Kerry

Went down to Kerry for a few days. The weather turned out horrible but still did a bit. Drove down on Sunday and stayed with Ped. Next morning went straight to Cronin's Yard. I haven't been down to Kerry for about a year but the roads have improved alot. It took me just under 4hours to Killarney in my yoke and not doing over 95kmph.

Set off in the sunshine to do Stumpa an TSaimh and along the ridge to Binn Chaorach and Corrán Tuathail. Got some nice shots on the walk in. It was warm in the sun. The direct line up Stumpa is around Diff and I had hoped I might find myself doing it. Once I got to the point of commitement I decided to go around the easy way. Just wasn't confident enough to press on into the void. Good call as it turned out as it started to rain a short while later.

Continued along the ridge encased in cloud. Took a good while to reach Bhinn Chaorach. Was nice easy scrambling on grippy rock. The ridge across to Corrán was nice. But by this point it had got very windy and I felt I shouldn't be there. So raced along it and descended down Brother O'Shea's Gully which is a horrible steep, stoney descent. Trudged back to the car, luckily the visibility wasn't too bad so I got some sense of the grandeur around me.

Went on a romantic walk around the smaller Killarney Lake that evening with Ped. Saw some crab apples growing wild which was the highpoint of the walk.

The next day went out to Dingle to try and find an old Frank Winder route on the sea cliffs at Ballydavid Head. The description was too vague to be sure what we found. We scrambled down a grassy gully and along a ridge but the rock wasn't great. Incredible place though.

 That afternoon we did the Faha Ridge is think clag and non-stop rain. We took a while to get our bearings when we reached the main ridge and where close to deciding to retrace our steps. It was quite miserable all in all.

The next day we drove for about 3 hours to check out a valley called Glanrastel on the Beara Penisula. I had found photos of the valley that showed lots of massive boulders. It was pissing rain when we got there and the rock was total choss, the worst sandstone I had ever seen, I really thought I was on to something. We ended up trudging around from one giant block to choss to another. Standing in rivers wondering where it all went wrong. I have offically given up searching for boulders of that old red sandstone, its quality is too variable.

I had 3 things for dinner that evening as a consolation.