Ireland, Part I

In April 1999, I took a two-week trip to Ireland. I was living in London at the time. I came across the journal I kept from that trip while I was rummaging around in my old stuff recently. It's one of only two journals I've ever kept and now I'm wishing I'd kept more journals.

I started flipping through it and couldn't help but read it all the way through because it evoked so many vivid memories that even photographs couldn't match. I had such fun reliving the brief trip that I wondered if it could be at all interesting to a stranger reading it as well. Anyway, I'm posting it here in a series, exactly as I wrote it (so pardon the youthful nonsense).

I may post some pictures I also found, which I'll have to scan when I'm done studying for boards.

Friday, April 9

I arrived here in Dublin at 3 pm and checked into a hostel called Avalon House not far from St. Steven’s Green, both the hostel and park very nice indeed. Anyway, at a loss for what to do exactly, I walked all around Dublin and got to know the central area pretty well, with my map and Lonely Planet. I walked all around the Temple Bar area and saw some of Trinity College, but of course in one day I couldn’t see everything I’d wanted to. I was tired and went back to the hostel for the night.

Saturday, 10 April

I got up at 7 am intending to go to Newgrange. But I’d asked the night before and the hostel was full, so I thought I should secure some accomodation elsewhere first. Failing this, after three hours, I ended up at a less than helpful (but very hospitable and cheerful, mind you) student travel office (USIT: Union of Student Irish Travellers or something similar). I did learn that to get a day tour to Newgrange I would have to wait until Thursday. So that was out. I went to the bus station and asked there. No luck with Newgrange, but an idea hit me: I could just go to Glendalough! It’s in County Wicklow, and almost in the middle of nowhere so people don’t usually stay there overnight, and that meant that I might find accommodation. So, I found out where the bus left from and hurried there. I caught it by five minutes at 11:25 am (the next bus would’ve left at 6 pm).

At Glendalough (Gleann dé Loch; glen of the two lakes), there’s a monastic site, one of the best preserved in Ireland, founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century AD. It was very nice, but I still had the nagging thought of where I would sleep that night. I went to the Glendalough hostel and they were full. The lady there was really pleasant and told me that the hostel in the nearby village of Laragh was not full. She showed me the way and I was off for the 3 km walk up the road (there being no other transport) with my pack, after calling and booking a place just in case...

The Wicklow Way Hostel is a delightful little self-catering place, right next to the convenience store (and that’s about all there is in Laragh, aside from this one house that doubles as a tea and scones shop). A while after I had begun to settle in I left again for Glendalough for a better look with an eased mind. It was breathtaking as I walked past Lower Lake and sat down for some lunch on the bank of Upper Lake. The two were joined once. I had by this time figured out the what the deal was with the rain, essentially that the clouds move quickly overhead, raining on what they pass over, but keep moving. So, walking against the wind, in this case up the path away from the monastery towards the valley, I was able to avoid getting rained on for long, while everyone else was walking back, the cloud following them and raining on them the whole way. I tried to tell a few people but they seemed to distrust my theory and kept going, the cloud on their heels.

I was having lunch while it started to get a little bit cold as the day wore on. I headed back towards the road after a last look at the valley and mountains at either side. Back to Laragh. The distance walked on today was about 14 km (a little over 8 miles, maybe 9). At the hostel I met a newly arrived old Irish man (this hostel had no age restriction) named Jim. He’d walked all the way down from Enniskerry, a distance of 20 miles, that day, along the Wicklow Way, a path opened in 1982 by J. B. Malone, and was Ireland’s first long distance trail. It is about 130 km in total, and goes straight down the county, north to south, beginning and ending in the adjacent counties on either side, the northern one being Dublin. Anyway, another person had arrived in the hostel, a girl who was asking people about hiking along the Wicklow Way. Jim and others in the dorm offered to help out with her planning (which she really needed, since she’d only just heard about it), and a short while later they had pulled me into the conversation, lurking though I was on my upper-bunk bed in the corner reading. After going down to the pub for a meal, and a very jolly one to say the least (Jim really likes his alcohol), we went back up to get ready for bed. Jim went back down for a night cap (whiskey, double), and Melissa and I decided it would be best if neither one of us hiked alone, so we planned to head out together northward towards Dublin the next morning. I had been thinking about doing this, earlier in the day, while she had been thinking about going south to Glenmallure. But we couldn’t find any accommodation there. So we thought we’d go north and stop for the night at Knockcree, where there’s a hostel right off the Wicklow Way. We talked for a while longer, and I discovered that she’s from Fremont, goes to UCSD, and is spending a year abroad in Toulouse studying various world cultures.

To be continued.