On Thursday one of the young men in my course asked whether I would be walking on the weekend (Ameer used to do hill running and knows the Wicklow mountains really well). When I said I was walking, I also said I was looking forward to what I could experience weatherwise. After all in only three walks I had encountered snow, heavy fog, clear sunshine, sleet and five solid hours of rain. What other precipitation could I experience other than hail?

I also made this observation to Claire and Connor when they picked me up from the train station on the way to the walk. At the time I was wearing sunglasses, as the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We did our normal thing, starting with too much clothing on, we warmed up, stripped two (of about four) layers off, put it all back on again when we reached the top of a hill (with a wind chill factor of -1C), stripped off again when we got into a sunny valley and on it went until it became overcast and HAILED! I reacted like I had brought the hail on by celebrating with something like an Indian rain dance. Everyone thought I was quite mad - who gets excited about hail? The photos of the walking include the waterfall and Connor, Carmel and I at the pub after. At the end of a seven hour day of walking and being near the seaside I thought I would experience fish and chips from one of the enormous number of chippers in Bray. But I am afraid it will be my first and last experience of Irish indigestion.

So who has heard of a place called Newgrange (or Bru na Boinne)? Showing my ignorance - I hadn’t until I read about it in a book given to me by Chris at Christmas – it was so interestingly described I thought I must see that. So I became one of the over 235,000 people a year who travel to see an archaeological site older than the pyramids. Newgrange may be smaller and not so imposing on the landscape but it took my breath away. How could stone-age people build something that today stands soundly, not letting one bit of moisture or light inside, with just layers of rock and without the use of mortar or cement. The stone was brought from 400kms away, and like Stonehenge and the Pyramids they don’t know how the rock was transported because it was before the invention of the wheel.

Of course this isn’t the amazing part – what is really astounding is that there is a light box over the entry of the “temple” , "tomb" (there is no definitive description or use of the structure) that on the winter solstice at dawn, directs the light perfectly into the centre of the floor of the building, a distance of about 25 metres. With a successful visit to Newgrange I thought I might walk around the nearby town of Drogheda (“Cathy it may have a ‘g’ in it but just ignore it”). But unfortunately despite the call of seeing St Oliver’s head in St Peter’s, I decided the rain and the constant road works were too much for me to negotiate so I headed to my nice warm and dry home. Love Cathy