One of the hobbies we started to do here in Ireland is hiking. We never did this before when we are still in the Philippines. Since the pandemic broke traveling abroad became impossible at the moment. So for now, we started to discover what the Emerald Isle can offer us. Indeed, we are not disappointed. There is so much more to see here and we are definitely enjoying it.
Ireland is known for its mountainous landscapes, gorgeous cliffs and vast forests and woods. So, we have decided to do something different to celebrate her 30βish birthday (she does not want to reveal her true age, ha! so, letβs leave her to that). We went for a hiking-cum-mountain climbing. Indeed, this was the hardest hike we did yet. One and half drive from Cork, where we live, Galtees Mountain Range is situated in Co.Tipperary. It is known to be the highest inland mountain in Ireland. We did the horseshoe loop, as it is a hiking loop which covers four different mountain peaks, (1) Glencushnabinnia (819m), (2) Galtee Mor (918m), (3) Galtee Beag (799m), (4) Cush (641m) in counter-clockwise order.
Weather seems to be the best when we started our hike. But close when we almost reach the 2nd summit it started to get foggy and windy which became very dangerous to us, not only because of poor visibility, also the strong wind gust is so critically forceful enough to tip you over down the cliffs. Scary that we have to stop for awhile and literally sit on the ground to minimise us being carried by the unsafely gust. Luckily I was able to capture some of the scary moments we had on the summit. (watch the video below)
Overall, weβre able to overcome the challenge we brought to ourselves. It took us, 5 hours and 13 minutes to finish the whole loop. It is really exhausting and energy demanding but it is absolutely worth it for both of us. We defo enjoy our βBirthday Hikeβ and we are ready to conquer more peaks beyond boundaries. βοΈ
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