Cloghane to Castlegregory: Day Seven of the Dingle Way (The Riley Memorial Walk)

With heavy hearts (sorry for the cliche-it fits), we walked on. Luckily, today was the infamous beach walk portion of the Dingle Way. The walk, for us, was nearly 20 miles due to where our Cloghane B and B was located. Amazingly, over 3/4 of it was on the firm sands of various beaches, including 6 miles of Ireland's longest beach, the Fermoyle Strand. Really, as lame as it sounds, the sun, beach, and tranquility of the scenery was calming and therapeutic. We cried, of course, but we actually managed to laugh as well.  A few kilometers into the walk, we did a bit of a memorial for Riley in the sand. With our new walking poles, we drew a picture and wrote his name, knowing that the tide would come in that night and wash him away.

I found tons of shells on the beach! I know for those of you who live by a beach, this is not a big score! But for someone living in Wisconsin, seashells are seriously fun! I found the complete shell of a scallop, a few shiny something-or-others that will make great chunky jewelry to go around my neck, and some coral! Great fun:)

We stopped in at a pub after the first 12 miles of beach walking.

It should be noted that, we sat very, very unknowingly close  to the B and B that we were supposed to stay in that evening. But, we ventured on for another 8 miles to get to our supposed location. To make matters a bit worse (although at this point, we didn't know anything was going wrong), the second part of the walk today was VERY poorly marked. We actually ended up asking for directions at a trailer park diner. Not being able to follow the waymarking signs, we ended up walking the last bit of the walk on a highway, seriously dodging cars. When we finally made it into Castlegregory, we were ready to throw our bags down, take off our hiking boots, and have a beer. Over 20 miles is a lot of walking!

So, Andy called our B and B. The hostess told us we'd have to walk another five miles of highway walking to get to her place.

Say what? This would have been fine, but there was no offer to come and get us. We sat at the local pub, Ned Natterjack's, debating. The bartender told us about another place called the Orchard House. We walked to her place, asked if she had a room, and BINGO- we were set! We felt bad canceling with the other place, but we honestly could not walk any further nor did we want to walk into town for every beer for the next 48 hours. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.

We went back to Ned Natterjack's that evening and managed to have ourselves a good time! There was a fabulous band, with an amazing accordion player! The food was good, there was a 3-foot tall leprechaun playing a drum, and the music was lively. Speaking of which, have you ever heard the Irish version of Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds"? Amazingly, it sounded great.

..not to mention the lyrics were very fitting for our moods..."Don't worry about a thing...Every little thing is gonna be alright..." After such a fun night, we knew that someday, we might not feel as terrible as we did upon waking up this morning, and that one day soon, every little thing would be alright.