Countdown to Ireland

On Friday, Andrew and I are heading eastwards to spend five days hiking across the Irish countryside with two of Andrew's college friends. We're following a trail called the Wicklow Way that stretches from south Dublin all the way to Clonegal. Over the course of five days, we'll be traveling by foot from Knockcree to Shillelagh--as you can see on the map below, that means we're doing almost the whole thing!

Andrew and his friend did a couple days of the trail during study abroad in college, and apparently it is a lot of walking through pastures and country backyards. We're staying at hostels, B&Bs and the odd cottage, and we'll be doing four-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half hours of hiking each day. At least the weather is going to be cool (it's also going to be wet).

I'm looking forward to it...I think. I've got my misgivings, mostly about what it's going to be like to spend seven hours walking, and right now I'm bogged down with figuring out what we still need to do before we leave on Friday. We've got a decently long to-do and to-buy list, and I didn't get to check anything off of it today; Andrew says this is just because I didn't put enough on it to begin with. Today we purchased reading material for the trip as well as small moleskin notebooks for travel journaling (I won't have internet access over there, but I will take detailed notes, a la beach trips in Mexico); I also started throwing some things into a pile to be packed Thursday night. Tomorrow I'll knock out most other things, hopefully: buying duffle covers for the plane trip, tiny shampoo bottles, a toothbrush, a bandana, socks, turkey jerky, calling the bank so they don't freak over over foreign credit card charges...hoo boy.

But, we've got the important stuff: books to read, notebooks for writing, camera for picture-taking (of course).

So, next week I'll be blogging even less than usual, but I'll presumably return with a flurry of posts about sheep and Guiness and things that come up when you spend a week with three people (two almost strangers) testing the limits of your physical endurance. Should be exciting.