Welcome back to another edition of Tough Soles Fieldnotes, where all the adventures of the last few months are wrapped up in some bailer twine to carry off across the fields.
October
October saw the third and final hike organised by Outsider.ie and The Columbia Hike Society. I worked with Outsider on all three of these hikes, and it was a project I really enjoyed. Our hikes took in Bray Head, Howth Head, and the Sugarloaf - all looped routes that are accessible by public transport.
October also saw me attend the Women’s Bouldering Meet in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. This is the second year in a row that I’ve gone - it’s a really fun weekend with all of the best female rock climbing instructors there to provide lots of knowledge and psyche!
The Saturday evening is reserved for a talk from one of Ireland’s incredible climbers, and this year it was Lucy Mitchell, who I watched win comp after comp when I was getting into climbing over ten years ago. It was a really honest talk about the highs and lows of the pressure of high performance, and the life of a climbing coach.
Learn more about the 2025 event on the Mountaineering Ireland website.
Work brought me a lot to Mayo in October, part of which was leading the beginner hike for Hike West Fest 2025. The National Looped Walk we took on was the Keenagh Loop, a difficult trail through the wild bogs near Nephin. However, I enjoyed it so much, it made it onto my 2026 Day Hikes List! I explored some more of Achill (ticking off Minaun summit), and stopped the car whenever I saw something that looked like a nice walk.
Across the three months I published nine videos on YouTube; two in October, four in November, and three in December. It’s been really nice feeling some consistency in the video schedule again!
The one video that doesn’t have an upcoming website article, and was quite a big announcement for us this year, is that we bought a van! It’s a converted VW T5, which we bought in September and had on the road by the end of that month. Since then, we’ve been putting it through its paces, driving all over the country for work and adventures.
Video links:
November
Across the four weeks of November, Carl and I spent 12 days in very west Cork, literally learning the ropes to expand our rock climbing skills. It was an incredible, if intense few weeks - the newly acquired van making it all possible. Between the training and work, I slept 12/30 nights in November in the van.
Unlike a lot of the recent training and up-skilling I’ve done, there was no qualification or big goal behind doing this training, it was just for us. I was surprised to notice that this took a lot of pressure off, and I think helped me focus even more on learning what was in front of me.
If you’re thinking of up-skilling in 2026 - you can find loads of courses on the Mountaineering Ireland Training page, as well as on the websites of outdoor instructors or Outdoor Education and Training Centres.
In between these days on rock, I was working in Kerry. I love being down in this corner of the world, and I had a list of trails and sites I wanted to film in-between jobs. However, between the incredibly heavy rain leading to flooded trails, and many places being closed for the off season, I didn’t get to explore or film a single place on my list.
It’s because of this that I ended up trying to outrun the rain and found myself in Gougane Barra, getting to experience the amazing trails in the Forest Park there! What was an unexpected rain retreat turned into one of my favourite solo adventures of 2025.
Donegal Bay Trust
& Outdoor Recreation Forums
Being someone who uses the outdoors so much, I’m very invested in understanding how we impact it, and protecting it for the immediate and distant future. Part of that in November was attending some of the inaugural Donegal Bay Trust advisory committee meetings, as well as the Cavan Outdoor Recreation Forum.
The Outdoor Recreation Forums are the latest stage of the National Outdoor Recreation Strategy - where anyone can attend to learn about (and contribute to) how the county goes about implementing their County Outdoor Recreation Plan (which were all drafted in the last couple of years). If you want to find out about your county, I recommend contacting your local sports partnership, Rural Recreational Officer, or local authority Biodiversity Officer.
December
This year I avoided much of the hurrying and partying that this month can be, and leaned into slowing down. However, it was nonetheless a good month for Tough Soles. I published three videos and three articles, and made the first ever Tough Soles Calendars, which were way more of a success than I could’ve imagined! Thank you to everyone who ordered one, and apologies to anyone who missed them. I will be a lot more prepared for the 2027 batch!
In early December my friend Jen and I ticked off a new county high point - Slieve Foye in Louth. It’s an absolutely gorgeous hike, I really love the Cooley Mountains. They’re not overly tall, have great trails and stunning views. The video is already out, and the website write-up is almost complete (it will probably be the next thing published after this).
Winter Solstice
On the 21st of December the longest night of the year passed, and daylight is officially on the return. This process is both slower and faster than you’d think - the Spring Equinox will be 20th of March in 2026, which is when day and night are of equal length. From here until Autumn, the days are long and the sun truly feels like it’s back once more.
The return of the sun has been important to us for thousands of years. Ireland has the most megalithic art of Northern Europe and many of our passage tombs align to the solstices or equinoxes, so that every year the sunrise illuminates their long passages.
“Newgrange” is the modern name for An Brug, which was once a home of the Tuatha De Danann, mythical gods from the ‘other world’ in Celtic folklore.Now a Unesco World Heritage Site, Newgrange is over 5,000 years old. Above the main entrance to the passage tomb there’s the “roof box” - a hole that allowed the sun to light the inside every year on the solstice. This happens for a couple of days (not just the solstice), and the sunlight shines through for about 17 minutes.
Lynam Lecture 2025
The Lynam Lecture or Lynam Award “was inaugurated in 2011 in the memory of Joss Lynam, (1924 - 2011), one of Ireland's best-known mountaineers, in recognition of his enormous achievements in hillwalking, climbing and mountaineering in Ireland and overseas over some 60 years.During his lifetime, Joss initiated numerous developments in these different areas of our sport in Ireland and he was an inspiration to a number of generations of Irish mountaineers.”
Recipients of this award are recognised for their outstanding achievements and contribution to mountaineering. As part of the evening, they deliver a talk on their exploits, and it’s always an incredibly inspiring event.
Last year (2024) I filmed Dermot Somer’s lecture, which was an awe inspiring (and quite hilarious) evening. Filming indoor events is not my forte, but thankfully it came out serviceable.
The 2025 award went to Seán Villanueva O’Driscoll, a world-renowned climber and alpinist, “celebrated for his daring ascents and bold explorations of some of the world’s most remote and challenging mountain ranges. Best known for his groundbreaking climbs in Patagonia, Seán’s most notable achievement came in 2021 with his solo ascent of the Fitz Roy Traverse, a monumental 5 km-rugged ridgeline in Southern Patagonian.”
Listening to Sean was a true delight, and I hope to have the video edited and published for Mountaineering Ireland in the coming weeks (once published I will link here).
Running
In the lead up to Christmas, I saw posts going around on social media about “running the advent calendar”, which is a challenge where you simply do what it says on the tin. On the first of December you run 1km, on the second you run 2km, all the way up to the 24th of December, when you run 24km (having run 23km the day before, and 22km the day before that). Running is something that I both really enjoy, and utilise as a way to keep fit in between the long distance hikes or mountain days. I decided to try the challenge as a bit of fun and see how far I’d get. In the end, I ran the whole thing, and had a surprisingly fun time doing it.
If you’ve made it this far - thank you for being part of Tough Soles in 2025. It means so much to me to get to share my adventures and thoughts on the Irish outdoors. Wishing you all a very happy 2026, full of adventures and time outside.