"Ford of the Heroes" - Meelin Hill

In the Ford of the Heroes

there he lies,

brave Tom Crean

noble son of Annascaul

"Ode to Tom Crean" - Brigid O Connor

Hello hello, step in to the warmth of The Art of Caesura!

You may recall that one of my New Year's Resolutions for the blog was to bring more of the lifestyle stuff into the blog. As you can see, I've failed miserably thus far, with only 2 non-miniature related posts all year!! So, today we're going to change all that!

I want to show you a hike that my wife and I went on a few weeks ago in ancient Annascaul.

Annascaul means "River of Shadows" or "Ford of the Heroes" and is a town about half an hour from home, and when I say it's ancient, I mean ANCIENT!! For starters it's where a bunch of tectonic plates collided and they have found 380 million year old fossilized sand dunes there, as well as the footprints of one of the very first land animals on Earth!

In slightly more recent history, Annascaul is the closest town to the grave of the legendary mythological hero, Cu Chulainn ("The Hound of Ulster"). And the place is littered with standing stones, ogham stones and other neolithic wonders.

Here he is in comic format

Zooming forward in time, Annascaul is now best known as the birthplace of Tom Crean, the Antarctic explorer. Crean was part of Robert Scott's ill-fated attempt on the South Pole and then went back for more with Shakleton! When he got back from Shakleton's expedition apparently he settled down, opened a pub ("The South Pole Inn") and never really talked about his adventures. We went to his pub after our hike...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves!

We had done an epic hike in Annascaul before, and knew there was much more to be seen, so we set off with only one bit of the "essential" gear (we had the rain-gear down, but were sans map / compass / GPS / food / water).

I must say, the hike up Meelin Hill was uncharacteristically well signposted, although the "three peaks of Annascaul" seemed more like 7 peaks! We were lucky to get some great views from the top of Inch Beach and the Iveragh Peninsula across the way.

The rain stayed away for most of the day, so we were thrilled.

Every good hike ends in a pub, and ours ended in the famed South Pole Inn. Guinness has never tasted so good!

Thanks for tuning in for my first hiking post in a loooooonggg ass time, right here on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Being Mortal - Atul Gawande
Listening: Counting Crows

Next Week:

"Left to pit his wits and will against nature's fury..."

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