great boat and long walk

Today we planned to do the gap of dunloe walk which involved a boat trip across the lakes of kilarney and a walk through a pass next the the tallest mountain in Ireland. Perhaps a little bigger than mount Lofty, we couldn't decide. 

We woke up at 7 and enjoyed the lovely free breakfast at our accommodation. The black sheep hostel where we are staying is fantastic and by far the best hostel I've ever stayed in (thanks for the recommendation Kate). Every bed in the dorm has its own curtain, the mattreses are amazing (much better than the ones we had in leeds) and over all the people are wondeful. Sadly we never got to some of the recommended pubs as we were exhausted both nights. 

Anyway onwards with the day, we first had to walk to the boat. It was a lovely walk through the kilarney national park and we saw a huge amount of bird life and deer, cows and sheep. Sadly no badger or otters. The boat left from Ross castle and the man driving was a lovely old man who'd been doing the trips for 60 years and had many stories to tell us of what it was like when they rowed the trip. 

The boat trip was amazing and the highlight of the day. First stop we landed at a little Island with ruins of a abbey. We spend a little time there and did a lovely walk around the perimeter of the island. The vegetation is amazing reminding us both of elvish lands because everything was so green and covered in moss. Also the canopy of leave was thick giving a nice green colour to the whole forest. 

Next we continued round the lake seeing little water falls, queen Victoria's old mansion ruins and a little friendly pheasant who sits at the edge of the lake and asks for food from all the boats that come by. Also myself and one of the other boys got the pull the boat up a shallow stream and through a bridge. (Not sure if  we were needed but he asked us to and it was Fun). The one issue with the boat was that it went an hour longer than expected. That was fine and we enjoyed every moment but we had to finish the walk and make it to the other side by 4 if we were going to get the shuttle bus. It was now 1. After we had lunch that became 1:30. 

We started the walk at a little Cafe however the route had almost no signs telling us where to go. In the end we had a horse and cart lady who told us where to go multiple times. The first bit of the walk was very hot. Bini struggled a bit and it was all road walking so everytime a car or horse and cart came we had to jump off the road. Not very pleasant sadly. After we had been waking for 40 minutes a horse and cart stopped for us and  the guy offered us a lift to the top for 20 euro as shameful as it is (at least it's shameful for me as a price) we accepted because we were both struggling and wanted to make the shuttle bus. The man was very nice and we had a great chat to him. The horse trek up was nice although still on roads and the scenery wasn't as nice as we were hoping. 

Once we got the the top we had some food and then continued through the pass still on roads which disappointed us a little as we were expecting a hiking trail. Ah well we should have done our research properly. We passed three very nice lakes and avoided the road as much as possible doing a bit of rock jumping and walking on a lot of sheep trails. Finishing the walk would take us another 2 hour from that point which meant that we arrived at the end at 5 meaning we missed the bus by an hour. 

Unsure of what to do we had dinner at the local pub. We decided to share 2 meals one was the Irish special of bacon and cabbage and the other was a plate if ribs in case the bacon and cabbage wasn't nice. The pub also had our favourite cider orchard theives however we resisted as we still had about 15km to walk if we were to make it home to killarney tonight. The bacon and cabbage ended up being amazing. Instead of  bacon we actually had thigh slices of Christmas ham with white sauce and really nice cabbage. I wished we had two plates of that as the ham was amazing!! We left the pub at 6pm and started the long trudge back to killarney. After about 30 minute of walking a nice Irish man stopped and offered us a lift. Which we accepted saving us 2 hours of walking. Once we were home we collapsed into bed. Also tried to have a shower however the water at the hostel is very hot and only had one setting. I'd got quite sunburnt during the day as we had forgotten sunscreen, bini was fine because her skin just doesn't burn. (Sun burn is better now almost gone which showed the hilarious difference between the Australian sun and Irish sun). We both had a good sleep and woke up at 6:30 the next day and got ready to go to Dublin.