The green elf - D5

The first real hiking day, I am barely alive :) I visited today one of the most popular Irish place, I had no idea that except snow and volcano I will meet everything in a couple of hours.

Glendalough
There are more routes with various difficulty levels. Just because I did not wanna finish in 2 hours, I have voted for the longest one. And because I travel alone, it has been decided which one I have to accomplish :)
And this was the orange route from the visitor center, then the white one and at the end the gray one. I messed up the picture, the orange brush is my trip. When anyone interested in the original routes, can have a look above on the link. Approx. 13 km, 500 meters height difference (which was mostly done in 2-3 km :o) in 6 hours.

Here comes the stations. Next to the visitor center there is an already common, but still not boring round tower, of course in the middle of a cemetery. :)

  

Between the tower and the Lower Lake the road went through a forest, full with moss covered trees and some jumping goat-like creature.

Sorry for the bad quality, maybe the Guinness at the previous evening was too much :D

The Lower Lake is small, but very loveable :)

  

Between the two lakes I have seen such a wonder, what never before: very wet, prociduous ground covered with moss and slim white bald trees (yes, I went off the road to take pictures :)). Immediately the moorland from LOTR popped up, however this was nice, that one was rather scary :)

  

The Poulanass Waterfall:

  

And here comes the heavy part... through a very dark pine forest on wooden planks (it was decorated with U-shape rivets to avoid slippery) to the top. Darth Vader showed himself again, at the end I could hardly breathe... which most probably appeared to the gentleman coming down, because he was laughing and telling me "you are near the top!"

Well, when you think you are over the hard part, then comes the most difficult slice: spine trip in bloody big wind, up to the clouds :) But the panorama compensated me for everything, and also the guys coming from the opposite direction, who could have a look on my clothes bought in eskimo-outlet (hood with fur).
Hero of the day award goes to a French lady, who came towards me with a big backsack and I could hear, she is speaking... wtf... and suddenly the backpack made a motion: a little kid was in it! Absolute respect to a mother hiking alone and lugging her baby on her back, upstairs!

  

  

  

  

Here the road went already downstairs, the wooden planks have been disappeared, instead of them stony road was the next till a wooden bridge (this was the endpoint, from here the road headed on the other side of the lakes, downstairs on big rocks, later on middle-size and small stones)

  

    

  

Coming down on rocks was only a few kilometers (bloody big praise to my knees!), after that it was a very easy walk in the forest, next to the Upper Lake. Hihi, two totally wet dogs run towards me (they had an owner too, but he is not really worth to mention)... how can 2 devils be so idiot, swimming in such a cold weather? :D

  

  

The animal of the day isn't the jumping goat or the wet dogs, but this orange-belly bird: he dared to come very close, even poked my shoes two times. Unfortunately no food left to share :(

And finally a little bit Irish sunset! Because of the first photo the police nearly caught me: I was so happy to see a sunset, that immediately stopped my car. Unfortunately I could do it only on the other side of the road, through a solid white line. :o 1 minute later the police car came and stopped behind me. And they were waiting, what will I do (my car's arrangement showed without doubt from which direction I came, but they did not see the disorder). With some difficulties I could turn around and get the proper direction, and they came after me. Thanks god they did not stop me, huuuuh. And because of this maneuver my GPS brought me home throough small and narrow country roads, the second picture was taken there. I really hope that everybody can see the cows on it!