Contact — Penelope Janu

We had lovely walk along country lanes today, and then walked a long way along the beach. A very long way! 11km on one stretch of a surf beach, then we hiked along the grassy shoreline before stepping onto the sand again. There was surf on one side, a sheltered bay on the other, and plenty to admire (including a murmuration of swallows. The photo below doesn’t capture the rush of wings or remarkable synchronicity - I wish I could work out how to share a video to my website!

The walk today was long but flat. At the end of the hike, we enjoyed sitting in an excellent pub and emptying our water bottles before drinking a celebratory lager (and eating a well deserved cylinder of Pringles). My back was stiff, my feet were sore, but the kilometres were something to celebrate as we’d seen a lot of variation in the coastline in a relatively short period of time.

The Good

The landscape and birdlife were spectacular. When I looked up what the swallows had been up to in forming a swarm (I think mumeration or flocking are the correct terms) everything fell into place (and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds slipped further back into my subconscious). Birds might behave like this to escape predators, which I think was the case here as there were a number of big black birds in the vicinity (no ornithologists were present on the track so ‘big black birds’ is all I have). If all the swallows are diving and swooping very quickly, it’s more difficult for a predator to capture its prey. This was an event can came out of nowhere, and we were very grateful to see it!

The Bad

So … my achilles heel has always been my feet (thankfully, my ‘horse knee’ problems of the Scottish Highlands 2022 walk didn’t trouble me at all - possibly because I stayed away from Roman Roads and walked relatively sedately for the first few kilometres at the beginning of the day). Anyway, back to my feet. If it’s not toenails coming off, it’s toes swelling like tiny Michelin men (Michelin is a French tyre company, and their ‘mascot’ is a rotund figure made up of tyres). I’ll save my sensitive readers from images of my toes, but do share an image of my toes in my toe socks.

Being risk averse (and pain averse!) I try a lot of different things, but it seems the mere tap of my toes on the ground (7 hours a day, up and down hills and over all different surfaces) causes problems. Special bandaids. Soft linings. Two pairs of socks. Well worn boots (but not old boots). Praying to icons at the sides of the roads. Yada yada. I won’t shock you with my toes, but here they are this morning wearing only their toe socks! What is under the socks? By the end of each day, I imagine five lacerated stumps at the end of each foot, but I am always surprised it’s only swelling and blisters under toenails which (sometimes annoyingly) don’t look too bad. And besides thudding a little at night, they don’t trouble me too much until the end of the next day’s walk.

The Adventure

Much as the beach walking was fabulous, another adventure this year has been finding a pub for a cup of tea. The summer beach season only seems to go from May - September (at most) on the Dingle Way.

When we do find a pub on our walks, even if it is closed, it’s appropriate that WB Yeats comes to mind …

“Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth
I look at you, and I sigh”

A relatively short walk tomorrow - back to our earlier destination of Camp to complete our tour of the Dingle Way!