Working on a chain-gang
So something new for Mountain Meithail yesterday: building a path which will eventually become part of the Dublin way. Another long cycle/walk up to Cruagh Forest car-park, then thankfully a slightly shorter stroll to the site than the last two times.

The path has basically 4 components: Big rocks, little rocks, grit, and a groundsheet. Big rocks go on the outside to constrain the path, then the groundsheet goes down, little rocks go on top of the groundsheet and finally grit fills it in to make a nice smoothish path. Apparently when it rains and people walk on it the grit will pack down and solidify into a sort of pseudo-concrete type of thing (not as hard, but nicer to look at).

There were 5 barrows between roughly 20 of us, and two of them failed almost immediately (either the bolts hold the wheels on sheared off, or they stripped their threads), which meant that the little rocks and grit - which couldn't be carried by hand - got the barrow treatment while about 8 or 9 of us spent the whole day carrying big rocks from the pile by the road down to the end of the path. The astute observe will realise that as the path grew, the distance we had to carry the rocks got longer and longer - and in fact the path grew at an amazing rate. In five hours of work we took the path from nothing to 87 meters long.

Eventually the path will be 370 meters long, looping round to meet a road at the other end and including at least one (possibly two) stiles. At some point (I assume) we'll switch from carrying the rocks from this end out to carrying them from the other end back - but probably not at the halfway point, since at least in this direction we're carrying them downhill.

This morning, of course, I woke up with an exercise hangover - my arms have the strength of a newborn kitten, and my leg muscles ache like anything. I am grateful it's Sunday.