Cork Examiner (now the Irish Examiner). Rhododendron flowering seasons nearly always saw excursions to the Vee and Mount Melleray in the Knockmealdown Mountains between Clogheen in County Tipperary and Cappoquin in County Waterford.
Continuing the scenic theme, my parents also appreciated mountain and coastal scenery. My mother especially enjoyed the latter, and it was the freshness of the Atlantic sea air that especially drew her. There were so many visits to Ballybunion in County Kerry that the place no longer appealed to me and might have inoculated me against seaside resorts for life! Other favoured seaside destinations included Beale, Banna and Ballyheigue on the same stretch of coastline as well as the likes of Kilkee, Lahinch and Spanish Point in County Clare.
Thinking back on it, it sounds that my parents enjoyed much of what is branded now as the Wild Atlantic Way. In fact, I reckon that there was not much of Ireland's western seaboard that they had not savoured. Donegal stands out in my mind, as well as Sligo and maybe north Mayo too. Definitely, their travels have West Cork, Kerry and Clare well covered and there were a few days spent around Connemara too, nearly twenty years ago. Car touring was their way rather than country walking, though, and they thought of their excursions as going for drives and these often were leisurely too, the often narrow roads that were travelled saw to that. Doring Kindersley's Back Roads Ireland (from their Eyewitness Travel series) would echo what my parents enjoyed doing.
On some of these, they would bring us along and there would be many miles covered between the two milking times in the day. One was around 180 miles and took us all around the Beara Peninsula, with a scary moment when it looked as if there was no road and that all that was ahead was the sea. Even though it was a sunny summer day, the sight gave pause for thought until we saw the road go around to the left and lose height as it did so. Going slow around there certainly paid its dividends. Another memory from such an escapade was dropping down into the Black Valley and the Gap of Dunloe on a gravel track in an ordinary family saloon, a four-door Nissan Sunny. The places that they took their cars would surprise you, and there was a story about the way into a waterfall on of their multi-day trips away; the road was well rough and my father proceeded without due regard to the underside of the car and got away with it. It may have been Glen Inchaquin near Kenmare, but I cannot be more definite than that.
The east coast of Ireland did not get overlooked either, for they honeymooned around Bray in County Wicklow. Thirty years later, they reprised that trip and went to Glendalough and other spots too. The full details escape me at this stage, but their love of scenery certainly excluded very few parts of Ireland. Another trip away took them down to Ireland's south-eastern corner, though it was not as sunny as its reputation suggests when they were there. There was one story about an experience in a guest house when trying to open a window for fresh air at my mother's insistence resulted in the thing falling out on my father. It was dodgy anyway and hit no one, as they discovered the next morning. Many a B&B say was secured at the end of a day's touring, and they were fortunate that accommodation providers at any fully booked establishments rang around to sort them out for that night. That is something on which I never would attempt myself now, even if I did take such a spur of the moment approach with hostels on my first visit to the Isle of Skye. It makes me shudder a little even now.
All of these visits to scenic areas rubbed off on me and actually inspired me to visit the Scottish Highlands in the first place. Even so, I followed a very different approach with more cycling and walking with hardly any motorised touring at all. Nevertheless, all that exploring of Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man never would have happened if visits to Kerry and West Cork with my parents had not stirred up something in me and my mother encouraged it in her own small way by asking if I had gone anywhere during a preceding weekend. Without my various excursions, there would be anything for this blog or even for this website, and that is one of the priceless things that they have left me. My curiosity for seeing new places or new sides to old haunts still remains with me. There are parts of Ireland that they visited where I have yet to go and there is armchair wandering beyond the shores of Britain and Ireland too, with the Faroe Islands and the Alps arousing enough interest for me to survey guidebooks because I realise how little I know of such places. Whether I actually get to these places is another matter, but my current hunting grounds have much to delight me, so I have no plan to desert those either. The two people who inspired all this may be with us no longer, yet their wanderlust has not gone with them. It is difficult to see them wanting to be very much different.
Released?
9th February 2015 As anyone with elderly parents should know, life can be a roller coaster ride when their health declines. It certainly has felt that way over the last few years for my family and me. However, escaping out into the countryside has helped in its own way when dealing with life's rougher moments. Getting through December 2012 certainly called for those head clearing escapes, be they into Tatton Park near Knutsford in Cheshire or along Irish country lanes. Both of my parents were frail then, with my mother having been shaken up by a hospital visit and my father's strength in free fall since the summer. By Christmas, he really needed to be in a nursing home but mentioning the subject only resulted in angry exchanges. It took a brush with death due to a kidney infection for the matter to be forced and the issue to get resolved as it needed to be. He still was not intent on staying where he had to be, and it was a nice place too, so no one could relax and a walk along the Macclesfield Canal between Congleton and Macclesfield as well as a shorter stroll around Buxton were well needed.
