☘️Walking the Ring of Kerry in Ireland☘️
The first character appeared before I had properly begun. It was a horse. We had been walking the Kerry Way for only a day when we encountered it somewhere among the mountains and rain. The path was narrow. The horse was large. We stopped. The horse looked at us. We looked at the horse. He seemed the enthusiastic sort and kept following us. In the end, we took the sensible option and found another way.
Welcome to Ireland
The horse was an apt introduction to the Emerald Isle. There would be other characters. Cows who occupied paths with the confidence of road authorities. A bull announced by a warning sign but never actually encountered. Sheep in such abundance that they became part of the landscape. A robin that appeared beside my rucksack as if checking whether I had packed correctly. And, eventually, a puffin.
But first there was the rain. The rain came down over the mountains as though it had been waiting for us. During the first days, the Kerry Way disappeared into mist and wet stone. Our boots slipped and our clothes became heavy. The path seemed to have little interest in whether we were enjoying ourselves. And then, almost without warning, the valley would open. In Glencar, after crossing the mountains in the rain, the sun came out.
The landscape changed in minutes. Wet stone shone. The sky became a vivid blue, and the valley turned green again. After a challenging day, we found somewhere to sit and drank a glass of wine in the sunshine. It was not the day we had planned. It had become better.
Perhaps that was when I began to understand something about walking. A long-distance trail does not give you what you have ordered. It gives you what it has. There were difficult days. One stage became longer than expected because we missed a turn. Another felt endless, even though it contained some of the most beautiful scenery of the journey. Later came a day when the Irish summer decided to become something altogether different: thirty degrees, under a sun that made every climb feel steeper.
I had imagined Ireland in the rain. It had other ideas. I had also imagined the coast. There were days when the Atlantic appeared dramatically, opening out beyond a ridge, and others when the sea seemed to have disappeared altogether. The path remained the path, and I walked it.
On a day of rest, I visited one of Ireland’s treasures: Skellig Michael. Famous for its ancient monastery and its colony of puffins. They are lively birds. On land, they look charmingly clumsy. A bit like tiny, overdressed officials waddling to an important meeting. But in the air, they are astonishingly fast. These beautiful little birds seemed entirely unconcerned with either history or tourism. They sat beside thousand-year-old stone walls and appeared to be thinking: “Interesting. Another boatload of humans.” One sat there and looked directly at me. For a moment, it seemed to pose, and I took the photograph.
Later, on the boat returning, dolphins appeared. They moved through the water beside us, playful and effortless, surfacing and disappearing again. I watched them and realised this was how Ireland worked. You went looking for one thing and were given another. A monastery became puffins and dolphins. A difficult walking day became a story. A wrong turn became part of the journey.
The company of characters grew, came and went. Lambs who posed for photographs with the confidence of professional models. Sheep sheltering beneath rocks from the heat, having apparently understood the weather better than we had. A robin who came to inspect my rucksack, and horses again, this time much less interested in causing diplomatic incidents.
But there was always the wind. The wind had been there all along. It moved across the mountains and the Atlantic, through the trees and over the open hills. Sometimes it pushed. Sometimes it cooled. Sometimes it simply reminded me that Ireland was an island. Words of W. B. Yeats came to mind: “The world is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” Ireland does that to you.
Close to the final days, the path seemed to slow down. There was a beautiful stretch beside a lake, with sunlight filtering through the leaves. There was nothing dramatic to see, nothing that demanded a photograph. Only light, water and trees. And the sound of my feet. Surprisingly, on one of the last days, both the path and the weather became harder again.
That seemed fitting. The final days should not necessarily be easy. There were still hills to climb, tired legs, moments when the distance seemed longer than it looked on the map. But something had changed. I was no longer asking what the trail would give me. I was simply walking.
On the morning of the final stage, the host at our B&B gave me something unexpected. Not directions. Not weather information. But a sense of wisdom and an urge to keep walking. He was one of those people whose presence made you listen, even before he had said very much. It was a good way to begin the final day.
And somewhere along the way, I thought again about a question I had been carrying with me: What will this trip, what will Ireland give me? The answer did not arrive immediately. It had been hiding in the journey and the rain. In the mountains I had climbed and in the wrong turns I had recovered from. In the heat I had endured and the stairs at Skellig Michael. In the moments when I had been unsure but continued.
It was not courage exactly. Nor resilience, although I do think I gained a bit of toughness. It was less grand than either. Ireland had given me a quiet but solid confidence in myself. I realised how grateful I was for its freedom.
Perhaps this is what a long walk does. It does not necessarily give you answers. It gives you enough silence to hear the questions properly. It makes space, and it slows down the world to the rhythm of your feet. Somewhere in that space, the magic that had been quietly present all along became visible to me. My senses had grown sharper. I left the Kerry Way with tired legs, photographs, stories and a company of characters that had never been part of the itinerary. I took them all with me. The wind most of all. The Kerry Way had done what paths sometimes do. It had given me something I didn’t realise I had lost.☘️
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