Day 10
Tuesday April 30. I had an enjoyable evening with Nicky Egan who looked after me and brought me to the square in Birr where I had left off the previous day. I had doctored my feet as best as I could, and set my face to the north again heading towards Ballynahown just to the south of Athlone. It was another perfect day, sun shining in a blue sky and a gentle breeze from the west. After a few miles of typical farmland I came to the Bog of Allen. Peat bogs stretched on either side for about a mile back from the road and were bordered by trees in the distance. The bog went on for miles. There is a company called Erin that is extracting the peat moss, so there were large tracts of brown peat, but in other places it was covered with brown wilted heather. It must be a purple heaven when it is in flower. I was delighted to hear my first cuckoo for several years. I just stood for a while and listened knowing it might be some time before I heard another one. After some miles I came to a large Erin peat moss depot where there were thousands of plastic bags of peat. Behind it I could see the smoke from four large chimneys of a Bord Na Mona generating plant. Next to that was a plant that processed the peat into briquettes. There was a long queue of trucks, tractors and cars with trailers that stretched out along the main road waiting to get their load of turf briquettes. When I mentioned this to someone later in the day I learned that the price of briquettes was to increase the following day and hence to rush to beat the price rise. The first village on my road was Coughlan. By now my feet were objecting strongly. It was about 1.30 pm so when I saw a GAA club house on the side of the road just after I left the village, I went into one of the open dressing rooms to sit down for a while and have my lunch. I took my boots of to give my feet a break and tried to doctor them some more, but maybe I was doing more harm than good. Anyhow I emerged from the dressing room just as the caretaker was coming to lock up. He was rather taken aback to meet me but I escaped just in time or I could have been locked in. I headed on towards the next village Ferbane but before I got there I had made the decision that I would have to take a break from my walk to allow my feet to recover. I went into a pub called Henessy’s in the middle of the village and phoned my hosts for the night, Kieron and Kay Smyth to come and pick me up. I also phoned home to Mary Ann and told her of my decision, but decided that it would be too late for her to make the round trip that evening. We agreed that she would come for me next day and I would take a break to get my feet back to walking fitness again.
So far cash, cheque and internet donations to Ndi Moyo have reached between £11,500 and £12,000, and the number continues to rise. I continue to be amazed at the generosity of people. This money will be well used and hugely appreciated.
I have no definite plans right now, but I am anxious to finish the walk as soon as possible, certainly before the end of the summer...so watch this space.
