Best Foot Forward

Day 5  Wed April 2.  I had discovered on Tues evening that the sore feet were in fact two blisters, one of them very large on the balls of my feet.  No wonder that I had so much pain walking.  Next morning I put a needle through them to release the pressure and put on two blister patches.  Mary had to catch train in Mallow at 8.00am so we had an early start.  They left me off about 6 miles south of Mallow.  They are great hosts and we had lots of good conversations.  Mary was going that day to Dublin to give a presentation to members of the Eastern Health Board on the links between food and health.  I suggested she title the presentation “One Bite at a Time”.  The walking was still painful and as the day went on became more and more painful.  My stroll through Ireland had become an endurance test rather than a pleasant ramble.  I struggled on as far as Charleville but could go no further, so I went into Dinny’s bar in the centre of the town and waited on Marese to pick me up.  I knew that this would not be until about 6.00pm because she was working in Shannon that day.  Marese is a vet and specializes in surgery on small animals.  She lives in Limerick.  Marese was just what I needed that day. The blister on my left foot had accumulated fluid again which explained why it had been so very painful to walk on.  She brought her expertise to bear on it. 

I was still in West Cork for much of the day so plenty of climbing, going down into valleys and out again including the Lee valley.  I was surprised at how broad the river was.  As on other days some of the cars blew their horns in encouragement on the way past and a few doubled back to talk to me and gave me donations.  Just north of Mallow I called at a food outlet to get coffee, a roll and a rest.  As I was ordering it a lady came up behind me and insisted on treating me to lunch and added a donation to her generosity.  As on previous days the goodness of total strangers was great encouragement.

Day 6  Marese left me off outside Dinny’s bar in Charlville.  Feet still painful but I was hopeful that they would get better.  I had decided that I would try following a minor road north to Limerick through Bruree and Athalacca.  I had to walk about two miles to the east.  This was to avoid walking on the very busy N20, the main road between Limerick and Cork.  I had noticed on the way down that there was no hard shoulder on most of the road. The man who walked me part of the way to the turn off also gave me a donation for the Hospice.  It was a very quiet country road and I thought I had chosen well, so I headed north again towards Bruree and Limerick.  It was a cold morning with the wind from the North West, partly in my face and my hands were very cold on the sticks.  There was a garden centre just south of Bruree where I called in to get a pair of gardening gloves for my hands.  When the sales woman saw that I was raising money for a hospice in Malawi, she told me that her husband had a brother who had spent some time in Malawi.  I discovered that it was Ciaran McGuiness, a White Father who I had taught as a student in Junior seminary and in Philosophy in Blacklion.  I walked on into Bruree and asked a man on the street which road I needed to take for Limerick.  However he told me the way I proposed to go was 24 miles whereas if I walked back to the main road it would only be another 18.  So I headed back to the main road and faced the oncoming traffic rather than take the long road.  It just goes to confirm the main road is normally the shortest way, but I was not happy about adding all that extra walking on to the journey.  Three women pulled in further along the road.  They were all Hospice workers in different countries, one in Canada, another in Armenia and the third in Zambia.  They were headed for a palliative care conference in Limerick and again gave me donations.  As the day went on the feet got worse and eventually I phoned Marese at Patrickswell, about 6 miles south of Limerick.