Day 573 – Rossbeg

Welcome to today’s update, have a quick watch of the video version and meet me below for the rest of the write up:

Finally. I was able to get out on this beautiful Saturday, and spend some time exploring places along the coast of Ireland, by myself. Family outings are great, son-father outings even more exciting, but sometimes I might go on a journey that is too risky for myself, to add another potential risk by taking family members with me. Or sometimes, I just want to do it myself, having that mental space and be with my own thoughts for certain period of time.

I always like to go out driving without specific destination, stopping by, checking new places, because while for some people it might sound like waste of time, for me it’s collecting experiences, while also building sort of database in my head of amazing, selected spots, that no guide or travel book usually provides.

Obviously, it didn’t happen without hiccup because yesterday I stayed for way too long in the evening, so it impacted my wake up time. I was the last one to get out of bed in the morning. Even Julian, who usually likes to stay the same time as I do, was downstairs already, after eating his breakfast, when I dragged my lazy arse out of bed. My wife is usually waking up very early anyway, and it’s very rare that she is not on her feet before 8 o’clock maybe, so she was up way before us.

I would love to adjust my wake up to the same routine as herself, because I believe in going to bed early as the best way to improve our health without any spendings or expensive solutions, and hardly any effort. It will be hard for me though, because I tend to stay longer in the evenings and leave a lot of things for last minute, for example, writing this blog and recording the updates (albeit updates are sometimes recorded already during the day, but I have to stitch them, and caption them so it still takes time in the evening).

That’s also one of the reasons for considering evolution and next stage of this project – to facilitate beneficial changes for both my family and myself, as well as YOU – a reader, watcher and listener.

Back to Saturday morning. When I came down, I prepared the breakfast for Elizabeth and myself because Julian was already past the “feeding time”. Unfortunately I had to go to the shop prior to breakfast, because there was no bread at home. While my wife still eats bread normally, I switched recently to a lower-carb gear in terms of breads, buns and other stuff like pastries, etc. It’s not that I don’t eat them, but I try to skip every second or every two meals with processed carbs, and then have one instead of two/three. This way I am not doing any big changes in my diet, but improve my macro elements consumption, and focus on getting more protein and fats in comparison to carbohydrates. Especially those that are not very beneficial for my teeth, and for stomach biome.

After breakfast we were meant to go for a walk together, or rather drive somewhere but after long consideration and the fact that neither my wife nor Julian wanted to drive anywhere far, in this very windy and unstable weather, they decided that they will do local walk and let me just go with the flow and decide where I wanna go alone. As they were during their walk, I started preparing for the drive. I packed my backpack and also got some snacks to make sure that I don’t run out of energy if I happen to be on a longer walk.

When I left home, they were still on the walk, but I knew that they were on the way back to the house, and not so far. I drove towards them to give them a hug and to make sure that they know where I go. Julian was very dedicated on the walk, to the point that he took a small container with him and packed it with foraged wild garlic.

After picking the coffee on the way and buying missing map for the areas in question, I drove towards Doon Fort. I wasn’t sure if this will be my final destination, but I decided to pick some point on the map and drive towards it and if I decide to switch or change the route, I will do it as I go.

Doon Fort is an amazing thing that I discovered sometime ago and had it marked for a while on my Google Maps, but I never happened to get to explore it and I was afraid that even though I set it as the destination on the map today, it will be too difficult at this particular time to reach it. Along the way while I was driving, I decided that if there will be no obvious trail marked for Doon Fort, I won’t bother going through boglands for the sake of seeing it from flatland, and plan for proper exploration with inflatable kayak or paddling board and the drone.

You might ask why, and I will give you a simple answer: Doon Fort is located on a small island in the middle of a lake and the lake itself has no direct access from any road. This part is also a private land, so it is very difficult to not only reach the shore, but you can only see Doon Fort from the shore itself. Unless it’s season and somebody provides boat trips to the island, the only way to enjoy some nice views of it is to use the drone. Some people are carrying inflatables to get there, and that’s what I want to do in summer but for that, I need to buy inflatable AND the drone.

As I was passing by the nearest road to the lake and the fort I realised that it will indeed be impossible to achieve it today, so instead of fighting with my own thoughts and terrain, I kept going and decided to explore Rossbeg area.

Rossbeg, is a small village. I can only assume that people settled there because of fishing opportunity and access via coves and sandy inlets, on that rocky peninsula. I was expecting some nice areas there, but it stunned me and I definitely underestimated what I was about to see.

First thing that was just at the entry of Rossbeg, was a small area with holiday homes and an amazing beach that was guarded by rocks. This beach was plain golden sand, natural beach, and those rocks that were protecting it were almost like human built piers but no human interaction was involved in this structure. Amazingly these huge walls of rock served the bay and the beach just like that, sculpted by nature.

Because there was no parking space near that beach, I drove closer to Rossbeg pier, and parked the car near some derelict homes. I walked about 500 m downhill back to the beach, and started exploring it. The wind was very strong, but fortunately I avoided any rain or even drizzle. It was sunny and lovely weather, and ocean waves and their noise accompanied me for the whole length of exploration.

I crawled rocks, climbed them, found many amazing inlets, cracks and almost like mini-fiord, and observed a lot of different plants and some sea life in small tidal pools, as I walked through and around the beach for about 3 km total.

After I got to the car, I drove towards Rossbeg and tried to find a parking spot near pier and beach, which was quite difficult, and only at the end of Rossbeg I found some small inlet on the side of the road, where I could park the car without obstructing any traffic. It was difficult not because it was busy (there was almost zero people there), but because there were narrow roads and no space to pass the car, forget about parking.

I went down and explored Rossbeg beach. Afterwards I also visited the pier that I think is serving fishing vessels, but can also can serve for swimming because near the pier, when the tide is in, water is transparent and the bottom is golden sand so I can only assume that anyone that loves swimming uses this spot regularly. The wind strengthened as I was in Rossbeg and the tide was coming back, so it was less and less pleasant and more and more rough, but that was fine, because I decided to finish my exploration and was ready to head back home.

I hope you liked the write up and I highly recommend watching the video update, mainly because all of the footage in it that I recorded on the spot (a bit in the car, the rest of it on the beach).

I’m not sure what Sunday brings. I hope that it will be equally or even more entertaining. For now that’s it. Stay tuned and see you tomorrow.