A walk on the wild side ... just for the day

IT’S Saturday morning and young people are chatting in different languages as they wait to board a tour bus on St Patrick’s Quay.

They are taking a ‘daycation’ from the city.

“It’s an opportunity to get outside the city. In Italy, I live in the countryside and I go to the lake often.

“Here, in Ireland, I’m stuck in the city centre. I know every single tree in Fitzgerald’s Park by now,” says Marta, 25.

“I like hiking and I want to meet new people,” says Francesca Corda, an Italian au pair in Cork. Two Germans, Agata Schmidt and Julia Schmid, giggle as we board the bus. Nine Chinese PhD students are with their visiting professor, from University College Cork.

They’ve brought packed lunches and cameras, and are excited to see Gougane Barra.

“I don’t have a car, and thought it’d be nice to do something different on a Saturday. I like walking and want to start hillwalking,” says Lisa, 34, one of four Irish people on the tour.

Established last month, Coach Walk Cork is fully booked for its inaugural tour and its organiser, Tim O’Leary, is delighted.

“I’m hugely surprised. We thought we might only get 20 today, but to get a full bus of 53 is amazing,” says O’Leary, who has been in tourism for 30 years.

“It’s very handy for people who don’t have cars. People like to get out of the city for a walk and use the mainly free amenities we have,” he says.

“We get you to your destination, and then we stand back and let people do their own thing.

“After our walks, you go home mentally relaxed and physically tired. It’s an active and healthy day out, and for €15 what more can you ask for?” he says. Coach Walk Cork run day trips every Saturday of the summer. Destinations include the Ardmore coastal walk and Youghal, hiking in the Gap of Dunloe, and an overnight trip to the Burren, Co Clare.

Today’s trip is to Gougane Barra forest park, with detours to Toonsbridge dairy and the Lee Valley clothing company.

At the park, O’Leary distributes maps of the park, and explains the walking trails. There are six trails of varying degrees of difficulty (‘easy’, ‘moderate’ and ‘strenuous’) and, after a brief chat with the other daytrippers, we set off. O’Leary and his nephew, Denis, are present throughout, for any questions, but we are largely left to our own devices.

This fine, sunny morning, the forest park is all babbling brooks and moss-covered trees.

A few cyclists trickle past, and a couple walk their dog up a steep incline. There are name-plates on many trees, and a sign denoting the source of the River Lee.

We hike up the steep Red trail, and watch tall, spindly trees swaying in the gentle breeze. We chat to fellow-daytrippers, sit on rocks to rest, and photograph the magnificent scenery.

A sheep and a lamb amble beside us on the path, and people stop for lunch on picnic benches.

Back on lower ground, a few tourists pause at the holy well, or walk around the 12 stations of the cross outside the stone church where patron saint of Cork, St Finbarr, settled in the sixth century before founding the city of Cork.

We eat hot soup and smoked-salmon bagels (though most of the coach-tour participants have brought a packed lunch) in the Gougane Barra Hotel. At 3pm, the bus departs, just as the mist comes down over Gougane Barra lake, and the rising wind blows ripples across its surface.

There aren’t any buffalo at Toonsbridge dairy, but the shop sells the only Irish-made buffalo mozzarella, and the café is worth a trip, with home-made cakes, and little glass lights strung across the door leading out into its gardens. We browse the rails at the Lee Valley clothing company, and learn that the owner exports 80% of his produce to the US.

At 6pm, we roll back into the city.

The day-trippers are quieter now, as they step off the bus, many unaware of the silent ebb and flow of the River Lee underneath the city pavements, travelling all the way from its source at Gougane Barra.

* The next Coach Walk Cork trip is an 11-mile walk in the Gap of Dunloe, on June 1, for €20.