I R E L A N D !
August 17 - 28, 2001

Preface

I first need to point out that I severely underestimated Ireland.  A major portion of my holiday consisted of a seven-day hiking trip with a variety of folks, mostly from England, as the company sponsoring the hikes was also based in England.

Being well aware of the American tendency toward the dramatic, I tend to downplay the descriptions I read.  If a passage describing a hike in the Adirondack Mountains reads "a very rocky and wet trail, be sure to wear good hiking boots."  I would go, as is my habit, in my sneakers, certain to find an easily navigated path.  So when the brochure for the Ireland hikes mentioned that the trails might be a bit wet, I decided I didn't need to lug hiking boots all the way across the Atlantic.  Naturally, I was forgetting that, in British terms, 'a bit wet' means the water rarely goes above your knees.

Consequently, I undertook these hikes in sneakers (or Trainers, as the Brits refer to them).  That was not a good idea.  Ireland is a land filled with bogs and wetlands the likes of which I have never before seen nor even imagined.  Still, I managed fairly well, although my English friends all thought me rather mad.