This story is part of our Walking, Hiking and Meaningful Routes series.
How it all began
The adventure, and it hasn’t stopped yet, began when I was working at the Australian embassy in Dublin in 1991. By chance I befriended ‘Harry’ on a pub crawl that had been organised by the YMCA cricket club. I could tell the long version of this story but I won’t. Suffice to say that numerous friendships, and ultimately one marriage, were minted that evening, by the time it ended at Johnnie Foxes, a pub in Glencullen, about 40 kms from Dublin. As a non-drinker I undoubtedly have a clearer recollection of events than most.
Harry and I clicked from the start. Shortly afterwards he hosted me at his house for dinner and introduced me to his two flatmates, Peter and Dick. Harry’s path was traditional: high school, university and then medicine, ultimately becoming an opthalmologist. His two flat mates, both older, trod a different road. Peter was a disillusioned, ‘apprenticed’ priest, while Dick, the oldest, had been working as an agricultural scientist.
A bunch of other people were there, mostly doctors, and we have been part of a close friendship group ever since. I have spent time with many of them all over the world during my time in the military and humanitarian endeavours. And I returned to Ireland for various weddings, children’s baptisms and shared holidays. Moreover, two of them, Peter, and Catherine, separately, came to Australia to work as GPs for a year.
Don’t give up reading just yet, as we are getting closer to the Kerry Way. I haven’t forgotten. I just have a few more yarns to spin first.
Dusty boots across Ireland
In 1991 our glue was a mutual love of the outdoors. During my four years in Ireland we would frequently hire a countryside cottage for a weekend, and go roaming.
The first of these many adventures unfolded at Camp, a village on the Dingle peninsula. Dingle was the location for the film Ryan’s Daughter, released in 1970. I had always been mesmerised by Dingle and it was on my bucket list. The panorama is kaleidoscopically spellbinding. I also had my heart set on visiting the spot where rebels are filmed unloading smuggled weapons from a fishing boat during an atrocious storm. The scene encapsulates gale force winds, sheeting, horizontal rain, menacing black clouds, and monster waves cascading in from the Atlantic.
However, it was not to be. In asking the locals (confirmed more recently on AI) I discovered that “The scenes in Ryan’s daughter where villagers smuggle weapons from a ship during a storm were filmed in South Africa, not Ireland!”
Nevertheless, Dingle is an area of outstanding natural beauty. And the road from Camp is an experience. Having served as an infantry officer on active service in two campaigns I consider that I can cope quite well in the scrub. Even so, I was unprepared for the ‘Irish way’.
You see, we had all arrived independently at Camp on a Friday evening. Foolishly, I was up and ready for the hills at 6am on Saturday. I sat alone in a chilly kitchen and waited and waited. Indeed, it was an exceedingly long wait before there was any other sign of life. From around 9am, in dribs and drabs, the others surfaced. The next surprise, me being the only non-doctor, was the expectation of healthy eating. You know, muesli, fruit, yoghurt, and smashed avocados. But no, forget everything you think you know about the trans fat and cholesterol scare. The preferred Irish medical breakfast, it seems, is an unhurried affair, underpinned by a cast iron frying pan filled with bacon rashers, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes, and pork sausages with sides of toast, butter, marmalade, and tea.
Eventually, after a convivial and congenial feast, at about 10.30am or thereabouts we strolled out of the door and headed into the hills. By 4.30pm we were ensconced in a pub. During my four Irish years I was lucky. I walked east, west, north, south and centre and there were many ‘Camp’ style weekends!
Belfast interlude
In 1991 I drove to Belfast, then still a novice and without much thought about the Troubles. I parked my car in the city and was walking downtown when I heard someone behind me screaming, ‘I wouldn’t be parking my fucking a car there if I were you.’ Also being a simpleton, I enquired ‘Why not?’ And the reply? ‘Because you have fucking Dublin number plates!’
Another Belfast memory, and I went several times, was a ‘feeling’, rather than an event. As a young man I was commissioned into the British Army. My regiment served in Northern Ireland, but it did so after I had resigned. Nevertheless, it was quite an eerie feeling to walk around the city and suddenly come face to face with an Army patrol only to find myself at the foresight end of an SLR (Rifle). And I did walk around in both the Catholic and Protestant areas.
And now for the Kerry Way!
Fast forward to 2025. I was invited for this walk to celebrate Dick’s retirement. He had gone on to become a professor of gynaecology. Harry, Peter, and I had the luxury of taking time off to join him. It was a four-day, laughter filled adventure. While being quite fit for my age – I exercise daily – I thought I would die when we took off. Back in the 1990s, I was 46 and the doctors were twenty years younger. And now the difference in speed between those 60-year-olds and this 80-year-old is much greater than the math implies. From the outset, Harry, Peter, and Dick walked incredibly quickly. I followed as best I could albeit by an ever widening distance in their wake. By lunch time on the first day, I was well and truly exhausted. But somehow I hung in. Long dormant muscles stretched, and walking became easier by the day.
If you are interested in the Kerry Way, just check the internet. There are plenty of options – numerous B&Bs, no shortage of views and an overwhelming abundance of places to stop for a Guinness (in my case pink lemonade) and enjoy gluttony.
As a grand finale we finished our trek with a highly recommended, warm ‘as long as you like’, soaking in a seaweed bath, in old whisky barrels in Sneem. Harry, Peter, Dick, and me.
Finally, we four sweat-cleansed beings met up with our other old friends in a remote, pub for dinner and a spot of heavy reminiscing and embellished story telling….and one more event worth relating.
During dinner, Harry disappeared into the pitch-black garden for a pee. On his return, he happened across a hysterical waiter hovering over the cook, who was lying flat on his back on the lawn. He was in the throes of a heart attack. Harry announced, ‘No need to worry, I have a table full of doctors sitting inside!’
The doctors – a mixture of specialists and GPs – reacted impressively. They arose as one and rushed outside. And, in what might have been a ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’ or in this case, ‘too many docs suffocate the patient’ moment, Catherine, a GP, assumed command and ordered her colleagues to return inside. She ministered to the cook until the ambulance arrived.
You might be thinking our bill could have been waived. Sadly no; I guess saving someone’s life must be reward enough.
Some memories really stick
It is time to go; I have finished reflecting on part of my Irish story, which started with the pub crawl. Let me finish by fast forwarding to the end of the first chapter, and what is perhaps my favourite photograph. I captured this fleeting moment during our last walk in 1995. The doctors, by a special request, burst into Irish rebel songs. Hearing the lyrics echoing around the remote Donegal hills was another poignant reminder of what might have been if I had stayed in the British Army.
Meandering since 1962. 18 Passports, 105 countries and still waddling.