We sat in Dungiven the other night searching for bus routes to get us to Belleek, the sections of the trail between Dungiven and Belleek were lower priority sections for us and in the interest of time we decided to skip them and circle back at the end if possible. The problem was that between these two small towns, bus service took five hours and only ran on Thursdays and Saturdays, and of course we wanted to travel on a Friday. This was our first night under a roof since our camping adventure and we were exhausted. We tried bus route combination after combination to get us down there to no avail. Lisa found a bus/train combo to Holywood, which was the last town prior to entering Belfast on our journey, and it was only a three hour trip. We decided to go there and begin the hike again in a clockwise direction, which by the way is how our directions are written. So we hoped this would make it easier to find our way.
To paint a picture if you look at a map, we began in Belfast almost two weeks ago and headed north to Ballycastle, then west along the Northen coast to Castlerock, from there we headed almost straight south to Dungiven, then hopped the bus and headed straight east to Holywood and are now making our way South and west along the coast back to Belleek. Basically we are completing our version of the Ulster Way in a figure eight pattern.
The sun was shining when we began again and it was a beautiful trail to follow to Bangor. It is refreshing to be back on the coast and back in civilization, we even went out to a pub for dinner that night and had two drinks (which was a big deal!). We are on for a week or so very popular sections so there are plenty of way markers and an easy trail to follow. After our reboot, everything seems to be bouncing our way and I am confident we made the right decision.
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