A quick Sunday afternoon mountain

 

 

Cycling to Ballyknockan then along a forestry track to Silsean, our nearest mountain (700m).

Returning to Ballyknockan via the quarry road. Hiking stats: 3.8 miles, max altitude 697m, elevation gain 563m. Barefoot of course.

And then Lugnaquilla

Whole track 42 miles

Hiking part: 6.8 miles there and back

I passed the access point (trail head) on my way back from Keadeen and, after checking the map, this sparked enough interest to do it.  My cycle route was similar, and I parked the bike at Ballinabarney Gap and set off. It was Sunday afternoon and I met several other hikers including a couple possibly older that 1, which was kind of encouraging.

Kelsha Bridge over Slaney

A cool place to swim (literally)

On the way there, and again on the way home, I stopped for a swim in the Slaney River.  Why not, I asked myself? After all I'm here to enjoy myself.

My photos follow, or if you prefer a Google Album go here.

The access point / trail head

Looking back climbing Ballineddan 704m

The goal before me 

Slievemaan summit 811m

Looking back to Keadeen

Lugnaquilla, two hikers coming over the crest

From the summit

Others were there

Mostly kitted up

Turlough Hill somewhere in the distance

A thingy to tell what you're looking at

The military warning sign

Returning

Goodbye Lugnaquilla

I climbed Keadeen

My track: 36.4 miles cycling

and 4.4 miles hiking

A new mountain peak for me: Keadeen at the south west limit of the Wicklow Mountains and standing somewhat separate connected only by the Ballinabarny Gap.  It was Sunday and I met several other groups tackling the peak, though none without shoes and mostly with those hiking sticks which I abhor (at least for easy hiking like this). There was even a parking place, which I biked to from home, and the trail was well used though boggy in places.

Overall stats: 40.8 miles, elevation gain 1394m, maximum 658m though, interestingly, other sites report varying heights e.g. 653m, 635m, and OpenTopoMap, which is the best open sourced map ever, reports a spot height of 705.3m though its contours do not bear this up.

Here is a pile of my photos, the last one being of mist rising from our lake the early morning after. Click on the images to view full-screen.

I climbed Benbulbin

My track: 7.1 miles elevation gain 521m

I got a bit lost on the way to the access point and a helpful local man gave me directions to Luke's Bridge and told me that on no account was I to climb Benbulbin as it would be too dangerous with the recent rainfall.  However on parking the car it was evident that numerous others were climbing so I dismissed his advice and set off, and was glad I did.

Luke's Bridge, seen looking down from the top

Looking down one of the many fissures

The relatively flat top

Looking back on the way down

The inscription on the bronze plate affixed to the triangulation pillar reads:

Kevin Myers

12.12.74 - 7.7.2002

Passed on in the middle of living his dreams

Cheers to our mate kev

Great memories live on

Love from

Trav Beth Russ Tracy Wrenny

Steve Nick Viv Amy

and all your aussie mates

That he came from Australia is evident. But what were his dreams? - and how did he die: was it on this mountain?  Sadly Google could tell me no more so I was left wondering. 

The climb and views from the top of this unusual mountain were awesome, ecstatic almost. Marred only by the many other hikers attempting it, with their hiking gear, many layers of clothing, boots and sticks, but none barefoot or lightly clad as I was. But we coexisted amicably. 

And what are my dreams? And will they be of sufficient consequence to live on in anyone else's thoughts should I decease? And does it matter anyway?

Although it mattered to me enough to wonder and to write this post that this man, otherwise unknown to me, should have friends loving enough to erect this epitaph on having his dreams so abruptly extinguished.

Moone and Timolin

Moone and Timolin are villages close to each other in the south of Co.Kildare. My cycle ride this afternoon took me past a signpost that announced I was within a few km of these villages and this brought back memories of purchasing my first PC, as mention of either village always does.

