Outdoor Odysseys

Expansion

One activity that I have ongoing at the moment is an expansion of what has been the Cork city album in my online photo gallery. The cause of this is the increase in time around the place since 2022. Then, I spent part of an Irish break based in the city, though, in reality, I was travelling around back then. That took me to nearby Kinsale and Cobh as part of a single day’s explorations.

2024 has seen a major upsurge in the amount of time that I spent in the place. Thus, it is now time to include nearby spots like Blarney, Fota, Cobh and Crosshaven. Ballincollig Regional Park could cause that area to get represented, too. Thus far, the scenes do not look so dramatic, but there are more to come, so things could build out from where they are at the time of writing.

The West Cork album is another that could grow after the visits there during the last few years. Each of the main Atlantic peninsulas have seen my footfall this year, and there are reasons to return, like following the Beara Way from Castletownbere as far as Adrigole. The scenery has the drama to draw me back after a muddy, soggy hike from Adrigole to Glengarriff. Staying overnight in the latter when there is a glorious summer evening could be a special experience that cannot be overlooked. Other places like Kinsale or Drimoleague could lure me their way just yet. There are new photos to be added, and more may come for future escapades in the area.

While the Kerry album is large as things stand, there are more vistas to add to it. Repeat visits to Killarney increase the supply, as does explorations of the Dingle Peninsula in May and June 2022. Such is the quality of the county’s scenery, that it is virtually impossible not to get something from a visit to the place, especially when the weather is on your side.

The counties of Clare, Tipperary and Waterford could feature in a new and single album. The photos are there, and they show often overlooked gems in the Irish landscape, like what lies around Lough Derg and the Knockmealdown Mountains. All this is a far cry from things were when I began this online enterprise. For a long time, the Irish albums were the poor relation of their Scottish, English and even Welsh counterparts. That appears to be changing, so long as time is found to make the required additions.

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.