Ireland day 1091. Monday 23 September 2024- American Glendalough

Today’s summary	Drove down to Glendalough to meet up with some friends from Houston who were paying a flying visit to Ireland and wanted to do some hiking. We hiked the (modified) Spinc circuit and enjoyed fairly good weather- cool and grey but dry and not much wind. Walked down to the lower lough to look at St Kevin’s Monastic “city” afterwards.
Today’s weather	Overcast but apart from occasional light drizzle, mostly dry. Light northerly wind. Appx 15c

Today’s overview location (The green mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The orange 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): Spinc with American guests

Commentary

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

This week, some friends from Houston, Texas, are passing through Ireland, as part of a flying visited in between a trip to Scotland and returning home. They wanted to make the most of their couple of days in Dublin so today suggested we all met up and did a short hillwalk. We thought that sounded like an excellent idea, so arranged to rendezvous at Glendalough Upper Lough car park, to complete the Spinc circuit that I’ve recce’d a couple of times recently.

I’m pleased to report that everything went well today – and negotiating the Spinc diversion presented no problem at all. Indeed, as it was over seven years since we had last met, we had so much news to catch up on that we barely noticed the distance passing at all. Everyone seemed to enjoy the walk and even the weather co-operated. It was a bit grey and misty, but the views opened up reasonably well and it stayed dry.

As usual, there were plenty of deer hanging around the Van Diemen’s Land mine, and even a few mountain goats further down. I noticed that although the deer were, presumably, the same red-sika hybrids that were there a few weeks ago when I did the recce, they looked considerably darker brown coloured today. Perhaps they are growing their new winter coats now.

We paused at the lower mineworkings for a brief snack type lunch on the homeward leg, then returned down the loughside back to the car park and a very welcome cup of coffee from one of the caravans. As we were back in good time, we added on a stroll down to the lower lough to look at the ancient monastic city. Although it was busy, it wasn’t too over-run with tourists so it was quite a pleasant visit.

By the time we had walked back up to the cars, it was almost 5pm and a strategic decision was taken to quit while we were ahead, and return to Dublin in the daylight rather than heading into the pub for an early dinner.

Our return to Malahide was, as per most rush hour evenings on the M50, straightforward but slow. We rounded off the evening with oven-ready frozen fish and chips, while watching an interesting docu-drama about Amy Winehouse on the TV and then a quick phonecall to family in Canada. A very successful day all round, I’d say.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


With the group on the shores of the lower lough	Looking down Upper Glendalough from the mine

Wind blasted holly (I think) tree clinging on to the banks of the Glenealo river	Goats chomping their way through the hillside a little further down. You can just see the curved horns of a particularly large one, sitting, at the centre-right of the picture

St Kevin’s Church, in the monastic city. St Kevin was a very versatile man, as he also had a bus company and an ice-cream factory.	Thousand year old monastic tower in the City

Lots of deer (mostly stags, it looked like) up by the Van Diemen’s Land mine at the head of the valley