"After all it was a great big world, with lots of places to run to"

Another week, another escaping to the countryside for a hike. Before you see a bunch of pictures of landscapes and sheep and bucolic bliss, I do want to talk (mostly so I remember it) about the weird feeling in this country right now with COVID stuff. Feel free to skip the next section if you're just here for the pics!

There's levels to this:

Believe me when I say, things change here about every day. I moved to Killarney October 1, when things were Level 2. While not the all out fun-fest that life in Irish towns normally is, especially during tourist season, it was still pretty good-- pubs, restaurants, activities were all pretty open. Since October 6, we've been at Level 3, and we were told at the time it was only supposed to be through October 27. I'd describe things under Level 3 as "OK... I can make this work". Now, there's talk this weekend about moving swiftly to Level 5 for at least 6 weeks.

This has a huge impact on my life here. Not the "oh, I don't get to go to restaurants/pubs" whine, but the "you can't leave 5 km from your home" thing. I'm supposed to go to Galway in 2 weeks. Even today, it's not a sure thing I could get there if I wanted-- you could always meet a tough Garda who doesn't think moving to a new place because you've booked it ahead of time counts as "essential travel". If things change on Monday to a Level 5, there's practically no way I could do this. If it's a Level 4 upgrade, I could try, it would be expensive for me to do so, and there's no guarantees. One way or another I'm wasting a ton of money on rent. Also, I don't really want to spend my life within 5 km of Killarney-- beautiful town though it is!-- whereas Galway's a bit more palatable.

I also keenly understand the feeling of people in the country here-- "why are we paying for the sins of Dublin and/or Northern Ireland?" (It's basically only the adjacent Counties to NI and Dublin area that have amplified spiking cases). But the truth is people who can will flee from places with restrictions and spikes if they're at all able. The only way, sad though it is, is to put a country-wide restriction on things. I do get that. But it's frustrating.

Talking with the locals here, their advice is to just claim to be a visiting Professor from Georgetown and hope that bluster carries the day. What I'm going to do is try and be patient and wait. Unless things are at a 4 and about to go to a 5 *just* before my departure date, I'm not going to hemorrhage $$$ for hope. I'd rather hope on not hemorrhaging $$$.

And now for something totally different:

Alright. All those feelings aside, it really is gorgeous here! Went with a friend to explore the countryside again yesterday. Said friend had a car, which makes things oh so much better/easier. We toured through the Black Valley, Gap of Dunloe and did a bit of hiking.

First things first, we had about a 2k hike to get to some peak here with an unprounceable name starting with a G. Lets call it "Gilleagahesajshdakjhdkaj". Bit rainy for my tastes, but a gorgeous view after trudging through some mud is always helpful to forget such things.

I think the iPhone says I should have said "Glannagilliagh", but i prefer my spelling

After this walk, we had to drive through the Black Valley to get to the Gap of Dunloe (I guess, I really wasn't doing the navigating despite being in the navigator seat...). We did run into the occasional traffic issue below though...

Once we dodged enough livestock and locals with our slow driving speed, we did find ourselves at the Gap of Dunloe though. I do remember from prior experience that cars were not permitted in the Gap (see below sign)

A girl at a pub the other night told me "that's a load of shite, I take drive all my friends through there, that's just a way for the jaunting cars [horse carriages] to try and make money".

Truer words never spoken... indeed, if you come from the other way, there are no such signs, and you can just see hikers/bikers struggling to make it up the windy uphill terrain. Thank god for four tires and a steering wheel!

It is a pretty beautiful place though, here's a couple pics:

After driving through all this, it was time for a well deserved late lunch-- for me, a Guinness and some fries with steak and pepper sauce. Diet be damned, it was damp and I needed warm food! This was at Kate Kearney's Cottage

You see that newspaper article on the wall from the 1840s? It kind of explains who Kate Kearney was, and I'll just highlight for you the most relevant line: "She held in one hand a wooden jug of goat's milk, and in the other a whiskey bottle...she strongly recommended it as the best of all preliminaries for a successful day among the mountains". Badass, she was.

After all of this exhaustion, I basically retreated to my house to dry off and warm up.

Random Things:

-There's a place here, J.M. Reidy's, which really stretches the definition of "courtyard". It has a roof, heaters, and booths in it, and I guess technically it's outside, but there's 3 walls around it... anyhow, I'm happy for it as it allows under current regulations for drinking/eating/dodging Garda counting the number of people in the restaurant.

-People in Ireland are *way* more comfortable pulling their cars up onto the curb. Most of the time it's out of necessity, for instance, when the road isn't wide enough to accommodate two cars unless you do it. But sometimes it's just out of preference, even for cars you wouldn't remotely describe as "off-road".

-Heard an awesome story about the way things used to be here... I'll spare you many of the details, but the epitome of a County Mayo grandma came in the form of an old gent talking about his mother, who would wrap salmon in cabbage leaves when coming down from Mayo to here, and making sure to bring a bottle of Poitin. Then get on the bus for 6+ hours with all that mess. It bore some imagining.

Moment of Zen