Hiking in the Croaghgorms

Two weekends ago was my first, and Judith's second trip with the DCU hiking club, which would take us North and West into the province of Ulster and Donegal County, to Dhun na nGall (Donegal Town) on a 4 hour bus ride with 33 other students. So, after frantically preparing 4 liters of pasta salad and packing 1 kg of tissues (for Judith who had unfortunately just started a cold), we were ready to venture forth into the Irish Countryside.

We stayed at a cozy hostel just 5 minutes from the city center and, as it turns out, the hiking club is actually composed almost entirely of exchange students, namely a large group of Germans, so I got to brush up on my Deutsch... or rather realize how little I really know, even after watching Sissi about a million times! I did understand bits and pieces however, which one of the guys soon realized as he caught the "I know what you're saying" loo in my eyes and noted aloud that he should probably watch what he said about me while I was around! ;)

But I digress... Friday night was spent getting to know a few of the other students and drinking Guiness at a local pub called The Reel Inn. At first, Mary, Fabian and I were the only ones there from our group and we felt quite out of place considering everyone else in the pub was over 40 besides the bartender! It turned out to be quite a good place for great live music in the end; so much so that we ended up there again on the Saturday night!

Saturday morning, we were woken up fairly early to get on out to the Bluestack Mountains (na  Cruacha Gorma), where we spent about 6 hours hiking to higher and higher peaks, before reaching an ultimate elevation of about 690 meters above sea level! It was a great workout and full of astonishing views! At one point, we all stopped for lunch and I went off to a little peak with Fabian such that we could get away from the chatter of the group and, as I sat cross-legged and closed my eyes to meditate a bit, I was surprised with a "baaaah", which turned out to be a sheep running

along some of the adjacent peaks! What a funny sight it was!

Johannes and Kili
jumping into
the bog!

In any case, the descent was full of slips and tumbles, as you all probably expected. We even stopped at one point to jump into a boggy area at the bottom of a slope (although it is safe to say I did NOT partake in this event as I cleverly only brought
1 pair of shoes and 1 pair of
pants for the entire weekend).

Judith, Mary, Felix

That night at the pub, I had my first superb dance with a drunk Irish man who couldn't keep the tempo! AND I was pleasantly surprised with a brief pub-salsa dance with Felix, who turned out to be quite the little dancer!

Sunday, Judith and I had signed up to go Coasteering, which involves donning a wet suit, bouldering along cliff faces on the coast (the COLD North Atlantic in this case) and periodically jumping into the water! Oh what fun it was! And my hands ended up so frozen by the end of it that it took me about 10 minutes (no joke) to simply untie my shoelaces!

Overall, this was one of the most memorable weekends, spent in great company, of my trip to Ireland thus far! The countryside is beautiful and hiking along in the wilderness is such a thrill! I would recommend scaling any of the little peaks in Ireland to anyone who makes a trip out here!

<-- Some more of my favorites! --

One last look back before leaving it all behind...