Outdoor Discoveries

Some Irish hiking titbits

In the middle of the first decade of the century, blogging was an activity that felt new and novel. Thus, walking, hiking, backpacking and other outdoor activity blogs felt likewise and I did mention other blogs on here in those early days. That has lapsed but some reading about Irish outdoor activities stoked it up again.

It was perusing an Irish adventure guidebook that had lain unread for more than two years that caused the perhaps momentary restart. Hiking and walking are my main interests but the book also included others like swimming, diving, snorkelling, surfing, caving and climbing. It also promoted responsible enjoyment of nature’s delights so it perhaps was not a surprise to have mentions given to Leave No Trace Ireland with its Seven Principles and Invasive Species Ireland.

There are very good reasons for highlighting the need to respect the countryside when legal access is so limited that there is much dependence on the permissive kind and goodwill can be lost so easily by a spot of carelessness. It is a theme that recurs in reports on the Mountain Views website where many a hill outing gets documented. It is not just the likes of James Forest who visit Irish hilltops.

Of course, not everyone is bound for a summit so initiatives that have given us the National Waymarked Trails or Loop Walks more than retain their importance. Satisfyingly, there is about 4,000 km of walking covered by the former of these and someone set to walking all of them and that story gets told on the Tough Soles blog. However, this was not what brought it to my attention but rather the maps that are shared on there. Completing the lot is quite a feat and others might be inspired to do the same and make Ireland even more of a walking destination. Anything that drives enhancement of facilities has to be a good thing.

Trip reports often get accompanied by photos and that is very true of my own offerings. What is more unusual is when artwork like sketching or painting is used instead as is the case on the Hikelines blog. Initially, this featured a lot of longer hikes in Ireland but a knee injury sadly changed that. Even so, the shorter strolls still suffice for adding those alluring handcrafted images and new posts retain the same amount of interest.

Even now, my own incursions remain more limited than anything mentioned above so there remains more scope for advancement beyond what I did in the counties of Clare and Galway during August 2018. For this, the prospect of an extended weekend in Killarney appeals when there is so much near at hand there. For that, the Killarney Shuttle Bus may or may not have a use depending on its intent though I have seen it mentioned in the book described near the start of this entry. If not, longer self-devised circular walking routes would support any desired exploring like they have done for me in other places.

Another thought arose while writing these words: using previously visited places as launchpads for exploring new locations. Dursey Island in West Cork or the Blasket Islands near Dingle are examples that come to mind and small offshore islands do have much to offer a seeker of wider adventure. The Irish mainland does some of that too and I even get to thinking about counties where I never have set foot; Down, Donegal or Sligo are just three of these with hills that await attention.

What gets in the way of seeing all this is a wider wanderlust that is cause of my reading guidebooks while surveying other prospective holiday destinations. That will continue and it is premature to talk of these possibilities and the ones that might have come to my notice during the Adventure Travel Show that I went to see last weekend. Some plans are best described when they have happened and, in marked contrast to my Irish ruminations, that will remain my approach to these other putative designs.

So many destinations

It used not be the case that my mind went went roving the world when compiling lists of places to go. Then, I limited myself to Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man but 2015 changed all that. International possibilities not only became realistic but even became a necessity during times of work dissatisfaction and domestic political tumult before the latter began to feel international in its own way.

Even so, overseas journeying has not stopped with Canada becoming the latest country that I have got to visiting. Others like the U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Chile also are tempting though I may need to temper such thoughts given how far away Seattle, Portland, Tasmania and Patagonia actually. To get that far afield needs a little stability in my working life and there may be some big changes ahead of me.

Even within Britain and Ireland, I need to exercise control for Donegal, Kerry, the Ochill Hills and numerous other places all call in their own way. It is when the list grows so large that the limits of human capabilities and lifespan start to dawn on you. It is then that you get to wishing that books of things to do or places to visit refrained to mentioning human mortality in their titles. After all, who can do 1001 different hikes in their lifetime when other matters need more attention?

There are some whose lives are focussed around such things but, aside from being obsessive, all this needs to take is place among other priorities. A recent career break had me assessing just those because we all need fulfiling work lives without depending solely on pleasurable experiences to keep us going. Thinking back to 2016 and 2017, I know all about the futility of just that.

Satisfaction is what lasts even if it does not feel entirely like fun at the time. That was the driver for my recent trip to Vancouver though I got a lot of enjoyment too. The same needs to apply to working for a living and that will be in my mind over the next few years while I may need to allow appealing thoughts of visiting far flung parts of the world drift away from me so I can deal with more important matters while still exploring what surrounds me.

