I was on the outskirts of Cork, Ireland, standing across the road from the city Zoo displaying a handwritten sign to drivers that read ‘I DON’T SMELL.’ Having lost out on an opportunity to drive through the Ring of Kerry region earlier that morning, I now had no idea where I was going. I would be at the mercy of whoever picked me up, though by design that person ought to be interesting and have a good sense of humor. So with my headphones blaring Blue Suede, I swayed to the music and smiled broadly at the passing cars. I was a rampant raving optimist.

I was eventually picked up by Annie, a thirty-something doctoral student on her way to visit a friend in the countryside. I told her that I wasn’t really sure where I was going, so she helped me brainstorm some interesting destinations as we drove. We stopped for lunch together at a cafe where she insisted on treating me after I listened (with genuine interest) to her notes for an upcoming presentation on abnormal psychology. Annie got me excited about a place called Cashel, a small town famous for a massive castle and scenic mountains riddled with hiking trails. Annie dropped me at a tollbooth on a major road where she thought it might be a good gambit to offer to pay someone’s toll in exchange for a lift to Cashel. I thanked her for her kindness and wished her luck on her upcoming presentation before waving goodbye.

In the short about of time that it took to rewrite my hitchhiking sign to read ‘CASHEL,’ a policeman came striding out of a building across from the tollbooths. He politely told me that it was illegal to hitch on the ‘M-Motorways’ in Ireland, but that he could give a lift to the next exit where I could try my luck on a country road. Happy to dodge yet another misdemeanor, I accepted his offer and got in my second police car in as many weeks. The cop left the highway, drove out into the middle of nowhere, and then promptly abandoned me on a desolate stretch of road, just like that. The hilly vista spread out around me was awesome, but my situation suddenly wasn’t. Picking up a hitchhiker on the outskirts of a major tourist city seems much less risky to good-karma-seekers than pulling over for a lone backpacker trudging along a country road near sundown. For solo drivers who’ve maybe seen one too many episodes of Criminal Minds, that is a textbook “Ehh…nope” situation.

After about an hour of walking, fully expecting to sleep out under the chilly November sky that night, a little car came honking up behind me enthusiastically. In the driver’s seat was Conor, an exercise science undergrad who, as luck would have it, was driving right through Cashel. Conor and I had a lot of the same interests and political opinions and we got along famously as we wound our way through the countryside, dutifully avoiding all the tollbooths on the major highway that probably would’ve gotten us to Cashel in half the time. We arrived in little Cashel by nightfall and took a few pictures before exchanging information and parting ways. Conor later posted a picture of the two of us on Facebook commenting on what a nice guy I was.

I checked into a hostel in Cashel where I befriended Marleen from Holland, Hayley from Alaska, and an amateur French boxer whose name I couldn’t understand or pronounce so I just called him Jock. We chatted around hot drinks and got to know each other before cozying up on a couch to watch Braveheart. I swear, making fast friends on the road is one of the simplest and most wonderful parts of travelling by yourself. Jock went to bed right after the movie to rest up for his face-pummeling contest in the morning, and Hayley turned in as well since she needed to be up early to work at the hostel desk. Marleen and I decided to go out for drinks together, however a decidedly over-the-hill truck driver also staying at the hostel eavesdropped on our plans and invited himself to join us. We took this as bittersweet fortune since the odd man claimed to know the best bars with live music in town. Thanks to him we got to see the worst acoustic gig ever where a teenager actually played Wonderwall twice within an hour. The consolation prize was at the second bar where we crashed a girl’s eighteenth birthday party and danced with prom-dress clad aspiring alcoholics.

The next day I joined Marleen, Hayley, and the freshly victorious Jock on a hike in the Knockmealdown mountain range. We had to drive a ways down the road from Cashel in Jock’s car toward a speck on the map called Clogheen to reach the trailhead. Now because Jock had brought this little green car with him on the ferry from France to Ireland, it was a left-hand drive instead of the right-hand drive cars everyone in Ireland (and the rest of the British Islands) drives. As I was riding shotgun, where the steering wheel ought to have been in an Irish car, I had some fun leaning out of the window and waving my arms maniacally at honking cars passing us in the opposite direction. The looks on those drivers’ faces were absolutely priceless. We finally reached our destination at the base of a small mountain nicknamed The Vee. We unfortunately couldn’t see the summit 2,000 feet above us due to a thick cloud that had settled itself on top of the mountain, but we set off on our hike regardless.

Only a few hundred yards away from the road we came across a strange egg-shaped stone structure about fifteen feet tall jutting out of the trail. Jock, with his long spider-like legs, scrambled up to the top of it and started making bird noises. I walked around the stone egg and found a small plaque revealing that this was in fact the tomb of a man named Grubb Grave. There was no other information except that he had died in 1921. I relayed this information to the French boxing bird, who then made a sound like a broken cuckoo clock and dismounted the tomb.

We continued hiking until the loose stone path regressed into a steep muddy mess of unpleasantness where a recent rain had washed out the trail in dramatic fashion. This was the kind of soupy, tar-like mud that would swallow a boot whole and fossilize it for some eager 25th-century archeologist to discover. Undeterred, Jock began to hopscotch his way upward from rock to rock. It was absurd, but I followed his lead. After an unforgiving mile or so of this technique, the trail thankfully returned to a solid rocky consistency. Jock and I had outpaced the girls considerably by that point, but we decided to press on anyway. We soon began to hike into the thick of the cloud enveloping the summit and suddenly couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. Jock and I decided that reaching the summit would be more than a little anticlimactic if we couldn’t see anything, so we turned back and met the girls just as they were emerging from the mud pits. They were livid when we told them we were going back down through the mud again.

We hiked or way back down the mountain to a serene little valley lake in the mountain’s shadow. The water was so still and glassy that it looked almost frozen from a distance. The surrounding mountains were reflected with such mirror-like perfection on the water that the point where the mountain stopped and the lake began was not immediately obvious. Our talkative little group found itself hushed by the scenery and we went about enjoying it in our own ways.

That night I went out again with the girls, this time to a nightclub. Cashel was a small town, and I’m pretty sure that every resident under the age of forty was in that club that night. The club had a kind of Dante’s Inferno layering system to it. First you entered into a small, well lit bar playing prehistoric hits like “Come On Eileen,” then had to cross through an outdoor smoking area blaring rock music to reach a slightly larger bar playing more modern pop music for a crowd of bad haircuts. Another, much darker outdoor smoking area then connected to the inner sanctum where a DJ pumped lethal amounts of electronic music into a gymnasium-sized room lit only by black lights and glow stick-wielding dancers. I unwittingly lost the girls shortly after arriving, and like Dante’s Inferno, I spent most of my night on a desperate mission to find my beloveds and escape that hell. When I eventually did find them, we retired back to the hostel where we changed into pajamas and made a giant pillow fort to watch movies inside of. All in all, it was a day well spent.

I checked out the next morning with heartfelt goodbyes to everyone and set out with my backpack to hike to the castle – the whole reason I’d wanted to come to Cashel in the first place. When I found it, it certainly did not disappoint. Nicknamed The Rock, Cashel Castle is a marvel of Celtic stonework, though it was sadly in the process of being restored and therefore closed. After taking a few pictures I realized I was in the same situation I was just a couple days ago – back on the road without any idea where I was going. I popped into a little bakery for some breakfast and asked the woman behind the counter if there were any other big castles like The Cashel Rock nearby. She recommended the castle in Cahir, and just like that, I knew where I was going next.