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The Bray Summer Festival is awesome. That’s pretty much the summary of these photos here, and I think they don’t really need much commentary. THAT SAID, this is my last post about UK&Ireland 2013, so some narrative is in order. Left Belfast Friday, got to Dublin where I got to stay with some old friends […]

This is the story we heard. Back in the 90s, people didn’t really go into West Belfast, but an Australian guy asked some cab drivers to take him on a tour of the area. Most refused, but one agreed, and that was the beginning of the Black Taxi tours of Belfast. (Incidentally, our car was […]

Left Glasgow via train, then took a bus to a boat and a boat across the water to Belfast. Things had been a little bit more tense in Belfast recently, especially with the Orange parade a few weeks earlier, where the Protestants celebrate a 400 something year old victory over the Catholics, getting everyone in […]

Glasgow is great. Pretty controversial statement, but I’m sticking to it. Everyone I met says that Edinburgh is way better, which is all the more reason to go back to Edinburgh, cause, while I had fun there, Glasgow was a blast. First thing I did was check into my hostel, which was pretty lame, but […]

Last photos from the group portion of the trip. Basically just a train trip to Glasgow. Cool. What were the highlights of this portion? Being well-rested on the train was great, everyone was in high spirits and the scenery was great. In Glasgow, Brendan and I immediately went to TGI Friday’s where I drank a […]

So Fort William is a great place to spend an afternoon. Possibly not the best place to spend an afternoon and two evenings and part of a morning, but hey, how would you know that until you’d done it? Or until you’d read this, which until recently, wasn’t even possible. After we got to town […]

This is going to be the last post including pictures of me wearing my sikk trail gear. Bummer. Friday we finished our mostly last day on the trail. It was a pretty long day, starting with an initial ascent up um.. I dunno, a few hundred feet. A thousand feet? Not as high as we’d […]

Morning! Today was the day we’d been afraid of since we first heard about it. We had to climb the Devil’s Staircase! If that doens’t intimidate you, then.. you were not one of us. We got a pretty early start, being on the trail before 9am, which might not seem early, but I was proud […]

Today: smooth sailing. Wide trails, long, slow inclines, followed by long, slow declines. Giant valleys, beautiful rivers, dead deer, live deer. WE made pretty decent time, probably on account of the slowness of the altitude changes, it still felt good to be early. We couldn’t stay at the hotel at the end of the trail, […]

So the Drovers Inn is where we stayed last night. IT’s super old, it’s haunted, it’s full of taxidermy. They serve vegetarian haggis (supposedly), the bathrooms are carpeted and on every other floor, and it has a fabulous whisky selection. Highly recommended! ****!