We hiked to the peak of the tallest mountain in Ireland: Carrauntoohil. This was an hour’s drive away, but we think it took us more like 1.5 hours, as the roads were mostly small on the route we took, and our inability to even remotely approach the posted speed limit was in play (even the locals don’t seem to come close to the 80 km/h posted limit on some of these roads).
The hike itself was 7.2 miles, which is totally reasonable, but with 3,000’ of elevation gain, most of which occurs in the last 1.5 miles before the peak. That had ~1/3 of its gain going up waterfalls that doubled as the constant runoff routes from the surrounding mountains. So, lots of picking our way up through wet rocks, which was technically challenging, physically taxing, and fun. After that climb, the rest of the climb was pretty steep, and we were doing it on pretty spent legs. But, the weather was nice all day, and we had a clear view all around at the top of the mountain. Walking down was almost as harrowing (the general muscle fatigue from the previous few days and the mountain ascent both contributed to that), but also fun. Tim logged 30,000 steps on his Fitbit which is… a lot (20,000 is a lot; 10-12K is normal if he’s given multiple dogs walks and/or if he’s gone for a run).
Once we got back to Kenmare, we showered, put on some laundry, and then headed over to check out the Kenmare pier, which juts out into Kenmare Bay and has pretty amazing views of the bay looking out to the North Atlantic, as well as the Kenmare bridge. The bridge is something of an oddity, in that it looks like a small suspension bridge from the distance, but both the “steel” arches and the cables are…concrete. We drove over and walked across that, too, to get a closer look.
Dinner was at The Coachman’s, which is where we had picked up our key for the AirBnB when we had arrived in town. The live music (3rd straight night with live music at the restaurant) was a lady on keyboard backing up a gentleman playing the crap out of a piano accordion and singing. He…was good. After his break, he actually had a kid “from Boston” who was clearly in town with his family join him onstage with a clarinet (the accordion player had to ask him what the name of the instrument was). That could have been terrible…but it was pretty impressive. The kid (seemed to be mid- to late- teens?) went to town jamming with them on some extended songs. Benton’s convinced he’s a student at Berklee, since he was from Boston.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: the Carrauntoohil climbs and descents; the live music, including the kid with the clarinet sitting in
Tim: the Carrauntoohil climbs and descents; Benton’s increasing comfort with the narrow roads; Benton getting called into service for some boat work by a local at the Kenmare pier