Echoes of repetition

There are times when trip ideas get re-used. The unseasonal sunny weather that dominated the second week of February became a backdrop to some of this. Firstly, it lured me up to Great Ayton for a day spent around Roseberry Topping, Highcliffe Nab and Easby Moor. This was a variation of a route enjoyed more than a year earlier when snow and ice were dominant. Then, the ground conditions added a need for extra care that probably should have precluded an ascent of Roseberry Topping that was facilitated far better in conditions more typical of late spring or early summer.

A few days later, I was drawn to Earl Sterndale for a walk that took in the tops of both Parkhouse Hill and Chrome Hill. The latter was more friendly to those whose tolerance of exposure is more limited. Some might go up and over the former but I did an out and back trip to its summit before kinder gradients were descended in a northward direction. In the autumn of 2017, I had passed both on the way from Sterndale Moor to Buxton but avoided their summits on that equally pleasant sunny day.

Sometimes, there are stronger patterns of repetition there is one shared between 2010 and 2017. Both featured trips to Sweden and Aberdeenshire as well as marking the start and end of my time with a single employer. Because of the changeover in employment arrangements, the destination pairing has a certain eerie resonance for me.

Neither the Swedish or Aberdeen trips were my first to either place but it took a third visit to the former for more of a leisure focus to show itself. September 1997 saw my first visit to Aberdeen and that was for a scientific congress while business was the main motivation for those first two trips to Sweden. Even so, there opportunities for personal exploration offer themselves too because conferences cannot occupy you for all their duration and long sunny Swedish summer evenings made for pleasant strolling around both Södertälje and Stockholm.

The 2010 sojourn in Aberdeen allowed for more city strolling and a visit to Braemar only months after starting a new job. There was no mountain walking in 2017 but Stonehaven, Dunnottar Castle, Banchory, Crathes Castle and the Deeside Way more than occupied the time not spent on city wanderings. In fact, the idea of doing some castle visiting was a seed sown during the previous trip. That it preceded my leaving the company that I joined in 2017 by a matter of months made it a kind of a bookend to my time there.

One of the motivations for heading to Aberdeen for the 2017 Spring Bank Holiday weekend was as a means of dealing with the fact that I no longer enjoyed working where I was. Together with a second trip to Norway, it was intended to salve the lack of enthusiasm that I had for what I was doing but it was not to be a long term strategy so I made the difficult decision to leave my then employer and take a career break while I worked through the aftermath of a number of life events as well as working out what my future career direction might be.

It was after starting the career break, that I then headed to Stockholm for an extended weekend stay. My previous time in Sweden preceded a departure from a then current employer and information transfer was its purpose. Only weeks later, I was going to start with the employer that I left in 2017 so there was a curious symmetry about my actions. Naturally, city explorations were to follow with even Gothenburg receiving a fleeting visit. Tyresta National Park became the starting point for the longest hike that I enjoyed while in the country. The whole experience was vastly more restive than the preceding months and it would take more than a year before I started to explore places beyond British and Irish shores.

If I have my way, such juxtapositions as pairings of trip destinations and career changes may not be repeated in the future. Though there are other places to see and experience, I also hope to continue my Scottish and Scandinavian encounters. My choice would be that they do not need career upheavals to make them happen because we need to keep making more happy memories to get us through times that are more testing.

Travel shows

For me, a rural Irish upbringing brought with it participation in agricultural shows and other country events. Trade stands were manned, cows got lead around show rings and vintage fairs got stewarded. The last of these became the cause of getting sunburnt; being indoors studying for so much of the year ensured that young bare skin remained unseasoned.

Though these contained hints of the agrarian about them, there were other hints that my future mainly lay outside of farming. When helping with trade stands promoting the advantages of Jersey or Simmental cattle, I was not the one doing the selling. Aside from my not having a salesperson’s bone in me, I simply did not know enough about animal husbandry to do any promotion and stuck to simpler tasks like keeping videos playing or giving out stickers to anyone who wanted them. Even back then, I knew my strengths.

More recently, industry conferences came into my life even if I am more likely to read their published papers rather than being there to watch them being presented to fellow colleagues. As it happens, that is something that I would like to address later this year should circumstances allow. These are busy events with a certain social aspect and have so many presentations that one hardly needs to go around stands; also, there can be good reason not to do so if you are not looking to switch job or buy some software tool.

