The day after climbing Carrauntoohil we were heading up to Loughrea and decided to stop in Lahinch for lunch. We went in to the local bookshop for a map of the Burren, intending to do a walk there and spotted a book called Best Irish Walks by Joss Lynam. Fantastic! It seemed to give details on all the most notable walks in Ireland: "does exactly what it says on the cover" to coin a phrase... We decided to try a walk he suggested in the Burren. The less said about the outcome of that walk the better. Suffice to say it ended almost as soon as it began with us running away from an escaped and extremely irritated bull.
We didn't want to blame our new hero Joss for the outcome of the Burren walk and decided to give him another chance the next day by trying out his suggested horse-shoe route of Mweelrea. We parked where he suggested and looked at the map in the book which seemed to suggest that we climb up a sheer cliff-face. "It looks worse that it is, sure you can see the path there" said Dec waving his hand in the general direction of the cliff. Anna was not convinced but the route in the book did indicate that that was where we had to go so off we went. An hour later and we're hanging on to the edge of the mountain. Anna checked the title of the book - no she hadn't picked up the copy of Best Irish Abseiling by mistake. The post-traumatic stress from Carrauntoohil two days earlier had well and truly set in by now and nerves were getting frayed. When we finally got to the top of the section we were crawling up Batman style we decided to take a lunch stop. Nothing like chocolate to take your mind off another near death experience. The views from this point were amazing. We were looking down on the road where we parked and the two lakes were crystal clear. It was a Geography teacher's dream below us and the clear day meant we could see for miles. We could even make out the church on the top of Croagh Partick in the distance. By now time was ticking and we had decided that we weren't going to make it to the top of Mweelrea. Neither of us wanted to go back the way we came so we made our way down in the direction Delphi adventure centre and back along the river towards Doolough. That route presented its own problems and we ended up taking off our boots and socks and wading through the river to get across on to the road. A long and tiring day. Mweelrea summit will have to wait for another time.
