Outdoor Odysseys

A case for division

In August 2022, I embarked on a longer break in Ireland without attending to any business matters over there. This became my annual summer getaway in the spirt of others that took me to Scotland, around Continental Europe and to North America. It also followed a longer stay centred in Galway during August 2018 that was accompanied by mixed weather as I explored parts of the counties of Clare and Galway.

Unlike the 2018 escapade, the 2022 counterpart was split between two bases because of cost consciousness. The first was Killarney, a place where I had long fancied spending more time. The day trips in April and June of the same year only whetted my appetite for such a venture. The resulting three-night stay and accompanying long days of traipsing gave much in the way of satisfaction, yet there are reasons for returning even at the time of writing these words.

The second was Cork city. Bantry, Whiddy Island, Kinsale and Cobh all featured, as did Clogheen and the Knockmealdown Mountains in County Tipperary. Temperatures were increasing all the while as I explored, reaching a crescendo at the end of the week before cooling down again. This was a contrast to the cooler weather around Killarney, with occasional wettings to remand me where I was.

These portions are so distinct that I am going to split the account of the trip in two. Since the accounts likely will be lengthy anyway, going about writing them in this way likely will make them more readable afterwards. Thus, I will bring to a close the relating of a trio of Irish excursions that set the scene for my traipsing this year.

Looking through the transport arrangements brought something home to me that I had not noticed before. My time in Killarney needed very little moving around: everything was near enough on my doorstep there. Thus, long days on foot either started from and/or ended at my accommodation; there was little need to go anywhere else. In Cork, I often left the city to visit other places. Shorelines were closer there than hills or mountains.

That contrast reminds me that my new base in Ireland needs supplementing with hotel stays in other places to make the most of what lies near them. While writing the account of a stay in Tralee, this really struck me; Dingle is not an easy day trip from Cork city when using public transport. Even West Cork is easier to savour with an accommodation base over there, and the same could be said for Galway, Mayo, Donegal and Wicklow. Much is nearby, and more is further away.

Filling in gaps and reorganising what became unwieldy

The travelogue has seen quite an amount of attention in the last few weeks. Firstly, a lot of content has been added or refreshed. Destination directories have become more informative articles, giving rise to new sections for Canada and the U.S.A. The former Alpine and Pyrenean article for Europe has been split up into its own section. Other sections have been renamed and many articles retitled.

The enabler for all this flurry of changes has been the advent of GenAI; it is now possible to automate a lot of the effort. It still needs human oversight and can be heavy work from time to time. As with human help, not every tool is as effective as one might like it to be. Getting to know such foibles is becoming essential for the world of work.

The gap filling also happened around here as well. Wherever there was a collation of websites, descriptions were added. In one case, a more narrative form was made from what was there; it is the outdoor pursuits inspiration piece that was progressed like that. In time, that may be the way that things go in other places, too. If you want to check what has happened, all the activity was in the resources section. The collations of long-distance trails and online retailers are among the beneficiaries.

While changes may have been dramatic thanks to new text processing technology, much remains unaltered. While the appearance may get attention sometime, that is not a priority for now. Trips remain human written anyway; the technology does not do all for us anyhow. You may have notes, but a machine can only do so much with them; it cannot carry over your personal touch that well or easily.

It all takes my back to university days, when a lecturer found regurgitated errors in someone else’s work. Then, the advice was to use the efforts of others for inspiration, not transcription. That remains ever more relevant in the times in which we now live. We need to learn how to use the new machines to help us, and that will be a longer process with its share of slips and trips before everything gets consolidated again.

Required: energy plus inspiration; unshackling that enables relocation

While every year of our lives can be unique, 2024 has been more unusual for me than others. The main cause has been the reorganisation of what I have in Ireland, selling some of what I hold while getting a new family base there. All this takes time, of course, and has meant that I spent more time in Ireland than has been the case for a long time. Some of that was used for the painful work of clearing out an old family home for sale. Now that effort is complete, my mind can turn to other things.

