HH Challenge, Day Five (Or Inniskeen Road)

Inniskeen Road: July Evening

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -

There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn tonight,

And there's the half-talk code of mysteries

And the wink-and-elbow language of delight... 

Patrick Kavanagh 

Ah yes, I've started throwing a bit of poetry into my blog entries now, it's getting serious.

I know I've fallen behind a bit with my blog entries, but I'm trying to pick up the slack now, and I don't intend to let them get any more than a week late. I'm going to continue to write as if it is actually the day of the events, just to make life easier.

Destination: Inniskeen

I read in a travel book I got once that you can travel light by only bringing a change of clothes and washing them in hotel/hostel/service area sinks in the evenings, wringing them out, hanging them up and leaving them to dry overnight.  This worked out well when I was coming across Europe last year, and it's even more of a necessity on this trip as I set out to be as minimalistic as I could. Including what I was wearing I left home with:

2 t-shirts - I was given a third, bright orange, Run for Life one at the photo shoot on Saturday

2 pairs of trousers (one with the zippy legs so they can be shorts if necessary)

2 pairs of underwear

2 pairs of socks

1 set of pyjamas - for modesty's sake if I was going to be partnering up with somebody

1 pair of swim shorts

1 set of running gear (shorts, tee-shirt, trainers)

1 long sleeve t-shirt

1 fleece

1 set of rain gear (leggings and oilskin)

I realise that the running gear wasn't exactly minimalist (nor were the snorkel and mask or frisbee), but it had been my intention to go for a run in each place I stopped, in order to have a look around, but that hasn't panned out, as my Achilles tendons have been rebelling on me for the last few weeks. I had thought they were getting better when I was doing my packing - not so, it would seem.

Anyway, I washed the t-shirt I'd been wearing at the end of Day 0 in Tramore to try to build good habits for the week (not unlike my blogging). The result was that I had a wet tee-shirt in the morning, but I put that down to having done it late and not wringing it out properly. The book proclaimed that if this happened, the best practice was to dry the clothes by wearing them rather than bunging wet clothes into a backpack to become smelly and horrible. This worked out fine on the morning of Day 1.

It being a couple of days since I had done any washing, I decided to wash my hitchhiking t-shirts, as well as my trousers, my socks and underwear on Tuesday evening in sink of my ensuite in the B&B in Banagher before my shower, giving them the most possible time to dry out before the morning, and taking care to wring out every drop that I could. I fell into bed and straight to sleep until my alarm went off at 7:30am the following morning for my breakfast at 8. I checked my clothes...all wet. In fact I'd say they hadn't dried at all since the evening before. I put on the spare pair of trousers I had (going commando, as I know from experience that wet underwear under dry trousers doesn't work, surprisingly), and stuck on one of the wet tee's which I wore while I was having my breakfast of scrambled eggs, rashers and mushrooms. 

The owner of the B&B had agreed to play in a golf tournament in Birr at 9:15, before a late guest had landed on her doorstep at nearly 11pm the night before, and she said that if I was ready she'd be able to give me a lift out to Birr with her. So I bundled all my wet clothes into a plastic bag and stuffed that into my rucksack. 

My lift from Birr, a very nice lady who told me she wouldn't normally pick up hitchhikers, but liked the way I good humouredly waved at people that couldn't pick me up, recited a few lines of Kavanagh's Inniskeen Road: July evening, when I told her where I was headed. She dropped me off just outside Tullamore - across the road from a stall selling strawberries and various other fruit and veg. I lasted about five minutes before the temptation got too great and I ventured over to get a punnet. He didn't have any change for my twenty, though, so I told him not to worry about it, that if I was still there after he'd got a few more customers he could give me a wave and I'd call over. 

In the meantime, my first t-shirt was pretty much dry, so I took that one off, put it neatly in my bag and put on the high-viz orange one. It was soaking, but the sun was pretty strong and there was a breeze so I thought it would dry quickly enough. After three cars had stopped at the strawberry stall, the guy called me back over and I got myself a punnet of raspberries and another of strawberries. Delighted. 

Outside Tullamore I once again ended up in a car with one of the HH Challengees. Philipp and Camille were on their way northwest to their next destination, Easkey in Sligo and so were staying in the car all the way to its destination in Longford, while I was to get out in Mullingar to make my way northeast. They were very secretive about what they had got in exchange for their orange, and they reckoned that they wouldn't swap it any more, and our driver agreed that it would be difficult to top what they had.

Teapot for Greyhound Barking Muzzle

Coincidentally, my very next lift, when I told him about the challenge, and the orange part of it, said that he had the very thing for me. He began by explaining about greyhound training. Apparently for the first few months of a greyhound's life it is kept out in a field, so it is almost wild. Then, for the next stage of their training, they are brought inside, and kept in a room. Of course, being almost wild, and used to being outside, they don't like the room so they bark their heads off, and will do so all night. Which is where his special item comes in - a greyhound barking muzzle. This muzzle goes over the dog's nose and restricts their mouth so that, while they can drink and breath fairly comfortably they can't open their mouths to bark. After one night of this, the muzzle is removed and the following night, if they begin to bark the trainer just needs to enter the room and wave the muzzle at them. And they hate the muzzle, and don't want it put back on again, so they shut up. I had become quite attached to my teapot, but I'm glad that it went to a good home.

I passed through Kells, and took a few snaps of the round tower and surrounds. Closer inspection of the tower revealed that it was possible to climb up through the door to look inside, so it had to be done, and I took a few more shots that looked like they came straight out of The Ring. 

Checkpoint reached

I made it to Inniskeen in very good time, and on the way heard a lot of stories about Patrick Kavanagh that nobody told us when we were studying his poetry for the Leaving Certificate.  One gentleman told me the story of the time that Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan met in Dublin and decided to go for a drink, but couldn't find a single pub in Dublin that either one or both of them weren't barred from. The gent that dropped me off outside the graveyard which is Kavanagh's final resting place, told me that he remembered Kavanagh, as he was often on his bus home from school, usually drunk and saying dirty things to women and making snide remarks. Someone else described him as an eejit. 

By the time I left Inniskeen, I thought it was high time to try to dry some more clothing. I walked to a place outside the village where I could hang my trousers on a hedge in the sun, where they couldn't be seen by oncoming traffic (of course they could be seen by traffic going the other way, but what can you do). I also hung both pairs of socks on my rucksack straps (I had been wearing my ankle socks, which I'd brought for running, all day under my hiking boots). No cars stopped while I was drying my trousers but I'm not sure if some of them began to pull in and then looked back, saw them hanging up, and changed their minds. When they were dry enough to put on (I dried the back first so that I could sit into somebody's car without soaking the seat, I hopped over a wall and changed, and went back to my post to catch a lift within a few minutes, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence.

I'd decided I'd try to skirt around the border to the North, rather than going through it, for two reasons, one,  because for some reason I seemed to think that by crossing over into Northern Ireland people would suddenly change and be out to put a bullet in my head, and two, for fear that my mother would freak out altogether (as she is awfully nervous of the North), so I headed east toward Cavan, telling people along the way that I knew it wasn't the most direct route to Moville on the Inishowen peninsula, but I really had wanted to see the lakes in Cavan. I made it to Cootehill in Cavan after getting stuck for about two or three hours on the road from Shercock and walking about six kilometres of the thirteen. Nobody was stopping, but eventually I met a farmer on the road, who succeeded in flagging down a car for me which brought me the rest of the way to Cootehill, where, with the help of the friendly people in Hannigan's Shop and Bar, I found a place to stay, in Beeches B&B, where I collapsed after another long day, but having dried the majority of my washing.