We pass a family working in the bog, and get some friendly waves, and less friendly dog barks.Ī few kilometres later, we come to a split in the road. Somehow, he manages to flip the bottles quickly and slam a lid on, not spilling any of the precious liquid. We sit there in mild astonishment, then take a nap. Carl forget's how the volume of water bottles work, and tries to pour a litre of water into a litre bottle that isn't empty. In the late afternoon we reach a bog, and take a break lying on the dusty, spongy lane. The grassy bogland around is dappled with sunlight from the fast moving clouds, and the heat is doing that magical thing where things look bigger and closer than imaginable. Our semi-track becomes more road like again, and we briefly enjoy crossing some sheep fields before returning to tarmac again.
The road does become more "track-like" as we continue, and once we finish climbing it bends around a forest and opens up into a valley edged with the actual Bluestack Mountains. The heat continued to climb as we did, the clouds turning into a general heat haze. A car then chose this perfectly timed moment to drive passed us. What we were able to confirm with all this looking was that we were in fact already on the "track" section of the trail. Which makes situations like this take more than one look. Not every mud drain, however, is a bridge. It can be a small river, maybe 6 meters wide, or it could be a drain featuring some slow moving mud. When you see a bridge marked on a map, over what looks to be a small river, there really are a lot of options for what this might be. We stand at a tiny bridge and admire the view. The road starts to climb agin, and the views down over the lake are beautiful. Our plan is to take a break when we reach the off-road track that the map says is up ahead. It's peaceful, but we know we've only gone maybe 8km, and so turn our legs back to the road. We meet a family taking on the waters edge, and wait for them to leave before we start doing the exact same thing. The water is perfectly still, like a mirror as we stand leaning against a wall, panting. The trail takes you from Donegal town itself up to Lough Eske. The clouds are all hovering low on the horizon, feeling ominous and casting weird shadows across the landscape. It's late morning and already the day is incredibly humid, our t-shirts sticking to us as we keep moving up these small hills, hair plastered across our foreheads. Somehow, we've walked the right way, and wind under some bridges and start up a hill. The signage for the trail at the very beginning is pretty non-existent, so we try and follow the maps we've printed off, and the one or two uselessly placed signs out of the town. The next morning we get up slowly, pack up our stuff and immediately stop in town for a coffee. We arrive into Donegal Town the evening before, and spend a night in the Donegal Independent Hostel - a really nice place, only a short walk out the bay from the town itself. 5th June, 2018 Day 1: Donegal Town - Bluestack Centre (23km)
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