My track, 38.2 miles, 12.45mph average

My route was "go anywhere you like but keep away from Dunlavin". Which you will see from my track that I did very successfully. It's not that there is anything particularly wrong with Dunlavin, just that all roads in this area appear to lead there and it is thus a struggle to keep away.

So - my first PC. This was shortly after my decision to start an electronics design consultancy, Microlite. Having used a multi-user computer in my work for the BBC I at least knew that I needed one but not much else. I left the BBC in 1981 and in the next 7 years before Microlite I was totally out of touch with the world of electronics. During those years I did other things like learning to live in a community, building work, picking potatoes, a painting and decorating business, teaching people to drive, I even helped to cook a meal for a restaurant. And during those years I was oblivious to the birth of the PC.

The decision before me was the lower cost Amstrad PCW which used the CP/M operating system, or the IBM PC. Thankfully I chose the latter. I can't remember how one did market research back then before the dawn of the internet, but somehow I found this outfit in Moone. I must have seen an advert somewhere because I can still sort of picture the front of this XT desktop. And I longed for an excuse to go to Moone to see it for myself and possibly purchase. Back then one couldn't just jump in a car on a whim - money was short and getting permission was the order of the day. How things have changed since then! In the event I ended up buying a PC-AT (286 processor) from a company in Dublin. I remember asking them what colour it was, which bemused the salesperson somewhat - "computer colour of course".

I chose a Hercules graphics card and monochrome monitor in colour orange, though virtually all of my work was text based. Later, when I purchased my first PCB-CAD software, I got a CGA monitor which boasted a resolution 320×200 in 4 colors. How things have changed since then!

Fair waved the golden corn

Fair waved the golden corn

in Canaan's pleasant land,

when, full of joy, some shining morn,

went forth the reaper-band.

Every week-day morning at Alresford Preparatory School we sang a hymn probably followed Miss Curtis reciting a prayer. That was our morning "assembly". The hymn was chosen from a fixed and short list, round robin style. And one of the hymns, and the one that for some reason I hated, was "Fair waved the golden corn". Possibly because of the very dull melody, possibly because of the lyrics the point of which is nigh incomprehensible to me even now.

The other hymns in the list? Sorry, but I cannot remember. Strange that I should only remember the one I disliked.

The God of chance

The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.  (Proverbs 16:33)

Casting lots was a method used in the Old Testament to determine the "will of God". This verse was quoted in this morning's sermon to show that God still controls outcomes so that there is no such thing as "chance" regarding events in our lives.

My son has four girls. If they were to have a fifth - what would be the probability (i.e. chance) of it being a girl? A trick question and of course the "correct" answer according to statistics is about 49%.  But actually, quite apart from God, it is somewhat meaningless to talk statistics when the sample size is so small. The best one can say is that it will certainly be either a girl or a boy. Or, if you believe in the God of Proverbs 16, that it will be the exact sex that God appoints. And so were born two boys: John to be "the Baptist" and Jesus "the son of God".

So, if indeed God interferes with the laws of chance, doubt is cast on the outcome of physical phenomena that the law is supposed to govern.  And modern physics is all about probability.  Enter quantum mechanics with Schrödinger's cat and Maxwell's demon, Bose–Einstein statistics and Fermi–Dirac statistics and wot-not. Carbon 14, and any other radioactive-isotope, dating not only assumes that things were then as they are now, but also depends on probability.

Maybe God putting his spanner in the works and tweaking chance explains miracles, and could even justify creation. Like as in the angel Gabriel's For with God nothing shall be impossible. (Luke 1:37)

Not that I can prove this anymore than I could predict the sex of my son's fifth child. Indeed the point about the "thought experiment" named Schrödinger's cat is that, according to quantum mechanics the cat is both dead and alive at the same time and this reality collapses into one or other possibility only when the box is opened and the cat is observed. I'll only know for such when my daughter-in-law gives birth (or is scanned)... in the unlikely event that they have a fifth child!