Today we hiked Croagh Patrick. It is a mountain near Westport, Ireland that pilgrims hike in their barefeet each July. It is an extremely rocky and very rough 3 hour hike to the top. At the top is a small chapel. Wil wasn't feeling well so Loy, Christopher and myself started out. Loy went probably 1/4 of the way and decided to turn back. Christopher and I continued on. Poor Christopher he was very patient with me. I have been working out quite a bit and thought I was in fairly good condition but not so. It was so rough and so steep that I had to stop every 10-15 minutes to catch my breath. We got to a kind of sub-summit and the wind practically snatched my coat away as I tried to put it on. It was raining, cold and windy and I could see the next part was going to be very steep. The climbers in front of us looked to me like they were almost going straight up into fog and who knew what else. I decided to turn back but Christopher pressed onward. He said that it was worth it. I'll try and post some pictures of him at the top and maybe you can decide if you would have gone there.
When we got back down we had a cup of tea to warm him up and then headed to town to shop for an Irish woolen sweater for him and something linen for me. I bought a beautiful, too expensive and shouldn't have bought, handwoven Irish scarf but Christopher decided to try and find an Irish sweater at a thriftshop in Dublin. So we all got back into the car and headed up the coast to a pretty spot that Loy had seen a picture of. She didn't know what else was there but she thought the picture was pretty. Again Wil saw a brown sign but this time it had "a castle, a fish and a duck" so he thought that any sign with "a castle, a fish and a duck" would probably be worth investigating and he was right. We saw a tiny little castle and laughed about it and then pulled over to stretch our legs and look at the view. We promptly saw a seagull (our duck) pulling a crab (our fish) out the water to eat it so our side trip was complete. But wait, maybe we should drive on up the single car road and see what else is there. We did and we got to see a completely isolated "Big Sur"... no people, no homes, no businesses... it was beautiful. However, there were as usual, sheep. Big round sheep with tiny skinny legs that looked like any minute Wile E Coyote would come up and carry them away with the dutiful sheep dog not far behind. I got such a kick out of that image. Actually pretty much the whole trip whenever I saw sheep I couldn't get that image out of my mind. Back to my story. We again stopped at a Pub to use the bathroom and have a Guiness and again the Publican came up to chat. I think the Pub owners are brilliant marketers by finding the people they know aren't locals and making sure that their pub sticks out in the tourists mind. Back to my story take 2... We went on to have some dinner in Westport and then off to bed.
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