Ireland day 0948. Friday 03 May 2024- Tonelagee Camaderry Recce *

Ireland day 0948. Friday 03 May 2024- Tonelagee Camaderry Recce

Today’s summary	Val was working at the museum and I drove down to Wicklow to recce a Walking Club walk for a week on Saturday. We did a circular anti-clockwise loop from the Hero lead zinc mine taking in the Brockaghs, Tonelagee, Turlough Hill and Camaderry. Cold wet windy boggy and misty, but very enjoyable.
Today’s weather	Low cloud and thick mist with soaking drizzle all the time we were walking. Moderate northerly wind. Appx 11c

Today’s overview location (The red mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The red line shows where we walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Brockagh Tonelagee Turlough Camaderry recce

Commentary

(Summary blog only. Last full blog was Day 0368).

We haven’t been letting the grass grow under our feet since coming back from Scotland yesterday. Val was called in to do a shift at the museum, and I was down in Wicklow, recce-ing a route (which will be coming up on 11th May) for the walking club with a friend.

While Val was sorting out the model railway, I met up with my friend in Laragh then we drove up the Wicklow Gap road to the small car park by the Hero lead-zinc mine. Once booted up, we struck out more or less straight away across the pathless heathery slopes of the Brockaghs, until we reached the ridge about an hour later. It took us a further two hours from there to pick our way carefully through the peat bogs and then up to the summit of Tonelagee.

My experience with the weather on Tonelagee is that it is always cold, wet and windy, and today maintained that 100% record. So we paused only to take photos, then strode off hastily and made our way squelchily down to the Wicklow Gap.

We had hoped to stop there for lunch but the weather was no better even at the slightly lower altitude, and there was no shelter. So we kept going and picked up the hydro road to make a rapid ascent of Turlough hill. At the summit, at last, we found a sheltered gully for lunch. But we were cold and wet, so didn’t linger once sandwiches were eaten and hot coffee enjoyed.

The stretch out from there through the peat hags to Camaderry was relatively straightforward, and from the top it was an easy descent back to the mines. We just had to do a bit of careful navigation to make sure we branched off the main path, which leads back to Glendalough, at the right place. We could easily have ended up many miles away from where we wanted to be if we had been daydreaming.

We were back at the cars just before 6:30pm, after walking for seven and a half hours. It was quite tough going, which explains why we only covered 17km in all that time.

We said our farewells at that point, and I headed back to Dublin, this time taking the Hollywood-Blessington route after crossing the Wicklow Gap.

Val was back from work when I eventually made it to the flat, and had pulled together a delicious stir-fry. It was delicious and nutritious. Just what this hungry hiker needed!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Ruins of the old Hero lead-zinc mine	Mountain goat enthusiastically chomping his way through the spiny gorse bushes. Incredibly tough animal

Boggy ridge between the Brockaghs and Tonelagee	More peat hags – between Turlough Hill and Camaderry

Looking down into the Glendasan valley on the descent from Camaderry	View of the glen from the upper mine

Mysterious looking entrance to one of the abandoned lead mines. The opening was less than a metre high and it was filled with water. The working conditions don’t bear thinking about