crap- WHERE AM I?

1:16 PM Léonie Dupuis 0 Comments

The title of this blog posts pretty much summarizes how I felt earlier today, lost, in the forest trails of Glendalough. For some background information, I decided to go on a day tour of Glendalough and the Kilkenny. As we approach our first stop, Glendalough, our tour guide encourages us to go see the Upper Lake because Glendalough literally translates to "city of two lakes" and the upper lake is the nicer, bigger one. So, off I go, following the signs towards "Upper Lake."

At some point, there is a fork in the path. One leads up, to other leads right towards some kind of house. Thinking to myself "Upper Lake must be up," I took the path that went up. (Mistake #1.)

So here I am, climbing up and up, and I start to realize that I'm walking away from where the lake should be... Having grown up exploring mountains, I can sense when trails start going to the wrong side of the mountain. To confirm my sense of unease, I pull out Google Maps. Sure enough, I was walking away from the lake, but I was perpendicular to it. With examination of the google maps (which shows no trails, just where the body of water was) I managed to go cross-country and reach a river. There were some rocks every now and then, so like a ninja, I crossed the river (which was stressful because the rocks were slippery, I had a camera in my hand, and I was not dressed for cross-country adventures.)

The river I somehow crossed without getting wet.

After crossing the river, I start seeing people and I quickly start going up this new trail. And then stairs appeared- 827 of them to be exact- and I went up. Every. Single. One. I get to the top, expecting to see the lake only to realize that the top of the mountain is a viewing point of the lakes which are both at ground level!!

First time at the top! I was feeling triumphant in this shot, but I was ready to head back for the bus!

Time was starting to run out, so I quickly start running down the stairs with only 40 minutes to catch my bus. 3/4 of the way down the mountain, I stop. I left my phone at the top. I literally ran back up the mountain, got to the top, extremely out of breath and retrieved my phone. Took  one more photo just because I felt like I deserved it, and I ran back down. At this point, only 25 minutes remain before the bus's departure.

The photo I took from the top after getting there for the second time. Ironically, you can only see Lower Lake in this shot.

As I'm jogging back to the bus, I see the freaking lake. So I stopped for a photo, and ran again. The guy who took it for me must have thought I was crazy!!

Upper Lake!

Point is, I made it back to the bus. I made it to Kilkenny, and the day was grand from thereon out.