Furths on the Emerald Isle

Ally and Cat are keen to climb all 13 Furths in Ireland, so they have arranged a holiday to do so and invited us to join them. A Furth is a mountain over 3000 feet outwith Scotland but still in Great Britain. In other words they would be Munros if they were in Scotland. They invited Davie and Chanel too, but it's still Chanel's school term so she can't come. I was keen for her to come, because I will miss her and also because as a retired teacher I know what it's like to be restricted as to when you can take your holidays. So I found flights so that Chanel could join us for the last part of the holiday, but she understandably felt that it was too long a journey for only a couple of days. Today has been rather a long day. Ally, James and I got up nice and early to make sure we were in good time to catch the midday P&O ferry from Cairnryan to Larne. The day was divided roughly into two hour slots; two hours to the ferry terminal, two hours on the ferry and two hours to Dublin. Added into that were some contingency time, and two stops in Tescos in Northern Ireland for Ally to find his favourite protein breakfast drink, and some time being lost in the countryside, of which more later. It was very warm and sunny and it was rather too hot indoors in the ferry, so we spent a lot of time out on deck. The crossing was smooth and pleasant. We picked up Davie from Dublin Airport about an hour after he landed, so our timings worked out quite well. 

We are spending the night in a little cottage called Stables Cottage in County Wicklow, about an hour south of Dublin. It’s attached to one of the large horse farms in the area, and we visited the horses in their stable, they are racing horses and very fine. Our arrival at the cottage was delayed by 3/4 of an hour of trying to find it around the village of Grange Con, due to terrible directions from our Airbnb host, so we were tired and relieved by the time we got there. Grange Con is an attractive wee village, with a little Madonna in the centre who has a blue neon halo! The cottage itself was rather basic but fine for one night and we soon settled ourselves in and had tea, and then went for a walk up to the top of the little hill. We got fantastic sunset views all around the hills, and we could see tomorrow’s hill, Lugnaquilla, in the distance. Ally has now gone to collect Cat from Dublin airport (he had to retrace the journey, which was due to my mistake when I booked the cottage - I had forgotten that Cat’s flight from London was much later than Davie’s flight from Manchester.) 

* Update - By half past midnight all five travellers were safely ensconced in the cottage, ready for our Irish adventures to begin.