What really changed everything was my mother's passing away not so long before what would have been her eighty-first birthday and the loss was a raw one that not only resulted in next to daily evening walks by the River Bollin but also had me venturing further afield is search of a spot of solace. April 2013 saw me make two trips to Derbyshire; the area was to see me more than any other in that year. The of those April visits had me encountering banks of snow left over from a late winter as I hiked from Hayfield to Glossop, rounding Kinder Scout from below as I did so. The weather was much milder later in the month when I embarked on a circular yomp from Bakewell that took in both Ashford-in-the-Water and Monsal Dale. These were followed in June by a walk from Bamford to Edale that took in the southern edge of the Kinder Scout plateau and a walk from Monyash to Bakewell via Lathkill Dale. That last big walk of the year had me passing swollen rivers too; it had been a month of heavy rain and much flooding. A July escape to Fort William that took in Glen Coe and Glenfinnan could not have been more different with its sweltering temperatures and dry sunny weather. There also were sunlit walks from the Cat and Fiddle Inn back to my home that took in Shining Tor and Lamaload Reservoir. The first of these took me onto Rainow and Bollington, while I passed close to Shutlingsloe on the second.
The combination of the scare that began 2013 and the loss of our mother meant that I tended to be more precious about my father; I suspect that my brother probably felt the same. The sense that pervaded most of 2013 was that we could lose him sooner rather than later. It sounds churlish to say it now, but I started to wonder in the light of my father living longer than we might have expected if it was not before time to abandon any putting of my life on hold that there might have been. That does not imply that there was any sense of abandonment because, if anything, my visits to Ireland became more frequent. For much of 2014, I crossed the Irish Sea on a monthly basis.
In between those, though, I began to get out and about again; last summer saw me make three visits to the Lake District. The first was to Buttermere when I crossed the top of Haystacks, while the second facilitated a walk from Patterdale to Grasmere that went over the top of St. Sunday Crag and the last revisited Orrest Head and Loughrigg Fell. January and November saw me spend time around Llantysilio Mountain near Llangollen. Of these, the first trip enjoyed bright sunshine all day and the weather disintegrating to spells of rain while I was up high during the second. That makes an excuse for another return sometime, though I did get more than a little compensation from spending some time by the Mawddach estuary near Barmouth the next day. There were more Welsh visits though: a summer solstice one that visited Ysgyryd Fawr and Sugar Loaf near Abergavenny and a September retracing of steps between Rhossili and Port-Eynon in glorious weather. Yorkshire too saw a visit before the Tour de France did: that took in Pateley Bridge and Brimham Rocks in Nidderdale on a largely grey day. Northumberland was paid a visit during October, with the delights of the coastline around Bamburgh being sampled on a day that felt more like it belonged to summer. Local trots around Macclesfield were not neglected either; Alderley Edge and Hare Hill got two visits. A pesky Jack Russell terrier took a set on my left leg the first time around so a hospital visit was advised and no such intrusion was experienced the second time around, though I could have done with more sun.
There was more to my normalisation; a bike trainer was put to good use to see if my fitness could be bettered. The second half of 2014 also had my father see a good run of health that lasted until last month. Though there was a smaller scare in February 2014, things steadied after that. Still, he was growing weaker as I found during last Christmas and I returned to Britain before New Year sensing that we might be on the cusp of a big change of some sort. In fact, I also wondered to myself how he would fare if he caught an infection. That question was about to get an answer only weeks later. A heavy chest infection was to confine him to bed after a traumatic experience when the nursing home thought him strong enough to sit up in a chair for a while. With that in mind, I made what, I thought, was a flying weekend visit in case there were to any further developments. Much of Saturday was spent with him; my brother came later than I did. When we left, he was comfortable enough for us to think that a peaceful night was in store. When that changed after midnight, we dashed to the home. By the time that we got there, he had breathed his last only moments before. While some would find that heartbreaking, the final peace is what I recall. That his suffering had ended was more important than we might have felt.
A word said during one of the many conversations we had with others over the ensuing days remains with me: release. My brother and I felt it while nearby neighbours were stunned by our father's departure; they surely felt it more than we did; some were crying on the phone to us. There may be another factor: we both had our homes and our lives, while they see breakage in a continuity that they held dear. Also, the period with our father allowed us to come to terms with where things were going and have a partial glimpse of where things would go after he went. Of course, there are ups and downs as well as twists and turns of which we know nothing yet. The turbulence within me after my mother's passing has not come after my father's and there are times when I wonder why, though that is not to see that there was no weeping or no jabs of the heartstrings. Maybe it's that sense of release again.
