With 47 kilometres to complete over the next two days, I started late to avoid doing too much on the first day, lingering over a coffee I bought at the nearby convenience store. Once on the road, first stop was St Patrick's well at the edge of town. It was a spring in a pond rather than a classic well with a rope and bucket. Two streams flowed away from the pond in opposite directions (which I thought slightly odd, usually only one stream leaves a spring). You are meant to walk through the water in bare feet and pray to benefit from its healing properties. I did not bother, would it have helped my knee? On the trees opposite a variety of bits of cloth, clothing, rosary beads, pictures and the like had been hung. Not especially pretty unlike the horse chestnut tree just coming into brilliant green leaf beside me.
A long straight road led me uphill away from Belcoo, giving a view down onto Loughs Macnean, Upper and Lower, and the grey mountains beyond, indistinct in this morning's light drizzle. Then I turned into conifer forest through which I walked for the rest of the day. Near the entrance I saw my first Ulster Way direction indicator, a yellow arrow and a yellow fern motif, both on blue roundels.
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| Looking back from the road out of Belcoo. |
I had been reading a book called "The Edge" in which Dermot Breen describes his walk, or self-styled pilgrimage, around the Ulster Way to raise money for Cancer Research. Much of the book is about his grief on prematurely losing his wife to ovarian cancer. My main interest was his description of the parts of the Ulster Way I was about to encounter. Today's walk he found a bit of a slog! I would not go that far (although I walked a shorter distance today than he did). Primroses brightened the path, a friendly dog accompanying two ramblers came to say "hello", and as Dermot pointed out Lough Formal was an attractive spot with the twin hills of Formal Môr and Formal Beg (big and little) rising behind it. Formal Môr had a path up so you could admire the vista from the top and a picnic table at the base. By the picnic table there was a post with various spanners and levers attached, presumably to assist if you had a puncture on one of the many bike routes in these forests.
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| View of Lough Formal from the top of Formal Môr. |
After a brief road walk I continued my trek entering Big Dog Forest. The highlights of this section were two hills; Big Dog and Little Dog. Once there were two Irish Wolfhounds, Bran and Skeola, belonging to the famous, giant Finn McCool. Catching her scent they chased a witch. Though the witch turned into a deer she could not outrun the dogs. Irish Wolfhounds are pretty big and I guess those belonging to a giant are even bigger. To escape she cast a spell to turn the dogs into mountains, and I suppose one dog was bigger than the other.
A path led up to the top of Little Dog. At the top there were benches facing different directions with a white wall behind them to protect you from the wind. From these you could admire the countryside for miles around, all the way to the sea in Donegal Bay. Sadly today's visibility meant I could not see it at its best. I was planning to camp around this point and had not seen a good spot recently (strange how the good places to camp all disappear just around when you need them). Seeing a patch of green a little way beneath the summit, sheltered by young trees, I decided to pitch here. Not ideal, a little on the small side and not as flat as I thought, however, I managed to pitch my tent although it looked a little "skew- whiff".
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| View from the summit of Little Dog Mountain. |
I had climbed back to the top to gain a phone signal to check in with my dear wife, and I doubted I would be disturbed again. I was wrong. On returning to my tent I met a lad climbing up. The place was not as remote as I thought.
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