The long and winding trail

A week of wild, mountainous landscapes has made the running miles fly by

 The Beara peninsula in south-west Ireland. 

THE days are merging and warping. If I try to remember where I was two days ago, what that day's run was like, or where we stayed, my mind draws a blank. This morning I was just setting off on a big day - 28 miles - when I asked Marietta what day it was. “Monday, “ she said. “Oh,” I thought. “I haven’t done my Monday Musings.” But I was already strapped up, ready to go.

Twenty-eight miles later, I’m now sitting outside the village of Sneem, overlooking a river, the wind shaking the van, the Kerry mountains rising up across the water. There are no showers here, so we’re trying again to see if we can get the hot shower in the van working. Our two previous attempts failed, resulting in lots of yelping and huffing as I washed myself down with cold water.

I ran 22 miles with Conor Murphy today, a solicitor from Kenmare who is like a running tour guide, telling me stories about every hill and valley we pass. I enjoyed the story of the last Irish Wimbledon champion, Harold Mahony, who turned out years later to be Scottish, not Irish - so not the last Irish Wimbledon champion after all. He lived here in Kerry in a big house until he was knocked over and killed by a horse and cart. 

When the new owners took over the house, Conor tells me as we run by the fenced-off gardens, they found a huge soup tureen. “It was from the famine, when the owners would offer soup to anyone who would convert to Protestantism. There are still some Protestant families around here today from that time. That’s where the expression ‘taking the soup’ comes from.” The expression is still used in Ireland today, apparently, as a way of criticising someone for selling out their beliefs. You get lots of these history lessons running with Conor.