Tadhg Coakley

Walking

The Dingle Diaries. 5: Siúlóid an tSáis

21 February 2019

There was a moment on the walk when I turned around and looked at the valley I was emerging out from. It was brown with dead ferns and black where gorse bushes had burned. Green in places with heather. And I was completely alone. I couldn’t see any sign of human life, I was surrounded on all sides by hills and only hills. The wind blew through the valley. A stream surged at its base, towards the sea. But I couldn’t see the sea, I couldn’t see any houses, either, or any sign of human life. The mountains, the sky, the dead ferns and gorse, heather, a stream and me.

The Dingle Diaries. 2: The Magharees

19 February 2019

Monday is walking day. Originally we’d hoped to be walking Friday, Saturday and Sunday too, but the best laid plans etc. We decided on a loop around The Magharees (Na Macharaí, ‘the plains’) as described in Adrian Hendroff’s The Dingle Peninsula: a Walking Guide. It’s an excellent book, really well laid out and clear. The version we chose (he offers two) is about 16km, a three and a half hour walk.

Four Brothers in The Ossau Valley, Day 7

18 October 2017

‘We’ll take it handy tomorrow,’ they said. ‘Sure it’s our last day’. ‘We won’t kill ourselves tomorrow,’ they said. ‘We’ll do a local loop out of the house and finish early and relax in the afternoon,’ they said. For me, today’s walk was the most difficult. I’m not sure why. Maybe because my expectations were of a stroll, which it wasn’t. Maybe it was the heat – it got up to 28oC and we were exposed to sunlight for most of the walk. Maybe I’m just tired now after six days of tramping around Pyrenean mountains.

Four Brothers in The Ossau Valley, Day 6

18 October 2017

I love maps. I just love them. It’s the certainty of them, I think. And the comfort that when a map says this road goes here – then it does. And this mountain is here, it’s this high and there’s a cliff there. This valley is this low, and if you take this path, you can cross the stream… here! And so you do.

Four Brothers in The Ossau Valley, Day 5

18 October 2017

They go low, so we go high. We drove south past Laruns into the mountains up to the Lac de Bious-Artigues at 1400m altitude. We were shocked, shocked I tell you, to find the car park by the lake full, with well-equipped and, worse – fit-looking – hikers setting forth. We were most aggrieved, having had the forests and mountains to ourselves the previous two days – well, except for the cattle and horses, but they didn’t clog up the paths, they weren’t smugly thin and they didn’t have hiking poles and expensive walking gear.

Four Brothers in The Ossau Valley, Day 4

18 October 2017

After walking up through the early morning village of Bilhères, where we were living for the week, the path levelled off and we passed by some lush pastures and entered the forest. An old forest, big trees, venerable; moss hanging low from branches in the shadow of mountains. Steep mountains, high, stooping down to the valley floor and the running steam that we could hear but not see, far below.

Four Brothers in The Ossau Valley, Day 3

18 October 2017

We were hungry and empty when we ate on the unlikely named Col Deus Coïgts at 1068m. We’d climbed up from the villages of Louvie-Juzon and Castet on the valley floor at 400m and it took us four hours to get there. The woods around us as we ate, with tall beech trees reaching up imperiously, were a thing of inordinate beauty. A tree creeper climbed up a bark twenty metres away, doing his methodological thing.

Four Brothers in The Ossau Valley, Day 2

18 October 2017

Never miss an opportunity to enter a boulanger’s shop in the morning. I recommend it. The smell of the fresh bread and pastries, the look of their stacked fine golden familiar shapes. The appetite for a holiday breakfast and the anticipation of that first bite of crunchy crust. The taste of the soft white bread, with butter and tea. It’s all right there in the ringing of the bell when you open the door and step inside to the cheerful ‘bonjour’ that awaits you.

Four Brothers in The Ossau Valley, Day 1

18 October 2017

When I awoke I heard bells. No, a bell. Must be the church in the village, I thought and it must be later than I’d expected. I checked my phone: 5.29. Hardly the church – it was the bell on the animal in the field we’d heard the evening before, when we stood out on the balcony and gazed out into the valley, soaking it in.

Five Days Walking in France – Day 5: Saint-Jean-de-Côle et Angoulême

24 October 2016

We did a bit of sightseeing before today’s walk (our last of 2016 together) in Saint-Jean-de-Côle, which is listed as one of the most beautiful villages in France. M. Besson and most of the books had recommended it. And the Romanesque Byzantine church to Saint-Jean Baptiste  was very special I must say, its stone walls almost white, with small rounded chapels to the side. They had choral music playing through the sound-system and long elegant candles (Pad and I lit two) and I could have stayed there longer and prayed. There was a map on a notice board at the side showing a walk through the village all the way to Santiago de Compostela, a good walk, beginning in Vezelay – almost 1,500 km according to Googlemaps. Now that would be a walk and a talk. But we agreed to settle for somewhat less that Friday. Maybe some other time.

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