We finished the trail yesterday, and what a gorgeous day it was. We certainly saved the best for last, very spectacular views. Hope my pictures do it justice

we spent the day with the knowledge that it was going to start raining at about noon. We had 24 KM to go and 800 metres in elevation.

We did not get into Enniskerry until 5 pm, and it still had not really started raining. Stormy, windy with a heavy mist, but no downpour, so we feel…. We got away with it.

The last part we climbed and climbed and saw this at what we thought was the top….nothing…..ness.

When the weather is like this it is very hard to know where the top is, which is likely a good thing, it was like more mountain kept appearing like an escalator going down while you are going up.

This is Lough Tay, also known as lake Guinness with its black colour and white beach at one side…can you see it?

Ken has been faithful about supporting the Guinness industry by having a Guinness draft each day. I guess no blog about Ireland would be complete without some information about Guinness. Guinness is a stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St James Gate Dublin in the 18th century. It is one of the most successful alcoholic beverage maker in the world.

So this all started in 1759 in Dublin where he signed a 9000 year lease at 45 pounds per year.

On a recent search I have made on google, I found at least 3 film representations of the Guinness family. One of which is called “the house of Guinness” and is streaming on Netflix.

I thought I would look up the Guinness connection in Canada

It turns out that the engineer interesting in building what is now called the Lions Gate Bridge in Vancouver (was first the 1st narrows bridge) convinced Walter Guinness to invest in the land on the north shore of Burrard Inlet. He purchased 4700 acres of West Vancouver mountainside through “British Pacific properties”. The Guinness family sold the bridge to the province of British Columbia in 1955 for 5,873.837, which was the original cost to originally build it.

There was a toll instituted by the Guinness family to cross the bridge, and this remained until 1963 Interesting since the Lions Gate bridge is likely as well known to Canadians as the Golden Gate Bridge is to Americans.

Back to Ireland……

We are now in Bray drinking fancy coffees and the wind is howling with “storm Amy”. We got off the trains just in time

Warm and safe and cleaning clothes

Janet and Ken in Bray, Ireland