Day 160: A storm is coming

Day 160 - Monday, September 17th 2018: Wellington Bridge to Kilmore Quay 23 km / Total 3294 km, 17°C, windy

As I was packing my tent (wet because on that day it rained ONLY when I was packing my tent), the owner of the campsite and her husband came to see me. They told me they were very impressed with my trip, especially the fact that I was walking since March, and they also told me, there was a storm coming and that I should probably find a B&B for the night. 

It stopped raining almost as soon as I started to walk, which was not so bad. For many days since Hook Peninsula, I was walking on a road following a sign of a man walking on water (No, that's not Jesus Christ), and finally, in Wellington Bridge, I found what was that path I was walking on: "Slí Charman" ("slí" means "Way" in Irish), the Wexford Coastal Path, which is 221 km long, opened in 1993. It's not a national marked trail, and I don't know why but it seems like that I'll be walking it all along the Wexford coastline. 

For once there was something "original" on the pub menu: crispy duck! So, of course, I chose that. Talking about the weather, the lady who served me, told me I might have a beautiful evening. So, in Ireland, it's true, the weather can change in one hour. But weather prediction can change as well from one hour to the next one. And it can also change from one person to the next one. And they were both true. It was stormy, as there were very strong winds on that day, and the evening was lovely as it was not raining.

The afternoon was a very long walk, a little road but not very interesting, just a flat direct line, surrounded by fields and hedges. And the wind. So for once, the hedges were a good thing, doing their job: protecting me against the wind. The sky was grey, very dark, quite sad. No bird song, just the wind screaming. It was quite a painful walk as my shoes were almost 1000 km old. They were already very used, so I felt more all the ground imperfections.

I reached Kilmore Quay exhausted, once again. At the campsite, I negotiated to pay less than the price of a hostel night (I'm just one person in one small tent and don't even have a car). Unlimited hot shower was a good point, the lack of hedges or anything else to make a shelter against the wind was a bad point.

I built my tent thinking the wind would come from west or south. Unfortunately, the wind turned during the evening and came southeast, so on lateral side of my tent, and I had to get out of the tent to pitch it again (the ground was sandy and not strong enough to hold a tent). 

How shaky was that night!