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Carrantuohill - Ireland's highest peak
This was a trip with my old walking chums from work - Martin Devlin, Jaswant Golan and Graham Hale. Being a native of the bog Martin had been wanting to climb Carrantuohill for some time, in order to add the highest Irish peak to his collection of English, Scottish and Welsh ones. He thought it would be a nice idea to tie it in with St Patricks Day. At this time Trisha was having chemotherapy following her operation for lung cancer and I was unsure if I'd be able to go on the trip as she'd need me to be there for her. When I asked Amber if she might be able to cover for me for a couple of days, however, she said yes at once and in the event she was allowed to work from our house so she didn't even need to take any time off work. I was very grateful for her help and the chance to have a short break and climb my first big hill since last August.
On Thursday 17th, St Patrick's Day, I got up early and Amber drove me to Stansted airport in Trisha's car. We got there by 5.30 and having met the others we caught the 7.30 Ryanair flight to Kerry. There we picked up the Budget Car hire car Graham had ordered, getting a free upgrade to an Opel Zafira as there were no Mondeos available, and drove to Killarney where we were booked in at the Castle Lodge Hotel. Jas and Graham had single rooms and I shared a twin room with Martin - my share was a fairly reasonable £86.60 for the 3 nights bed and breakfast. There was still lots of the day left so we joined the mob of locals and visitors watching the Killarney St Patrick's Day parade pass through the town centre. Brownie packs and local pipe bands mostly - fairly pedestrian stuff compared to the TV shots we saw of a parade somewhere else, Dublin or Wexford maybe, that featured a large number of giant cockroaches and a boot with a hat on (Wellington?).
We'd had an introductory Guinness in some dark pub and when the parade palled Jas and Graham went back to the hotel while I faffed about buying gifts. When I'd got what I wanted Martin and I set out back for the hotel only to find we couldn't find our way back. At that point we realised that neither of us knew the name of the hotel and our room keys were just labeled 'Room 26' without saying which hotel it was! It took a lot of walking about before we made it back. That evening we had a meal in a restaurant called 'Stonechat' - I had a sort of curry flavoured veg tagliatelli. Not brilliant. That was followed with a few Guinnesses, first in a standing-room-only music pub - very small - and then in a larger place called Donohue Arms Bar which seemed to be part of a building called Killarney Towers something. The bar was next to a night club called Scruffys. Graham went back to the hotel alone after a couple of drinks.
Friday was a fine day with some cloud about but mostly clear of the tops so we had a good view of McGillicuddy's Reeks as we drove West to the starting point, just before Lough Acoose. We parked and got kitted up (having to faff about a bit with a dodgy bootlace which wouldn't go through the eyelets of my boot; fortunately I had a spare with me though) then we set off up a steep concrete track called the Hydro Road, marked at its start by a Kerry Mountain Rescue Team notice.
Our plan was to do the complete horseshoe of Caher, Carantuohill and Beenkeragh, these being the third, first and second highest peaks in Ireland respectively. We began by slogging our way up the steep Hydro Road and where it finished, at Lough Eighter, we crossed over a very boggy level area then ascended the lower outlying slopes of Caher, following a path up a relentlessly steepish slope of short grass, stone and snow patches until we reached West Caher Top.
We didn't linger there but pressed right on to Caher itself, the summit of which was marked by a cairn somewhat smaller than the cairn on W. Caher Top. Then on we trekked across a sharp-edged connecting ridge to Carrantuohill itself, where a bare and rocky summit is crowned by a large iron cross, erected in 1950. It was about 15:00 by now and as I looked around it brought back memories of the last time I'd been there, back in 1996 when I climbed it with my daughter, Amber. Happy days.
From there we contemplated the continuance of the horseshoe to Beenkeregh. A party coming from that direction said it was OK, not too difficult and just the odd bit of scrambling, but when we looked at it ourselves the immediate stretch of descent looked steep, convex and narrow with a sprinkling of snow over it. It looked a bit dodgy and Jas lost no time in ruling himself out. He said he was happy to return alone, over the way we had come, but Graham offered to accompany him and in the end we all stuck together and turned back. I wasn't disappointed by this for it had looked a bit dodgy to me too. Back we went, retracing our steps over Caher and West Caher Top then back down the steep Hydro road to the car.
We had a meal and a couple of drinks in Killarney that night but nothing much. The next day we went back to Lough Acoose and had a short walk around it, just about 4 miles. The weather wasn't quite as good this time and there were a few spots of drizzle occasionally. It was a straightforward walk although the path was not clear in the last third of the route so we had to indulge in a bit of DIY yomping over slightly boggy terrain. Afterwards we called in at the nearby Climbers Inn - well it was a few miles away actually but there was a sign for it near the lough - and had a packet of crisps and a cup of tea.
There was pool table in the pub so we had a couple of games, me and Graham against Martin and Jas. We won the first game then on the second one they needed only the black ball to win. At that point Graham forgot that reds were our colour and went for the black instead, pocketing it and forfeiting the game! One all but we won the final game and I shall immodestly record that I pocketed the final black. 2:1 We returned to Killarney and napped for an hour then ventured forth into town. It was the day of the England-Ireland rugby match, due to start at 5.00, and we wanted to find a pub and watch it on TV. It was the Six Nations competition and having beaten everyone else England would achieve the 'Grand Slam' if they won today. Ireland were just playing for pride. There was some time till 5.00 yet though so while Martin was souvenir shopping I was rather hungry and went to a café for soup and a roll. I met Jas and Graham there and we all went on to the Donohue Arms bar again and got some seats near a TV plus a round of Guinesses. England proved to be totally awful, of course, much to the satisfaction of most people in the pub. They lost 24 : 8 and failed to achieve the Grand Slam but still won the Six Nations competition overall.
Because of the early start we had ended up sinking a fair bit of Guinness - about 6 pints I think. It was enough to make my memories of the evening rather vague but I did recall a rather strange encounter we had when leaving the pub (this was another pub, I think, one we'd just stepped in to see what it was like, no idea why). A girl, fairly drunk herself, stopped us in the doorway as we were leaving. She told us she was a lesbian and had been with her partner for 6 years, partner's name was Trisha. That's the same as my wife's name, I observed profoundly. I got a bemused smile and Martin got a kiss, probably because he wanted one, and then suddenly we were outside in the crisp, cold night air. Ho hum. We had an early start the next day, making do with cereal and toast for breakfast at 6.45. Got to the airport at 7.30, posted the car keys through the hire company's door then waited until about 8.15 before we could check in. No problems though and we flew home on time to be picked up by Amber driving Trisha's car. | ||||||||||||||||
