Our plan had been to take one rest day in before starting our next trail - the Avondhu Way. And it was a fine day with clouds and scattered sunshine. We were gearing up to do a big push all the way to the bottom of Cork.
On day 2 the rain started, and we easily persuaded each other that a second day wouldn't be bad. That evening the weather forecast said the weather would be its worst the day after, with sunshine promised in our future.
At this point our bodies were getting restless. It was really great having that time off - not just for us to recover physically, but also we got to go through a lot of footage and images from our first few walks. However, even after just a few weeks of walking, our bodies were already used to burning more calories and just moving more than we knew what to do with.
On day 4 the rain hadn't stopped, but we tried to leave. This ended in us getting less than 10km done the trail before we were swimming in our boots, our clothes, and along the trail.
It was hard admitting we were wrong, and to turn back. I somehow felt we were being lazy and taking advantage of the weather - as opposed to just being rained out of it.
Thankfully that night the worse of the rain finished pouring and we got to start walking again, albeit with many showers along the way. Â
We also changed our minds in regard to what route we would do: the Avondhu Way was across mountains for the first few days with no towns, and if the rain was to start again I fathered the idea of having people and transport nearby. Also, waking up to the tent floating down a hillside seemed like too likely an option to properly joke about it. Thankfully, all we had to do was walk in the opposite direction to start a different trail: the East Munster Way.