Chris Worfolk's Blog

For years, I’ve watched people get lucky with autumn and winter graduations. Cold but clear days make for excellent conditions when you’re wrapped up in robes. Alas, for us doctoral candidates, the long wait ended in a day a rain. A full day. It never stopped raining the whole day.

That could only slightly dampen, and not extinguish, our spirits, though. Professor Neville Cox gave a fantastic speech, touching on the hardships so many of us had overcome to be here, the responsibility we now had to make a positive contribution, and the importance of standing up to to the anti-knowledge sentiment that society is currently wrestling with.

Then came the formal bit. It is all done in Latin. There was a lot of smiling and nodding. My parchment is also in Latin.

This was followed by a reception in the Great Hall.

I’ve been in psychology for 12 years now, and it is a long journey from initial qualification to chartership. It doesn’t really finish here: I’ve already had an email from the BPS telling me about the fellowship track. But this is a wonderful milestone to reach. Thank you to everyone who has supported me on this journey, especially Elina, Venla and my parents. Like Formula One, it’s a team effort where one person takes all of the glory.

Good views guaranteed.

Lovely little museum. Security was so lax that they let an Englishman inside.

Bohernabreena Reservoir offers an 8.5 km loop, which includes an initial out-and-back section. It has some nice views and is relatively accessible. There isn’t much in the way of hills so not very strenuous.

Happy anniversary to my incredible wife. Here is to many more years of co-dependence.

This month’s guest speaker at the Humanist Association of Ireland was comedian Ed Byrne. He talked about growing up in Swords, which was a small town back then, and about his involvement in the Humanist movement, as well as comedy and how to approach making jokes about religion. All of it was super interesting. Thanks, Ed!

We wanted to hide Tonelagee. But when we drove into the hills, it looked like this:

So we diverted to Bray instead. Even Bray Head was in the clouds when we arrived, but after a snack break the mist cleared and we were able to get good views. We walked was far as Bray Head Hill which is the highest point between Bray and Greystones.

The moisture had left all of the spiders webs visible.

Killarney National Park is located in County Kerry in the south west corner of Ireland. We have previously visited every county in Ireland except two: Cork and Kerry. To resolve this, we headed down the M8 to tick the final counties off (it’s the final counties, du du du dudh), stopping in Mallow to tick off County Cork and spending the weekend in Killarney.

It also meant I could engage in a bit more parkrun tourism, completing Killarney House parkrun.

There is free parking at the Muckross estate which includes farms, a house, an abbey and more. We started by walking over and exploring the abbey. There are lots of old trees, including one inside the cloister of the abbey. We then took a walk along the lakeside and hiked over to Torc Waterfall.

We had lunch at the garden restaurant which offered a really nice roast chicken. One of the challenges when you are outside of Yorkshire is that people often don’t understand when you say you want a generous portion of gravy. There is just never enough gravy. But not a problem here.

There was so much to do that we spend both days in the park and did a tour of Muckross House the next day.

Killarney is a happening place and the whole weekend was busy in the town. This made for a lot of traffic but also plenty of atmosphere. We were worried we might not be able to find somewhere to eat but luckily The Porterhouse were able to fit us in. On Sunday, we had lunch at Manna Cafe, which is also worth a visit.

Killarney House parkrun takes place at the large house and gardens in the centre of Killarney. It’s a three lap course with the beautiful hills in the background and a chance to see some deer (although we didn’t spot any on this occasion). Well worth doing if you are in the area.

Djouce is a mountain in County Wicklow. Ireland sometimes has a generous definition of mountain, but at 725 metres high, it is starting to feeling like a proper hill. It is a 7-8k round trip that takes around two hours to complete, a lot of which is on boarded paths.

It forms part of the Wicklow Way which was created by J. B. Malone. Malone was a Leeds lad, so we’re claiming the Wicklow Way and hill-walking as a Leeds invention now.