Though there are matters that need attending yet, my mind also is starting to explore possibilities too. Visits to Ireland are sure to continue, albeit not at the same frequency and certainly not with the same purposes as before, though you hardly can abandon your relatives or former neighbours. There may be opportunities to visit places in Connemara, Mayo, Donegal or Wicklow that I have yet to see. That would be continuing something that they did after their own parents were deceased, when there were many trips to Kerry and West Cork. Some of those gave me the love of hill country scenery that has taken me around so much of Britain and the Isle of Man. Over the past weekend, I was strolling around old haunts in Edinburgh like Blackford Hill, Bruntsfield Links and The Meadows before crossing over to newer haunts like Dean Village and Edinburgh's Botanic Gardens. Except for the occasional incursion of rogue clouds, there was enough sun shining on me throughout to inspire ruminations on the possibility of spending a week in the city sometime. Even in a place like Edinburgh, there was much opportunity to wander down memory lane (I graduated from one of the city's universities) and have time and space to yourself if you needed it. Nearer destinations will remain attractive in a new life situation.
Speaking of memories, there is one that returns to my mind when I mention Edinburgh, since I gained a research degree in a science subject while there. My parents were hoping that I would find a job in Ireland afterwards, only for the world of science to be an international one, especially if you fancy a career in academic research. Some of my contemporaries gained post-doctoral jobs in the U.S. and that option did appeal to me not a little. The phrase "seeing the world" came to my notice and sharing it while on a trip back to Ireland must have tugged rather too strongly on parental heartstrings, for I was asked to leave such designs until after they were gone. Now that youthful naivety has been displaced by realism, I now am amazed at the sorts of thoughts that went through my mind back then, especially when after experiencing more of the delights of Britain and Ireland.
Even so, that is not to imply that I am not tempted by foreign destinations. Since the likes of the mountains of Canada or New Zealand or the American Rockies may be a step too far, other spots in Europe have a certain allure. For instance, business trips to Sweden appear to have cultivated a soft spot for Scandinavian destinations such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark or Iceland. There are areas of hilly and mountainous country in three of those. Any juxtaposition of mountain and coast is a stunning combination, too, as many photos of Norwegian fjords will evince. That brings its own reminder of the Faroe Islands; their compactness could help any explorations. Going there would build on a 2008 escapade that to Scotland's Western Isles and the islands of Orkney and Shetland have not missed my attention either. To return to the continental European theme, though, you cannot overlook the Alps or the Pyrenees, either. Yet, even they are but some of the mountainous regions on the continent that get mentioned in walking magazines from time to time.
None of this means that responsibilities are about to be overlooked. Sometimes, it does feel that you can make new obstacles for yourself, too. The ones that appear of their own accord are enough for anyone; life after my parents will bring its ups and downs soon enough. In between, pondering those other destinations may bring its own comfort, while realising that short visits only uncover so much. After all, I lived in Edinburgh for over four years and still have parts of it to see anew, along with those nooks and crannies that I continue to revisit. As ever, only time will reveal what comes to pass and what adventures may be had yet.
Thoughts of Killarney
11th November 2014 Earlier in the year, I was surprised to see a book on Killarney National Park featured in an issue of Outdoor Photography. It was Norman McCloskey's Parklight. Though some of the images chosen by the magazine were not entirely to my taste, I still ordered a copy of the book for my inspection and there are photos in there that are more to my taste so it was a delightful acquisition. Deservedly, it got airtime on RTÉ Radio 1 in the home country of it's Limerick born author so I hope it has had an audience for the gems found between its covers.
In fact, it brought back memories of day trips to Killarney made with my parents when they still were able to do such things. the last of these was on a scorching Sunday near the end of May in 2010. That had us revisiting delights such as Moll's Gap, Lady's View, Muckross Park and other familiar haunts. Looking back on it now, it was fortunate that the day came that the course that life has taken since then meant that such things are less thinkable than they were in those days.
During two decades of visits, there were a multitude of visits to the aforementioned spots but that was not all. There was a mad car ride (in the family Nissan Sunny no less!) on the gravel track through the Black Valley and the Gap of Dunloe in the heel of an evening while the jarveys were calling it a day. That was not all there was on that day for it was a long drive that was undertaken and cows needed milking after we got home. We celebrated our parents' fortieth wedding anniversary with a boat trip on Lough Leane that started and ended at Ross Castle; the golden wedding anniversary sadly was beset by my father's ever increasing frailty. Torc Waterfall was visited of a greyer and damper day but was none the worse for that and there have been many, many more.
