{"id":279,"date":"2008-08-02T21:43:17","date_gmt":"2008-08-02T20:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/?p=279"},"modified":"2008-08-02T21:49:56","modified_gmt":"2008-08-02T20:49:56","slug":"kippure-mountain-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/02\/kippure-mountain-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Kippure Mountain & Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anita left me the car on Monday and the sun was out. Naturally, I headed south into the Wicklow Mountains<\/a>. (Technically, I stayed in County Dublin some of the time, but you get the idea.)<\/p>\n

I wanted to spend some time outside the city, and the harshness of the Wicklow Mountains always attracts me. I’d planned to bike on the Military Road at some point during the week. The weekend was beautiful (as you saw at the Kings of Concrete<\/a>). But rain was on the way and it was getting too late for a real adventure.<\/p>\n

A walk up Kippure Mountain<\/a> was perfect for my purposes. It was a true mountain peak, over 700 metres, but the service road to the top made it a relatively easy walk<\/a>. I could see what was blooming at mid-summer, and I could see some awe-inspiring horizons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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When I cleared the pine forests<\/a> between Kippure Mountain and the outskirts of Dublin, I noticed several cumulonimbus<\/a> clouds among the mountains. Those thundery rainclouds are rare here, so I was glad that I picked a route that would let me skedaddle back down if necessary.<\/p>\n

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But I was lucky: the sun smiled on me the whole way up and down<\/a>. It was even hot<\/i> for the first one hundred vertical metres or so. The view was a little hazy, so the photos aren’t ideal<\/a>, but they’re still worth seeing, so I posted them on Flickr for you:<\/p>\n