When I was young, I avoided it like the plague, much preferring to cycle or drive. Now, I can’t get enough of it; of its unique primaeval healing of the body and mind.
In these frustratingly uncertain times, it’s a wonderful escape route. This summer, I set out to impart this important knowledge to my grown-up locked-down children by convincing them to come with me on a four-day trek on the Beara Peninsula.
For our hike, conditions looked perfect: the first day was a breezy 15C, with just the lightest of rain and the thinnest layers of high cloud forecast thereafter. Such typically Irish mid-summer weather is well-suited to hiking. The lads — Mark and Colm, both now in their twenties — were looking forward to it. This was arguably their biggest adventure since their lives were shut down so suddenly in March 2020. They had decided to leave technology at home, swapping books for their mobile phones. I was bringing mine in the event of emergency, as well as for taking photos and tracking our walk.
The sun shone as my wife dropped the three of us off in Eyeries — a photogenic village close to the Kerry border. We hurriedly applied sun cream before tramping off enthusiastically. This was a part of the walk we had done before — a year before, in fact — but we found it tough. Many of the muscles that had propelled us up the steeper parts of the walk a year earlier without too much fuss seemed to have disintegrated, apparently unwilling to push this extra body weight up the side of a mountain when they had been ignored for so long.
Allihies Copper Mine Trail, Beara Way, Beara, Co Cork
That first hour or so felt miserable, to be honest. But then we looked back down towards the point where we started and it was so far away we couldn’t even see it anymore. Then I checked my fitness tracker and saw that we’d already covered nearly four km. We realised that our muscles did work; that our bodies were still capable of carrying themselves to anywhere they wanted to go, and that no amount of governmental edicts can quell your spirit. For me, the most depressing things about lockdown were the removal of hope and possibility in an open-ended, seemingly directionless plan. That feeling was vanquished by the simple act of walking.
Allihies, Slieve Miskish Mountains, Beara, Co Cork
The trail soon joined the old mining road that was built in the early 19th century to facilitate the transfer of copper ore from the mines at Allihies to the more sheltered harbour at Urhan for export. It’s a bit of a slog up the long stretch of unforgiving roadway after the softer stretches of meadow that precede it, but once you come over the brow, the sight of Allihies village and beach below is truly uplifting. We smiled as we descended, twisting past the silent remains of mine shafts and engine houses from a dark industrial age.
O'Neill's Bar and Restaurant, Allihies, Beara, Co Cork
Upon arrival in Allihies, we made straight for the post-hike paradise of O’Neill’s pub/restaurant; purveyors of superb pints and even superb-er food. We joined a lively crowd of holidaymakers and locals, eating and drinking outdoors as an unseasonably Arctic breeze blew through Allihies like the ghost of a copper miner.
The next morning, the last thing I felt like doing was going for another long walk. But the lads were already in the shop purchasing supplies for sandwiches and drinks. The healing had begun, it seemed to me. My youngest son Mark admitted that lockdown had left him somewhat hopeless and less motivated: “I realised that it wouldn’t last forever but it felt endless at times… the phone gives you anxiety and when you’re in a world with real social contact, you realise the full value of it,” he said. “Not seeing people — the isolation part of it — was the hardest because you can always pass the time with hobbies,” his older brother Colm said. “Seeing people outside, eating, drinking and talking was really good.” And so, our canteens full of water, we trekked off that second morning in cold grey air.
The trail from Allihies to Castletownbere is a circuitous one that runs above and behind the village. The first three kilometres or so follow the Beara Bridle Trail (Ireland’s first bridal trail), involving a gentle climb along a forestry/agricultural road, with gorgeous vistas of Allihies beach, offshore islands, the Skelligs in the distance, and the one-street village itself, strung along the landscape like a multicoloured bracelet. Once you reach the other side of the height, you get your first glimpse of Castletownbere and Bantry Bay. Then the trail descends through a scrabbly forestry road past creaking pines, before climbing to a ridge that offers commanding views of the sea both north and south of the Beara. The sheep stared at us as if we were mad while we struggled up the steep ridge, the sudden gale-force winds threatening to blow us off our feet.
A gentle descent through bog roads brought us onto the public road and into the heart of Ireland’s second-biggest fishing port. Castletownbere was still Covid-quiet, with most restaurants and pubs closed. I took a seat outside of O’Donoghue’s pub on the main square, enjoying a pint of stout in the cool, rain-sprinkled air with Jim O’Sullivan of Beara Tourism (bearatourism.com). Involved with the Beara Way for all of its quarter-century existence, Jim knows every metre of the 206km, waymarked trail. Having found the day’s trek wearying enough, we asked him if the next stage (Castletownbere to Adrigole) would be similar. Maybe not as tough, perhaps? “It’s a very long, hard day,” he said, slowly and clearly. “There’s no use in saying otherwise.” So, each day was getting a bit longer than the previous one. Day One was 11km, Day Two was 15km and Day Three would be 22km. But we were also getting a little bit fitter every day. Weren’t we? I could feel my rickety knee getting stronger and the lads were heartened by what they had achieved so far. Colm likened the sudden walking marathon to “being thrown into a bucket of cold water” but he was still enjoying it. A quick health check back at the B&B revealed blisters on the feet of both sons, so we re-supplied ourselves with blister plasters from the pharmacy for the next long day.
After a great night’s snoring, we awoke semi-refreshed and rearing to go. It was Father’s Day and the lads had brought me a card, presented with great ceremony over a hearty breakfast. We doubled up on water, supplemented it with lemonade (and, in my case, a can of beer as a Father’s Day treat), while cookies and crisps supplemented our sandwiches. The first couple of hours was a mostly gentle climb from the centre of Castletownbere. The route to Adrigole is directly east as the crow flies, but the walking route zig-zags north and south in a seemingly crazy manner for much of the journey.
The views at almost every point along the way are absolutely amazing, sometimes taking in virtually all of the main southwestern peninsulas at once. We stopped after a particularly tough climb at one point. According to Google Fit, we had covered 9.8km. That, we convinced ourselves, was almost 10km which, in turn, was more-or-less 11km. So we were pretty much halfway. The “second half” turned out to be much longer than expected. Whether a fault of my tracker application or not, the 22km turned into 26km by the time we finished. The spectacular meandering route took us into ravines and out again, over quirky and picturesque bridges and around the edge of the brooding stony hulk of Hungry Hill. Everywhere, there was the constant presence of sheep and virtually no other human being.
We arrived at 7.30pm at the Hungry Hill Campsite and Lodge in Adrigole — surely the most stretched-out village in Ireland. Blister injuries and foot fatigue meant that our journey ended there for the time being. It wouldn’t be possible to attempt the final strenuous leg of the walk to Glengarriff without being in good condition. Our four day-trek had become three. Physically, there was a level of ill-preparedness that lockdown life had produced. There were soft muscles and feet that weren’t used to tramping for hours over challenging terrain.
From a mental point of view, there was an even greater tenderness that’s harder to express. The full measure of all of this damage — built up over the last year and a half — doesn’t make the evening news. It isn’t announced along with the latest statistics on infection numbers and associated deaths, but it’s there nonetheless. It’s the unspoken collateral damage and it seems as though our legislators haven’t factored it into the cost-benefit analysis of their decisions.
But if there’s a cure for it, it almost certainly begins with a long walk.
