what a hike!

It is Monday morning and I should be at the gym but alas, I am feeling all of my joints and my feet having hiked all day Sunday.  It was spectacular!  We started the Beehive Creek Walkway about 10:30 Sunday morning and hiked up to the top of a ridge, we followed the ridge up and down and around through fern vales, sheep pastures, wooded forest areas, pine tree groves until we ended at the Ridge Road.

the beginning

The hike is published as a family friendly 4km (2.5 miles) each way.  We opted for the "road back" option as there were some wicked little stickers in the sheep fields - we had on tennis shoes or sandals...  When I read "family friendly" I was thinking of a sedentary, out of shape American family, not a hyper-fit, wearing hiking boots, always going New Zealand family!

It was sunny and nice so we trudged on enjoying the scenery and the lovely day.  A nice way to spend a Sunday morning we said to each other.  We came upon a woman farmer working sheep with her dogs.  She asked how far we were walking and we told her about the Beehive Creek Walk and she - wide-eyed - said with incredulity, "Well done!".  We should have known...

We had unwittingly and unfortunately headed the wrong way on the road.  Who knows where we would have ended up and when we might have arrived somewhere - it was a gravel road that went, as its name implies (The Ridge Road) along the ridge and quite a long ridge it is.  At some point Adrian and I talked and we decided to go back to the last farm we had passed.  We found farmer Tim bringing in rams for the vet to test today with his great working dogs (7 in all).

We filled our water bottles from the hose and he generously offered to drive us back to the trail head.  We were so surprised at how far we had walked on the gravel road!  I am so grateful to him for driving us as we might still be on that path...  We retraced our steps on the path back to the car.   We met a 70-something year old man carrying his mountain bike on this path as we were barely able to put one foot in front of the other - after questioning him, we learned that he was training for a race and was biking the trail and riding on the roads from where we had come.  See what I mean about hyper-fit!  We were a bit demoralized to say the least...

We were back at the car at 4:30 in the afternoon.  6 hours later.  We figure we walked/hiked between 12 and 15 miles all told.  We had not trained for that or even expected it but WE DID IT!  Adrian and I collapsed when we got home and the kids played happily of course.  It was nothing to them.

We spent Saturday at Owlcatraz in Shannon.  We did some shopping on the square and had a nice lunch at a cafe just outside of town.  We will go back there for shopping!

A really nice weekend. We hope to be recovered soon...

early on, intrepid explorers

fun guy

 fungi

becoming obsessed with fun guy, oops, i mean fungi

across the valley, tree ferns

 hi from Shannon 

See he really is a FUN GUY!!