Romantic and Unrivalled Views

From pole to pole should my migration bend,

Or twice around the earth should extend

No place in all those travels could be found

To my mind's eye, so adequately crowned

With nature's diadems, serene, profuse,

As theses romantic and unrivalled views.

Denis Cronin


Wrecked!! We're just back from a humungeous walk. The forecast was good and as we still need to do four more loop walks in order to update the walking book we decided to sally forth. Three walks are huge, we chose the least daunting and cheated a little by not doing one section. Nonethless our legs are now jellified. Fab though. We ventured out on the Poet's Way Loop, parked at the very end of the Sheep's Head, missed out the walk to the lighthouse, but cut across the peninsula, walked along the north side, crossed over and then came back on the south side, very high up. It was incredibly boggy and a lot of clambering was involved but:
we heard a person in a red jersey singing on the hillside; saw activity in a bog, heard weird noises and realised it was frogs getting amorous (Valentine's Day after all); past ruined cottages, the remains of a signal tower and a rather forlorn looking pillbox and staggered up to a trig point. We ate our customary crackers and cheese just about on top of a waterfall and watched the waves surge in below. It was a bit busy today though, we met four other people!
The Poet in question was Denis Cronin, who lived on the peninsula then emigrated to New York in the late 1800s. He's famous for his narrative poem The Chase of the Shadow, extract above. Not sure about profuse and views rhyming though!
A few more here ... including an amorous frog. Actually not so amorous, he was lurking at the edge of the road instead of in the bog, looking a bit confused. Hope all your frogs have turned to princes and you're having a good Valentine's Day. By the way did you know St Valentine is buried in Dublin (but Rome, Prague, Poland, France, Vienna, Malta, Glasgow, Birmingham and  Missouri also claim him!) More about St Valentine