County Kerry | Tales from the Hutt

Saturday, 07-February-2026

Now, in my previous post I mentioned going camping out in Kerry… but why was I in Kerry, you may reasonably ask?

Well, it’s pretty. So there’s one good reason. But the real reason is that Mt. Brandon is there!

It’s the second highest peak in Ireland, and… Well, between you and I, it seems like a pretty simple ascent. Sure, it’s ranked as hard, but let’s be real with the terrain, elevation, and distance… it’s not the alps, or the cascades, or… really, it’s a pretty simple hike.

I figured that it’d make for a good test hike – I’d go, see how things pass, and iterate on Irish hikes from there. A leader’s recon, so to say.

It went absolutely lovely.

A bit of fog, some marshy terrain, but it was clean, simple, and lovely. Not too tiring, not too steep, not too slippery… just a lovely training hike for a lovely weekend.

Friday and Saturday, 06-February-2026 and 07-February-2026

It’s been absolutely too long since I’ve gone camping.

So I went camping.

Yup, simple story, epz, done and done, right?

Well… honestly, kind of? It’s weird… it’s been so long since I’ve really been able to escape and go camping that I’ve gained this kind of inertia. Partially built from not having gone camping, but mainly from the fact that it’s basically illegal to go tent camping / wild camping anywhere in Ireland. It’s supposedly “accepted”, so long as you stop by the farmhouse that owns the land and ask permission… but that’s not backpacking / camping, that’s just setting up a tent in a field for an evening.

So yeah, I found an AirBnB that’s a small cabin, so I could go do a hike nearby.

It’s not really camping, and it’s a far sight from backpacking.

But you know what? It’s the best that I can do in Ireland, so it’s what I did while here in Ireland.