Glengarriff, the Beara Peninsula, and Hungry Hill, Ireland

Looking south on the way up, Jen focused.

 Today, we took a drive out to the Beara Peninsula in West Cork and hiked Hungry Hill, which was brought to my attention by Missoulian Steve Sheriff. I found a description of a 7-8 mile loop hike here, which is what we followed. It took us 5-6 hours, and the views and countryside were splendid, though we were told we'd missed the truly epic summit views. Oh well, it was a grand day.

The ridge heading up to the summit. We followed the grass gully just to the right.

Heading up the gully.

Stepping into the fog as we head up.

The last push up to the summit ridge.

This nice fellow walked with us a ways on top.

Looking off to the south.

The view north.

Some of the geology on our descent.

Looking back up to where we'd come from.

Jen and I kept saying how much Ireland reminded us of New Zealand. One of the biggest differences is the culture and the people. Kiwi's are lovely, but it's been fun to find new friends in the Irish. After our hike, we stopped in Glengarriff for a pint at a happening little pub and had a great conversation with a couple from Cork City over our first delicious pint of Beamish. 

A lot of the the Irish that immigrated to Butte came from exactly this area. My uncle's family, for example, have the name Harrington, which is local to the Beara Penninsula (three of the businesses in Glengarriff went by the name Harrington), as is O'Sullivan, which is the last name of my mother's best friend. And a few days later we met a fellow named Johnny Walsh, who said that the Walsh name is local to Sheep's Head Peninsula, which is next door to the Beara Peninsula (I had a good friend in grade school by the name of Tim Walsh), and Johnny knew about Butte, saying that at one point in the past half of the town he grew up in left for mining jobs in Butte. Finally, it should be no surprise that this was the area of copper mining in Ireland during the 1800's.   

Betsie, the dog that followed us the entire way (and was quite tired at the end).

New friends at the pub in Glengarriff and Beamish Stout (brewed in Cork) below.