Day 150: The highway to hell

Day 150 - Friday, September 07th 2018: Carrigtohill to Clonpriest 27 km / Total 3105 km, 18°C, cloudy

How to avoid the highway? That N25 road was my pet peeve of the day. Because from my campsite to Middleton there was no other road. Except going to the south and then turn back to the north to the town. I definitely didn't want to walk on the highway (despite what Google Map told me to do), the traffic was too heavy. I finally chose to cross it. It wasn't so hard to do, and then I found myself on a very little road, so narrow that when I faced a tractor coming from the opposite direction, there was not enough space for both of us, and I had to find a field gate to let it pass. That little road was not going directly to Middleton, it turned around a quarry, but it was the shortest road to get to that town. 

And I had no other choice than getting in that town, because it's settled between Cork's harbour (or bay) and a river, and the only bridge to cross it, apart from the N25 is in that town. At least Middleton gave me the occasion to get lunch, so it was not so bad to get there.

But it was also quite hard to leave it. In fact, going from west to east, there's only the N25 road. So I had to escape that town, taking a road to the south and then I found a little road going east direction. 

I thought the west coast was the more zigzag coast, but when I looked at my itinerary on that day it was not much better. 

In fact, the south coast isn't really a direct line coast. There're many rivers estuaries with big bays like in Cork, Youghal, Dungaravan or Waterford. In fact all the big towns and cities. And there's no real coast road between each bay, so I'm mostly walking in the countryside, which is not so interesting after several hours on the road, surrounded by hedges. 

So with all the extra kilometres and diversions I took, I reached my campsite completely exhausted and almost fall into my ... wet tent. But at least I finally escaped the busy area I guess.