SUN RUN FIRST, THEN GIANT’S CAUSEWAY
I would never have sat atop one of the 25-metre-high basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway and my partner would never have sung Spancil Hill at a ceilidh in a bar in Ballinamore if we hadn’t completed the Sun Run in April 2018.
Indeed, while running in Vancouver may seem a long way from hiking in Ireland, it was our completion of the Sun Run training and actual event that gave us the confidence to book a week’s worth of guided hiking in Northern Ireland last summer.
Our 13-week Sun Run training had started in January in Gibsons. We met with our leaders on Sunday mornings and were divided into walking and different-level running groups according to our wishes and needs.
Two additional weekly practices were described in our handy guide so that we could build fitness and stamina incrementally and without injury.
After the 10-kilometre Sun Run April 22, my partner and I were raring to go to new places for new challenges and so we booked a week’s hike in Northern Ireland with Footfalls Walking Holidays, an Irish family company.
At our first breakfast at the B&B in Ballinamore, I wore my Sun Run training shirt to establish my fitness credentials in case anyone in the group harboured the prejudice that someone of my age or hair colour was not a serious walker. But, alas, everyone was too impressed, so lest I set up unrealistic expectations, I explained that my goals in Sun Run training had been to get fit, meet people and have fun.
My goals for the week’s hiking were the same: to stay fit and healthy, meet new people, complete each walk safely and thoroughly enjoy myself.
Our first hike, the Cuilcagh Legnabrocky Trail, was 14 km through a limestone landscape so rich in plants and flowers it is called “the fertile rock.” One of the world’s most intact blanket bogs, it is made up of peat two to three metres deep and is now dammed to bring the water back up to its natural levels, so that this natural carbon sink can help prevent further global warming.
Hiking this trail, I was happy to spot wild blueberries and bog cotton and to breathe the clean air in deeply as we climbed 666 metres to take in the views of the Irish Lake District of Fermanagh.
While we explored the Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark, a UNESCO site, by underground boat, walked the Derry city walls and stopped at Homeplace, a marvellous centre dedicated to the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney, I grew to enjoy the company of my small hiking group.
There were two solo women travellers, one from Bristol and one from Toronto, and a couple from Connecticut as well as my partner and myself. As in the Sun Run training, I found that people with a common purpose make the most agreeable of companions and that it’s fun to get to know new people.
By the time we had hiked the cliffs along the Atlantic to reach the Giant’s Causeway and had traversed the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, we were happily cheering each other on along the trail.
For our last day, we climbed the Mourne Mountains along an old smugglers’ trail. Our knowledgeable, ever-helpful guide had spent the week ensuring that he spent time walking alongside each of us, marking the route and offering encouraging words and hiking tips, and finally at the foot of one hill, he pointed to a gap in the stone wall far up ahead and set us free to find our own individual paths as we scrambled to reach it.
The weather was drizzly and foggy, the hills sometimes steep, requiring that they be taken one step at a time, but we were ready. By the time we reached the other side, the weather had cleared, and the sun shone a clear path to where, according to the Percy French ballad, “the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.”
This new year, I am eager to do the Sun Run again and to see where in the world it will take my partner and me next.