#11: [13-Jul-24]

#10: [24-May-24]

#9: [11-Oct-12]

#8: [24-May-12]

#7: [05-Aug-08]

#4: [11-Oct-04]

#2: [03-Aug-01]

#1: [27-Jul-01]

#5: [16-Mar-06] (incomplete)

#3: [04-Aug-01] (incomplete)

26-Feb-2008 --

2008 Ireland Tour

Continued from 52N-09W

Why do it the easy way!

As with all of the points in this trip I had made notes beforehand. For this one they read "Nearest road COOMASAHARN, which runs alongside the lake on your LEFT. At end of road, park and walk about 800 yards".

By contrast the the last point, this one I expected to be fairly easy, how wrong can you be?

Approximately 100 minutes after leaving 52N-09W I followed my in car SatNav down some single track roads until I come to a closed gate with some cows on the other side (more on those later). Reverse back for about 1/4 mile - single track, no room to turn around - and park in front of a house.

I asked for and got permission to park there and while I am getting changed turn found to find out I have another spectator, a lovely collie dog who was to follow me most of the way to this point.

The cows appear to have gone, so I followed the track, after about 15 minutes it becomes abundantly clear that I am NOT on the track I expected to be on. I am much further away than I should be, but I put that down to not taking the car past the closed gate....

Oh well, might as well carry on, can't be too hard can it?

Let's just say that the next 3/4 mile or so involved the following - traversing peat cutting areas, skirting a lake, sinking almost to my knees in water then climbing several hundred feet up a 1 in 3 hill. Good exercise or something like that.....

Looking at the map afterwards, I realise that instead of coming at this from almost due East I have instead come from almost due North. The only conclusion I can come to is that my Sat Nav was trying to find the absolute shortest distance and so I turned onto the single track roads too soon.

Eventually I come to the path mentioned by previous visitors, cross over that and head off down the hill towards the rather large lake, dodging sheep and gorse bushes as I go.

I am here! Set the Garmin into averaging mode and sit down to take in the scenery and basically have a bit of a rest. It is a superb example of a glacial valley and the view alone was worth the trouble to get there.

1039 samples later, the altitude has settled down to 871 feet. this is by a long way the most accurate visit here, accuracy recorded as 4.9 feet!!! Just 1.3m.

I am also pleased to report that the previous visitor here who marked a large rock was not only in the wrong place by a few yards, but nature is reclaiming the rock and you can barely see his vandalism any more.

I now have a line of visits (bar the water between England & Ireland) that stretches from 52N 01E through to 52N 10W a distance of 468 miles. The next landfall is 52N 56W in Newfoundland 1926 miles away.

all that remained was to walk back out, this time I stuck a bit more to the direct route. Back to those "cows", when I was approaching the last sharp right turn on the path only about 600 yards from the gate and 900 yards from the car I came across those "cows" again. Blocking the path, four of them.

I had hoped they would simply move off when they saw me approach, after all I had on my bright yellow outdoor coat. They didn't. In fact one of them moved to the centre of the path to stand facing me. Closer inspection of certain parts of their anatomy revealed that three of them were young bulls and this one didn't seem to happy at my approach.

I reasoned that they would be unable to follow me into the peat bog (or so I hoped anyway) and so for the last time today I took a 100 yards detour out into the soggy spongy stuff to loop around them.

When I got back to the car and started to get changed, my companion from earlier came back for a final scratch behind the ears.

Continued at 53N-07W