Spending more time in Ireland meant that I got to explore the place more than I ever did. There were numerous visits to parts of Kerry and West Cork, while Waterford, Limerick and Tipperary. Clare looked like being omitted until I journeyed through the county while on a day trip to Galway. All that rambling now means that I am a little short of ideas for Munster explorations, a situation in which I never thought I would find myself.

The location in Cork city also is a limitation. While the area is quiet, it also means that there is a thirty-minute bus journey to reach bus and train stations for onward travel beyond the city. In some ways, this takes me back to when I was living in Edinburgh. In those days, youth and novelty were sufficient to overcome some of the inertia that being outside a city centre can bring. It also reminds of how fortunate that ten to fifteen walk from my house to Macclesfield’s train station has been for various getaways.

Another thing about Cork that hit me during a week or so spent in Ireland during August 2022 was that any Irish hill country is further away. For that, you need the energy to get to Kerry, Waterford or even Tipperary. For a time during this autumn that was lacking, though things are picking up now. It appears that staying put somewhere for a while helps with building motivation.

In many ways, it is its coastline that marks out the county of Cork as exceptional. There are three main peninsulas, Mizen, Sheep’s Head and Beara, and I have got to some part of all of them. Add in Kinsale and there is a building exposure. Around Cork harbour, there is a lot too, though industrialisation dulls the appeal somewhat. In East Cork, there is Youghal and Ballycotton, the latter of which I have yet to visit for its clifftop walk; an infrequent bus service means that might be a full day trip unless inland travel on country lanes is part of a hike. A need to find more of what is nearby had me looking on AllTrails, though use generated content needs care and everyone needs to hike their own hike, not someone else’s one.

With time, a stay elsewhere in Ireland might be the solution. In a good way, Limerick is somewhat spoiled by its location with access to Kerry, Clare and Tipperary hills, not to mention Shannon lakes like Lough Derg. Galway and other spots in Ireland’s west and northwest have much to offer, and there also is Northern Ireland.

Your possessions can possess you; that might not be helping me with the new base in Cork. Slowly, but surely, I am starting to move beyond the that stage for letting go often is the only way forward. Places in the U.K. continue to beckon; Inverness was another prospect this year, with its potential as a jumping point for hikes around the shore of Loch Ness or further afield for a circuit near Achnasheen comes to mind too. North America again comes to mind as a reward for unshackling myself.

Before the financial transaction went through, I was free to explore several parts of Scotland and France, and did so. There was another session of house clearing before all that: decluttering my own base in the U.K. A lot has happened this year during a break for other paying work. That too needs a return.

Though there is a danger that it could be procrastination, especially at this time of year, much has been happening on the content side with this online outpost. Trips reports have been written that got me past both 2020 and 2021 into 2022. The mention of a certain pandemic will decline to near nothing in these, probably to the relief of some. 2021 was so dull that night walking may have been undertaken for the sake of the novelty that was absent, though it might have been a respite after 2020 brought the most challenging kind of upheaval. That night walking dallying has erupted again along the shores of Lough Mahon too, which makes me wonder if there is any resonance, and 2024 has not been that dull.

In the background, there has been dabbling with what new GenAI tools can do for this place; they help and can be hard work to get anything like what you need from them. They assisted the fleshing out of destination guides for Canada, Australia, the Canary Islands, Cinque Terre and Mallorca. The first of these became a major effort that likely needs splitting apart to produce a Canada section to the travelogue instead. There is another, handwritten, candidate for that treatment too: the Alpine and Pyrenean article that I compiled a while ago. There are other destination guides that I want to add for various U.S. western states, but that will be more gradual because other things need doing in my life.

The automation also helped to build up the long-distance trails article, as well as the one for additional outdoors inspiration. Numerous empty spaces are getting filled while I get to grips with the technology tsunami that is starting to affect us all in so many ways. It is neither as good as its promoters claim nor as bad as its detractors suggest. One thing is certain: it will be a step change, much like the way personal computing became pervasive thirty years ago.

