Take a walk on The Wild Side! - I definitely did

This is from Saturday 20th June
I set off from Portnoo, taking Vernon (over 70) & Gisela (they live in Eastbourne & have a holiday home in Portnoo) & had expressed an interest in doing the walk, last Saturday, when we called in with them after the Butterfly day. They are almost always game for an adventure wherever there is an opportunity, amazingly they don’t have a car & that is some achievement in rural Donegal. The weather was so closed in, it felt crazy to still be heading to go on the walk, but the forecast was hopeful!

Advance details of the walk were provided “The walk is a Grade A level. 11k in distance and will take from 5 - 6 hours. However, we are a group and we will walk as a group with enough breaks along the way to enjoy the scenery and time to take pictures. We will walk up The Pilgrims Path across The One Man's Pass to the Trig point at 595mts. Then continue on to Malin Beg where the boat will pick us up (weather permitting). Some may want to walk under The One Man's Pass and that is fine too.”

 

We parked at Carrick & the group of 37 (including 3 leaders, Dairmuid, Helen (organiser in the red ooking towards the walkers) & Michael) gathered in the car park, a lovely lady, Joy was up from Dublin to redo the walk as she 1st did it when she was 15 & remembered it as extremely scary, she was wanting to see if it really was (she celebrated her 70th birthday on Friday).

We were taken by bus to the starting point at The Rusty Mackerel Pub in Teelin. The mountain top was covered in low cloud but we set off in sunshine. We made gradual progress, but before long our visibility was very low. By the time we were on One Man’s Pass, visibility was limited, just as well really, as we were not able to see how steep it was. Vernon’s vertigo kicked in & he was ably helped by Diarmuid to get to the end of One Man’s Pass (he even smiled/grimaced for the camera, see extra photo).

We all finished the walk, personally I felt a great sense of achievement, mind you during it I wondered why I had allowed myself to be talked into it.

Poor Helen, the boat owner let her down & she was very annoyed that we had to finish the day returning by boat & not as planned. All of the group were gutted for her, as she had organised everything (bar the weather) to a T.

Most of the walkers seemed to descend on the bar for refreshments, a lot of us ended up have a great meal in good company having made some new friends.

Afterwards some of us went up to Bunglas (by car) to the viewpoint to see the cliffs.
the photo is towards the end of the walk