Footprints on Dingle

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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.