This will be something to domesticate over time, and retaining our connection to the outdoors is never more crucial. Just like the internet nearly a generation ago, there is the risk of getting lost in a technology bubble with all that is happening. Getting outside in nature can be a counterpoint to all that is happening, for nothing what is perceived using our natural senses. Online experiences may be a way of limiting overtourism, yet we are tactile creatures who need that physical connection to wilder places.

That drew me out to Curraghbinny Woods not so long ago. The day was mild and sunny, and there were sunlit sights of what lay around the place, including nearby Crosshaven and more distant Cobh. No metaverse can replace that. Unshackling oneself to get to these and other places remains more necessary than ever.

More photos of North America

The North America section of the photo gallery now looks a little more substantial after adding an album for photos from last year’s trip to the San Francisco Bay Area. There already was one for those from 2019’s trip to British Columbia, and that looked a bit lonely on its own. It is not so easy to claim an interest in exploring another continent with only one substantive visit having happened.

While my appetite for North American explorations has been sated somewhat by those two trips, I cannot rule out the possibility of there being another this year. Seattle and Washington State both look tempting. A visit to Olympic National Park could be a possibility. However, as I know from my designs on Denver and Boulder in Colorado for the summer of 2020, anything could happen that stymies such schemes. Nothing has been planned yet, since I have a few things on my plate at the moment.

Jubilees

In Britain, last year saw a public jubilee being celebrated, though I took no part in that. This year marks some private ones of my own, but it is the silver jubilee of my own shamblings on the World Wide Web that I have in mind here. Things have come a long way since those tentative steps on the now defunct Geocities. Meanwhile, my interests in technology and transportation have found other homes to leave what you find here.

In the dying years of the last century, explorations of the sort that you find shared here only could be a pipe dream. Even photographic efforts were only tentative and involved a compact camera. SLR’s and hillwalking all lay in the future. Explorations of portions of English, Scottish, Welsh and Manx countryside could come only because of what I earned from a working life. These needed time to make them happen, too, and clement weather to make the experiences desirable.

It is only within the last ten years that I could have entertained notions of international travel that has taken me to various parts of Iceland, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Canada and France. Even a return to the Channel Islands to follow up on a school trip only happened this year. In the next few weeks, I hope to embark on another international escapade, the details of which I will share later.

The wanderings continue and photos keep coming. Since Easter, there have trips to Ireland, northwest Wales and highland Scotland. The last of these saw me spend some time around Aviemore taking Craigellachie National Nature Reserve, the top of Bynack Mór, Loch Morlich and Rothiemurchus. A tumble may have ruined a pair of trousers, but it pained me to leave the place with a week of sunny weather in train. The Welsh trip had no such drama and featured the top of Y Garn near the Ogwen Valley on a day of gathering heat.

The weather on the Irish trip was mixed, yet there were a few highlights that avoided the razzmatazz surrounding a coronation. A walk from Newcastle West to Abbeyfeale along the Limerick Greenway convinced me that it is best enjoyed as a cycling route. That exertion may have left me feeling the worst for wear, but that did not stop me heading to Clonmel for a circular hike taking in part of the Comeragh Mountains as well as a walk by the River Suir.

The threat of rain did not stop me spending a few hours around Ballybunion or Galway. There was a soaking at the former after a stroll along the Long Strand and a cliff top walk. That was while I was awaiting the bus back to Limerick, and I dried on the way back. The day improved in Galway and I got no wetting around Salthill, it somewhat pained me to leave sunny Eyre Square to return from there. Return visits to either place cannot be discounted, even though I have been scathing about the first of these; my parent’s chosen form of enjoyment was not mine, I need to say.

Stories of all the journeying over the decades would have stunned a young university student all those years ago, and there may be more yet. New locations continue to beckon to me, and old ones entice return visits. More of those may await and inspire more writing on here afterwards.