Footprints on Dingle

We were six couples, 12 friends. Three of us had walked out to the Horn of Africa one afternoon; several had circled the smoking rim of Vulcano in Italy’s Aeolian Islands and trekked across the Dolomites; all had hiked Colorado’s Elk Mountains. We decided on Ireland next.

The Dingle Way seemed to offer the best scenery of Ireland’s 32 marked hiking routes. It would mean walking 114 miles, and because some of us still work (at 74, I mainly play), we had just eight days in May to complete the route around the Dingle Peninsula, the most westerly point of mainland Ireland.

I reserved rooms at bed-and-breakfast accommodations found on the Internet (www.dingleway.net). From Amazon.com we obtained a concise guidebook, “The Dingle Way” (Rucksack Readers), by Sandra Bardwell. We all met on a Friday afternoon at Finnegan’s Hostel, which occupies one of many Georgian houses in Tralee, County Kerry’s largest town.

Finnegan’s was adequate and certainly economical, about $50 per couple for a room with a bath and “light breakfast,” coffee and toast. Did I hear muttering about “We hoped for better?”

We shopped that evening for good things to add to the light breakfast and for lunch supplies to stuff into our already heavy packs. At 8:30 a.m. the next day, we began to walk.

In the following days, we found most of the Dingle Way well marked with yellow arrows and the small figure of a hiker. Still, there were places where a signpost was missing, and it was a good thing that Chris and Christl had brought their global positioning system receivers and that Lucy and Ken had good maps.

There were no markers for bog, which we first encountered when, after three miles, we turned from a paved lane onto a path, the ancient route to Dingle. The mud wanted to hold onto our boots, and at one point, Mary Jane fell forward on all fours.

Eight days of this might be difficult, but it wasn’t raining, and the day was mild. We stopped for lunch, Dick pulled out his harmonica, and we sang what we remembered of “The Rose of Tralee.” Above us was the green mountain of the song, and later the sun would be “declining beneath the blue sea.”

After 12 miles, we reached Joanna Kelliher and her Sea View House in Camp, where we found pleasant, good-sized rooms with baths — and no complaints from my comrades. No restaurant, but Miss Kelliher arranged a van to take us five miles to Ned Natterjack’s for a good and hearty Irish dinner.

On our second day, we covered 11 miles over small roads and tracks. There was a lot of uphill walking, but we enjoyed the wide views over green pastures to cloudy mountains. Sheep were everywhere, with many lambs. We came down to the coast and lunched in a cafe by a three-mile beach, Inch Strand. By midafternoon, we reached the neat village of Annascaul, happy to have walked a day without bog.

I had reserved rooms for our group at Ardrinane House, but one room was lacking, and my wife and I stayed up the street at Teac Seain (Sean’s House) and found it comfortable and modern. Sunday supper was across the road at the South Pole Inn, opened in the 1920s by Tom Crean, who had gone to Antarctica with explorers Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton.

After a good meal, we sat by the bar, songbooks were handed out, a fair lady played the guitar and the owner’s son the banjo, and we sang, starting with “Tom Crean’s Song.”

On Monday, we walked 12 up-and-down miles to Dingle, on small roads and more muddy paths. We came down to a little cove and the gaunt hulk of Minard Castle, built in the 1500s and shelled by Oliver Cromwell’s men in 1650. Beyond, we followed a side path to the spring of John the Baptist, where people had tied kerchiefs on tree limbs, as they have done at holy springs in this island since long before Christ.

The town of Dingle is sizable and attractive, with 2,000 residents and scores of new vacation homes. It also is the largest predominantly Irish-speaking town, so I kept my ears open but was disappointed to hear more English than Irish, at least in public places.

We lodged in Dingle at the Mainstay Guesthouse, an old but modernized and comfortable place run by Gus Cero, a native of New Jersey, and his Dublin-born wife. One of the two Marys in our group turned 60, and for her birthday dinner, Gus recommended Out of the Blue, a small restaurant down by the port, a 10-minute stroll from the Mainstay.

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