Nowadays, gallivanting as far as Killarney or other beauty spots in Ireland's south western corner have to be put on hold but McCloskey's book got me dreaming a little of the hospitalities offered by a short hotel stay in the town. Ross Castle and Muckross Park are near at hand so old haunts could be retraced. Not having to worry about the patience of a parent not so interested in walking would be liberating too so trots as far as the Meeting of the Waters. Passing Torc Waterfall to follow the Kerry Way out around Torc Mountain and others surrounding it, such as Mangerton. Of course, there would be more than this near Ireland's highest mountains, MacGillycuddy's Reeks. For now, these are dreams in search of an opportunity but no one has excursions without there being ideas beforehand so that never is a bad situation.
News of Walking World Ireland
10th November 2014 Everyone can have a hiatus and there has been a long one on here for entries like this one. In my case, it is not as if I have been away from hillwalking. As it happens, I have had more trouble motivating myself to write stuff on here than getting out among hills and there is a growing list of Trip Reports to Come too. What has happened is that procrastination has got in the way of my getting those additional outings shared and it gets worse as the list grows longer. In addition, an old bike of mine has found its way onto rollers in an effort to increase fitness and reduce flab. The former has been a success so far and the latter needs more in the way of effort so the bike trainer will not be left to gather dust like another road bike that I acquired in April but that was taken out on a short cycle between Macclesfield and Buxton yesterday.
The inspiration for this post though is an email that I unexpectedly received from the publisher and editor of a walking magazine that I thought was defunct: Walking World Ireland. My impressions led me to join Mountaineering Ireland to received its journal, Irish Mountain Log, as a substitute. However plans are afoot to get Walking World Ireland back on newsagent shelves again, albeit under a new guise of Mountain World Ireland. Here is the text of that email:
An apology and announcement to readers of Walking World Ireland
From November 28th:
Walking World Ireland will become Mountain World Ireland
As a subscriber to Walking World Ireland, you'll have noticed that the magazine has not been published for almost a year now - since the 2014 Annual.
As editor and publisher I want to apologise sincerely for this. We value every reader very highly, and it was only after a prolonged period of business difficulties that the decision to suspend publication was made. Since that moment it has been my clear hope and intention to return WWI to the shelves as soon as possible.
The reason I'm contacting you today is to let you know that the magazine is indeed making a comeback. I'm delighted to be able to say that, and I hope it will also come as good news to you.
From next month, Walking World Ireland will resume publication as Mountain World Ireland. It's a small change, reflecting a slight but exciting change in emphasis - largely the result of the countless conversations I've had with readers over recent months.
Mountain World Ireland will remain at its core a hillwalking magazine, celebrating, as ever, the beauty of Ireland's mountain landscapes and the pleasures and challenges they offer. But more, it will celebrate the wider world of mountain sports - the people and activities that inspire us as lovers of high places.
I hope and trust that this rebirth will meet with your approval, and will continue to inform, entertain and inspire you as WWI did. I want to thank all of you for the patience you have shown, and for the many, many expressions of support we have received from readers and subscribers. I hope to hear from you again with any comments you may have on our future direction. Anything, in fact, that you have to say.
Finally, I want to assure all of you with unfulfilled subscriptions that we will honour all our outstanding commitments, and if you're unsure where your subscription stands, do contact me at [email protected] or on +353 (0)86 805 4590.
Sincerely
Conor O’Hagan
Editor
Copyright © 2014 Mountain World Ireland, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you have previously subscribed to Walking World Ireland
Our mailing address is:
Mountain World Ireland
10 Kickham Road
Kilmainham
Dublin,
Ireland
Some of the sentiments sound familiar so I will wait and see what becomes of these plans. An improving economic situation may help the new venture so I wish it well while intending to savour what is on offer. If anything, the WWI offer had gone a little repetitive so a refresh was needed anyway and a break often can make for a good reboot as has been seen with many a movie franchise. My Irish travel horizons may have been narrowed by life events over there in recent years but there may be a chance to do some explorations of my own yet.
As for the future of this outpost, I hope to get more trip reports shared and the summers of 2013 and 2014 came good enough to lure me out and about on welcome and much needed escapades. Usual haunts like the Scottish Highlands, the Lake District and the Peak District saw incursions along the Gower, Monmouthshire, Yorkshire and Northumberland. The perceived need for better photos drove quite a lot of these and the Lake District photo album is being rebuilt at the moment too. Also, there may have been visits to other places too and there are musings that I wish to mull over on here too once procrastination has been banished.
