The open road and wide-open views of a hiking holiday in the West Country of Ireland. Is there a better way to spell wellness?LAURA BYRNE PAQUET
I stood in a field of sheep and eyeballed the waterfall tumbling over a rocky precipice 137 metres (448 feet) above my head. According to our guides, the plan was to walk up narrow trails to the top of the cascade in Gleninchaquin Park in County Kerry. I was dubious about my fitness for the feat.
Sure, when I'd signed up for an Irish walking holiday, I'd expected to hike. And, yes, my friend Stephanie and I had been walking together a few times a week in Ottawa for months, training for this milestone birthday trip. But that didn't mean I was ready.
That's the thing about active holidays. You learn to push yourself. And while you can choose more relaxing routes into wellness, such as spa stays or meditation retreats, seeing Ireland on foot – after exploring it by car on several previous trips – felt like the right adventure at the right time.
Meeting the challenge
Before leaving, we'd studied the website of U.S.-based travel company VBT as if it were the Rosetta Stone. That fact that we would be two women who were leaving our 40s behind had loomed large in our minds when we booked the 10-day Walking the West Country tour. When it said we'd be walking two to five hours a day, did that mean hard trekking or easy strolling? The people in the photos looked like a non-threatening mix of Boomers and Gen Xers, but were they all secretly Ironman competitors?
Hiking the narrow trail that went to the top of this waterfall in Gleninchaquin Park in County Kerry may not be easy. But challenging yourself on a wellness holiday can reward with more than just beautiful views.
LAURA BYRNE PAQUET
We needn't have worried. While we were glad we'd logged a lot of 10K Sunday walks back home, and that we'd broken in our lightweight hiking boots, we managed the routes each day – even the Gleninchaquin waterfall – without too much trouble. On the second day, I did hop into the "jaunting cart" that accompanied our group of 14, but it wasn't because I was tired. It was because I was taking so many photos of the electric-green mountains and glassy lakes that I fell far behind the others. Besides, the horse-drawn buggy was adorable.
Other than that, Stephanie and I both managed to walk all of the trip's extended routes. (The tour gives walkers a range of short and long options each day.) We strolled flat lakeside trails in Killarney National Park. We hiked rocky paths to the well-named Windy Gap. On the last walk, we slogged through mud on the only seriously rainy day of the trip to enjoy misty views along the Kerry Way.
Everything's better with scones
At midday, there was always time for a leisurely lunch. According to my Fitbit, we walked between 11 and 19 kilometres a day, including post-hike explorations of the communities where we stayed.
Those towns and villages provided ample rewards for our exertions. First, the small hotels where we stayed knew how to fuel a group of walkers for a day on the trail. Or perhaps it's simply an Irish law that every hotel must provide huge platters of local smoked salmon and fresh scones each morning.
Sheep are just one of the many roadside attractions of hiking in West Ireland.
LAURA BYRNE PAQUET
Once our day's walk was done, usually by mid-afternoon, we had time to enjoy a pint, dinner, and some traditional Irish music and dancing, at our hotel or in town. After walking for hours, I felt no guilt about tucking into the dense brown bread that accompanied every meal.
You could certainly do this trip independently, as most trails are well marked and – at least in summer – well populated with other walkers. However, we were glad we'd signed up with a group. Our guides Maureen and Katrin were a wealth of local information and knew the trails intimately. They also lent us walking poles, which – despite initial skepticism – we loved so much that we each bought a set when we got home.
Stephanie and I both fell into fascinating chats with the other walkers in our group, who included everyone from a professional chef and an engineer to a girls' school principal, ranging in age from late 40s to early 70s. The evenings were a mix of organized dinners and meals on our own.
When I first signed up for the trip, my daughter asked, "You want to spend your whole vacation walking?" She thought it sounded like hard work, but I was eager for a trip that would change me. And it did. When I got home, I found I'd evolved from someone who liked to walk to someone who had to walk. A week without at least one good, long hike now feels incomplete. And while there aren't many sheep or jaunting carts in my home city, memories of meeting the challenge of those green Irish hills keep me on the right path, poles in hand.
Laura Byrne Paquet is an Ottawa-based travel writer who has stuck coca leaves on her forehead in Peru, jumped off a mountain in British Columbia and endured a painful loofah scrub by a Turkish masseuse, all in pursuit of a good story.
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