Hiking Trip No. 2 - hiking extreme!

This time I won't waste any time with doing another "orga post", but just stating the obvious: I've decided to change the language of this blog. Or, which is maybe more correct (regarding the content, the grammatical construction is probably rubbish): I was decided, since it wasn't exactly my idea. I mean, after all, I still study German, and I'm pretty sure the quality of my posts won't improve if I don't write in my native language... But at least some people will be happy now, I guess, because they can finally understand what I'm writing here all the time.
On the other hand, I hope I won't make my readers back home in Germany unhappy, but I count on them to understand English (which is more likely than lots of Erasmus people being able to read German ^^). And seriously, sometimes it felt like I was already writing ~50% of my texts in English. From now on, I just won't need to put all the English words I was already using in italics. But I might use one or another German expression from time to time, calling it germanicism, the equivalent to anglicism. :-P
Oh, and if you find any kind of mistakes in my posts (and I'm sure there will be dozens, since I don't have time for double-checking if I don't want to kill this blog with slowness) - just keep them, thank you! ;-)
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After this way too long introduction, I'm finally approaching the topic the headline promised: today (Oct. 25th, and I'll really try to publish this post today) was my second trip with the Rovers Club (or Society? I still have no clue).
At the beginning it was like the first hike I had joined: meeting in front of the SU in the morning, official time 9:45, not to be taken too seriously. So I didn't show up too early this time - even a German is able to learn that after some time here. :-D No silly games today - they were probably for killing time, because the bus driver was late last time xD -, we went straight to the bus and then to the mountains.
No problems so far. But then... *dramatic pause here* The difference was basically that we didn't follow an established path this time. Last time, you could even see the wooden path from time to time (have a look at my post about the first hike, even though it's in German, the pictures speak for themselves). This time, there was NO path, I swear... We just walked into something that looked like it had been a forest or so not too long ago:

I was kind of stunned by that. Until I found out that the Rovers guys referred to the first hike as the "Freshers' Hike" or something similar. So, what we did today was what they think of when they speak of "hiking"...
At the beginning, I was like: alright, so we're going up a mountain. That's totally okay, that's what hiking is about. I just hope that the ground won't stay like this all of the time...
Well, this actually became true, the ground changed later on, but when it did, I couldn't really appreciate that. And that's not because I like complaining (well, maybe I do, but that's not the point here ^^), but because it got worse. First, the ground was only uneven. Then it was uneven and wet... And, no, I'm not talking about a bit of dampness. The problem was, that the grass looked kind of dry on the surface. But when you placed your foot on it it could happen that it was like stepping into a puddle underneath. Which wetted you shoes incl. socks through and through, of course. Your feet were practically swimming in your shoes after that. And the mean thing was that you couldn't predict these mean places!!
After a short time, almost everybody had wet feet. Even people whose boots were supposed to be waterproof... (no, my runners weren't supposed to be waterproof, I assume. So I had very wet feet.)
But it got even funnier. Oh, just for your information: it wasn't raining today, only drizzling/mizzling for a short time (yeah, I admit: I had to look "nieseln" up. I usually don't talk about the weather in that great detail, although I'm in Ireland :-D). But probably it had been raining a lot during the last few days. That's why our surrounding looked like this at some point:

The second picture looks actually pretty nice... But as long as you're walking there it's not that nice, because you have to avoid looots of water - given the fact that you don't want to walk right trough it. Which isn't really to be recommended. You might get wet enough trying to go around it / jump over it / whatever creative idea might come to your mind...
By the way, our lunch break was at some sort of rift (fun fact: dict.cc also suggests "graben" for that :-P).

Tiny problem: you had to cross that, either before or after lunch. I think, even before we reached that, there was only one word that came to my mind when I tried to describe today's hike: adventurous!!

And - of course - we weren't finished then. Rather simple rule: if you go up a mountain, you'll have to go down again eventually. That's what we did, or let's say: attempted to do. I mean, since you're reading this post, we managed to go down and didn't just try it. But there was a bit of try and error involved.

At some point, somebody asked: "We're only going downhill now, right?" That was theoretically correct, but it wasn't quite as straightforward as it sounds. First, big surprise, there was still no path. So we made our way down somehow:

So far, so slippery, ahem, good. But then, some obstacles appeared. When we first walked our "way", we ended up at a fence. Since we didn't really want to climb over it, we had to go back. In order to do so, we had to cross a small "stream" (not sure if it's always there or just a result of too much rain). Again. Fact is, we had just crossed it to make our way down. And I have to admit, I don't like crossing streams, because I'm never sure when I'm going to end up having a bath involuntarily. Today I was lucky twice, but that was only because the Rovers guys made sure we all made it.
Well, after that we couldn't avoid climbing two fences to finally reach the road. Seriously, I can't remember when I climbed a fence for the last time. I haven't even climbed over the fence of the annoying field here in Maynooth, no matter how annoying it may be to walk round the field...
But here, we just didn't have an alternative (I have absolutely no clue who planned this route, seriously). Luckily, it wasn't too long until the bus came to pick us up. I've never been happier - only when I had a nice warm shower and a hot chocolate afterwards maybe...

The survival picture.

Yeah, and here are some more pictures of today's adventure. The landscape is actually beautiful...

And for the running gag of this blog: "Oh, Schafe!" (oh, sheep!)