Rain clouds billowing over the Twelve Bens on Saturday – picture taken from the trail of the Western Way, which has the Bens on one side and the Maumturks on the other.
The Galway Walking Club 2009 Marathon took place on Saturday. My knees aren’t up to 26 miles so I opted for the half-marathon instead. This is the first year that the club have organised a half marathon, and I suspect it will become more popular than the full one in years to come [this year, there were about 110 for the full marathon and about 30-40 for the half one ].
At 4am on Saturday morning, I woke to the sound of rain hammering against the bedroom window – it was still falling when I got up at 7. Still, there was some cause for hope – at 8am, I was on the Prom getting a cappuccino [Coco’s cafe opens from 7 – my kind of place] and the sky began to clear.
In the end, not a drop of rain fell on me during the 14 mile hike, though thre were plenty of showers falling over the Maumturks and the Twelve Bens. The marathon route follows much of the Western Way which can be quite boggy – luckily [for me], the worst parts were in the parts of the route of the full marathon only.
The weather has been very unpredictable of late. I spent all of yesterday on top of a mountain in Connemara waiting for a break in the weather so that I could take a picture of the vista below. I only needed one hundredth of a second, but I didn’t get it. I did see plenty of frogs, encounter a very startled fox and was finally driven off the hilltop by the unspeakable cruelty of midges.
You can see a slideshow of snaps that I took on the marathon day here.