Hillwalk with a 10 year old - Cork area

WHL

Hi All,

I have an energetic 10 year old boy that wants to climb a hill before his soccer season starts again. We are based in Cork city and I hear that the weather might be good this weekend. Whilst visiting West Cork he has often climbed a 500 foot hill in the area and wants a "bigger hill". Realistically we want to walk/scramble up a hill while wearing runners. We would leave early and return in the same evening. Any ideas of a safe option within around a 60 minute drive of Cork city. I obviously won't take any chances and will wear layers, take water/food, suncream etc. Thanks

SomeFool

http://www.munsterhillwalks.com/Documents/Paps.htm - one of the nearest choices, failing that you are only an hour from Killarney - Torc or Mangerton both would offer nice routes for you, the walk to the punch bowl on Mangerton might be a good starting point for ye. Enjoy it!

WHL

Looks good. Thanks. Could be the start of regular hill-walking ............

The Dagda

SomeFool wrote: »

http://www.munsterhillwalks.com/Documents/Paps.htm - one of the nearest choices, failing that you are only an hour from Killarney - Torc or Mangerton both would offer nice routes for you, the walk to the punch bowl on Mangerton might be a good starting point for ye. Enjoy it!

It would be a very bad idea to try the paps or mangerton in runners. Both are long walks over boggy wet land. Torc is easily done in runners as there's a path all the way up, it doesn't offer any scrambling opportunity though.

Tbh, there are no real scrambling routes close to cork city. My knowledge is limited but i'd say the best place for some scrambling close to cork would be on the way to killarney, past the paps, about 10km from killarney, on both sides of the road, there are rocky mountains that would offer dry scrambling. I don't know what the area is called, sorry.

Hope that helps.

WHL

Well we went as far as The Paps yesteday morning but found it difficult to figure out where to start without crossing land/getting permission etc. we ended up doing Claragh outside Millstreet. That was fine in runners and was a lovely first attempt. It took about to and a half hours to climb and return - at a sedate rate. No scrambling but he was delighted and didn't complain at all

The Dagda

The Dagda wrote: »

My knowledge is limited but i'd say the best place for some scrambling close to cork would be on the way to killarney, past the paps, about 10km from killarney, on both sides of the road, there are rocky mountains that would offer dry scrambling. I don't know what the area is called, sorry.

Hope that helps.

If you mean in and around Beenaunmore, would not advise it in runners. Lovely area though.

Not sure I would advise any scramble in runners. Not so much the grip, after all if the rocks are dry that might not be an issue. But the ankles will do a fair amount of bending, particularly on the descent where the body might be pitching forward. Would imagine it would be pretty easy to go over and do an injury on any scamble, even something easy enough. For runners, would shy away from scrambling and stick with trails like Torc, the Old Kenmare Killarney road (can be wet in places) etc. etc.