The cause of all the above entering my mind is more leisure-focussed: a single weekend in January was occupied by my going to two travel shows. The first was the Adventure Travel Show in the London Olympia and the second was Destinations at Manchester’s EventyCity. The latter was the northern counterpart of the London version of the same show that took place two weeks later. Attending the southern counterpart may have been tempting but there is only so much that can be gained by going to the same show twice.

Having gone to the Photography Show in March of last year and gained so much, I was not surprised by the mix of talks and trade stands on offer at both of January’s travels shows. My having been at the 2018 event only made me more courageous that I once would have been. Stand holders prove not to be that much more pro-active than those encountered at the agricultural shows of my younger days. Being able to look before asking any questions has its appeal.

Picking up brochures is part of many a show and I had a hobby of doing such things at agricultural shows though stand holders much preferred them to end up in the hands of prospective customers than mere youngsters. Though never that interested in motor cars, my brother did get to an Irish motor show in 1986 and an ensuing, and much prized, bounty of brochures found its way to me. A residual interest in cars may persist but it is better these days by more active pursuits like travel, photography and the main subject of this blog.

This year’s travel shows also caused my to collect a bounty of brochures, especially at the Destinations show. It might have been that there was more to pick up but I also wondered if I was overdoing things are the relative restraint of the Adventure Travel Show. Still, there was overlap between with activity holidays being quite a mainstay. Walking, cycling and wildlife watching all featured with a certain more out of the way feel to the London event.

That certainly applies to the talks that took place there and, unlike the Photography Show, they all were free to attend. Featured destinations included Greenland, Patagonia, Spain and others and there were seminars too though I stayed away from those because of their time commitments when there were so many stands to browse with a range extending from tourist agencies to travel magazines with plenty of tour operators in attendance. Choosing to return home at a reasonable hour also meant missing out on a film night but enough was gained without that.

There was less in the way of audiovisual information at the Manchester event though it did feature cookery demonstrations and talks on travel health matters such as avoiding overseas infections and infestations. Still, there were talks on visiting such diverse destinations as Sri Lanka and Canada for those who wished to rest weary legs for a while. Being there on the last day revealed something that I last met at those Irish events: there was a certain anticlimax as things drew towards a close, especially after lunch when a neighbouring camping and caravanning show also opened for attendees.

Naturally, both events featured eateries even if they were nowhere near as extensive as last year’s Photography Show. Getting to them involved its own lesson learning, especially the London event at the Olympia. Getting there from Macclesfield in the future will avoid use of the London Underground in favour of changing trains at Stoke-on-Trent and Milton Keynes to arrive at Kensington Olympia station on the national rail network. The Manchester event was easier to reach by public transport with a return train journey and bus journey combination easily facilitating the needful.

Having missed the events on previous years for one reason or another, it was good to get to them. While independent travel remains my preference, it was good to see what package tours are on offer and what tourism agencies have to say about what is possible in their respective countries. Those brochures need perusal while other thinking continues.

History

It appears that we are living in one of history’s more turbulent epochs and such is the drama that I have avoided reading very much history until now. The cause has been as much about the fear of reliving what is unnerving about our current times as the allure of other interests. However, I have relented and started on books that have awaited my attention for far too long.

Completing Tim Robinson’s Aran Island duology and his Connemara trilogy made me more open to Diarmaid Ferriter’s On the Edge, a modern history of Ireland’s offshore islands that was published towards the end of last year. When that proved eminently readable, I then started on the same author’s The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 and that will keep me going for a while before finishing two more from other authors would complete the same backlog.

History remains a subject to which I am more than partial with Christopher Clarke’s The Sleepwalkers, Norman Davies’ Vanished Kingdoms and Robert Kee’s The Green Flag all acting as staging posts on an ever continuing expansion of perspective. More may follow if I ever decide to look further into the stories of various other countries that I have explored in recent years and Switzerland comes to mind here.

That is not to say that other titles will not be perused during this run of historical reading but they are likely to lighten the mix. In any event, there is a pile of unread magazines that also needs reducing so that should help my idea collection to grow. At this time of year, it usually is opportune to think ahead to what excursions may be possible and North American ones are tempting options for this coming summer. What happens in reality still remains another matter though.

While it can be pleasant to allow your imagination to take flight, political and financial realities do help to ensure restraint. The acquisition of a new lens for my Canon EOS 5 Mark II and the rebuild of a five year old desktop PC involved such an investment that I am not so willing to expend too much more at the moment. Nevertheless, the new lens needs more testing so that adds incentive for an outing should more sunshine come our way. It is fine to dream but modest excursions do much for any overburdened spirit.