Ballysitteragh

Thursday 15th September 2005 

This walk was a total wash out. I drove over to the Dingle Peninsula in the morning with varying degrees of rain all the way. In Dingle I decided to head up to the Connor Pass and see what the weather was like. It was raining and cloudy, but because I can't resist doing a walk I headed westwards over Beenabrack along a grassy, boggy ridge up to Ballysitteragh. And then after lunch I walked all the way back. Or at least I tried and strode confidently out across the hillside and down the hill. Eventually I thought I wasn’t recognizing the landscape that I was passing (such as there was) even though I supposed to be returning by the way that I had come and when I got my compass out I realised that I had been heading down the long, southern slopes instead of east back along the ridge. I was frustrated with myself and climbed back up the hill almost all the way up to the summit of Ballysitteragh before I could turn right and proceed, now correctly, through the low cloud, wind and rain along the ridge and back to the car. The most I saw throughout the whole walk was the northern edge of the ridge which falls steeply to the loch filled Cloghane valley. There were no views to be seen except murkily at the car park and the ground underfoot was very wet and boggy. It rained heavily and the wind blew strongly almost all the way so I got soaked! Two hours of walking in this was enough to put me off for the rest of the day! I drove back to Dingle and wandered the streets for an hour before driving around the picturesque Slea Head to the Dunquin Youth Hostel where I hoped I would have better weather for my last day's walk in Ireland the following day.