Mile 33: The Luck of the Irish

On our second day in Ireland, some friends and I traveled by train to the small town of Howth, just 20 mins northeast of Dublin. The train smelled of new bandages but our chatter covered up the unpleasantries. We grabbed sandwiches in town and then followed the road to the start of the famous Howth hike. The beginning uphill climb was serious but we were rewarded with sweeping views of the harbor and Lambey Island. We passed Yeat’s old house as we traveled upward along the coast. The well-marked trail led us through some residential streets and then onto more jagged ground. I stopped to take a photo at one point and completely missed a passing seal in the water below. Everyone else saw it and I quickly became the girl who missed the seal.

The path curved around the hillside and we stopped every so often to let others hikers pass by or take a few photos. The cool 60-degree weather was an asset to us as we pushed on the purple trail. At one point, we turned a corner and could even make out the MV Explorer. A bit more than half way through, we sat down near a cliff’s edge and ate our sandwiches. Mine, sundried tomato and veggies, was really tasty thanks to the spicy sauce the shopkeeper had added. Serendipitously, a seal came up alongside the water’s edge below and this time, I saw it! The luck of the Irish! It watched us for a while, waiting for morsels of our sandwiches to fall down. He gave up shortly and was engulfed into the tranquil seas a few minutes later.

During the second half of the trek, my feet really started to ache from the jagged rocks sticking out on the ground. While the trail was pretty easy, the rocks kept jabbing the bottoms of my feet and I could feel them even though I was wearing sturdy shoes. Also, we had inadvertently chosen the longest of the four marked trails on Howth and what was meant to be a 2-hour hike lasted more than 5 hours. We passed by a beach, (nice to see the colors there!), some wildflower fields, a lighthouse, and a golf course at the top. All the while though, my feet ached with exhaustion and pain. Towards the end, I had to sit down for a few minutes to rub them in order to alleviate the pain. It was the longest walk of my life I think.

But, we made it back to town and happily caught the train to Dublin. I was meant to go dancing with Jess that night but given the state of my feet (I couldn’t walk anymore), I went straight to bed with two advil. Ouch. Two lessons come out of this otherwise amazing day: buy hiking boots and always carry advil. Still, the photos and stories from that hike are amazing. Would do it again for sure!

On the third day, a few of us – Alex, Marc, Janet and I – had bought tickets for a day trip to the Cliffs of Moher (we got them for really cheap at the Tourist office in Dublin). These alabaster cliffs were a true quest for me and I had wanted to go for many years. The day before, a group of students had traveled there and reported enjoying themselves, despite the cloudy weather, which shielded them from seeing the cliffs in their entirety. So, not optimistic about the weather but still excited about the cliffs, we boarded a 6am bus (after some coffee of course!) to take the three-hour drive to the West of Ireland. On the way, I chatted with Janet and listened to music on my ipod (I’ve noticed that I love long bus rides too, they really help put your thoughts in order!).

When we arrived, three hours later, we were greeted with the warmth of the afternoon sun that had melted away all the clouds, mist and haze of the morning. The cliffs, in all of their majestic glory, lay out before us in waves of green grass and an expanse of blue waters. The luck of the Irish again! At their highest, the cliffs are 214 meters above the sea surface and they stretch for about 5 miles. We walked along the edge, snapping pictures and enjoying this tremendous stroke of lucky weather. Even my camera was in heaven. I sat down on the edge of a bluff and stared out into the great blue. What luck! But then again, hadn’t this entire trip been such a lucky gift? And, why stop there, hadn’t my entire life brought me oodles of luck? I started to ponder the idea of “luck” on those cliffs and considered how I had arrived in this very spot. Sure, it was luck – getting chosen for this voyage, finding this trip so easily, having good weather – but it was also a lot of hard work – doing a PhD, the interview process, the preparations and teaching. The magnificent view off the Cliffs of Moher were a wonderful consequence of my life so far and I wouldn’t have exchanged that spot for anywhere in the world. I sent a “thank you” prayer off into the deep blue waters before heading back.  

On my way back to the bus, I ran into a few more friends who had come to the Cliffs independently and we marveled together at the sights for a while. Following some time in the adjacent gift store, we boarded the bus once again for Burren, which houses some really unusual geological formations since the ice age. The bus stopped and we were allowed to wander through the unique grounds and see some of the old stone walls built thousands of years ago. Having found a quite corner near the water’s edge, I plugged into my ipod and enjoyed the serenity of waving ocean. Do you ever have that feeling that no matter where you are going, your life is heading in the right direction? I don’t normally feel that way, mostly because I am a control freak, but in Burren, sitting on these historic formations, I really did feel peace. No matter where my life goes from here, I thought, it’s gotta be going the right way if I ended up here. =o)

We made it to a small town for lunch, which had a nice little pub with some seriously tasty Irish coffee. I feasted on pasta (no one likes vegetarians in Europe!) before heading off again. We drove to our third location, an old abandoned Abbey now turned into a cemetery. The grey stone walls rose high above the ground and rows of memorial slabs had become the front lawn. Inside, some of the alters sat at various corners of the open air Abbey and one even had an old skull inside. I walked around the exterior corners of the Abbey, peeping through window-less cutouts and stone slab graves on the ground. There was a lot of quiet to be found in Ireland, in its history, crystal waters and green fields.

The driver stated that we had some extra time on our trip so he added two additional stops: a small fishing village adjacent to a very serene lake and a chocolate shop near the Abbey. Both were prime indulgence stops, one for my camera and one for my sweet tooth. Feeling tired by the end of the day, the ride back into the city was very relaxing. 

As we made our way to Dublin, I took a ton of photos from the bus windows too. I could see the classics of Ireland: sheep grazing on green grass, rocky grey edges of land, four pubs on every street corner and rows of small cottages along the seaside. Ireland was as green as everyone said it would be. But the country also generated a sense of peace for me that I hadn’t felt in years. Here, the natural landscape required me to reflect, to stop, to wonder and to really see. In Ireland, I took a much-needed deep breath.