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Ireland 2008, Part 1
While I was back in the US feeding the cats and checking the mail, Tabitha and Christina were still visiting Amy and Peter. They left Germany to go to Paris for a day or so, then took a boat to Ireland. Meanwhile, I went to Dublin to pick up a rental car and headed south to meet them. We finally met in Wexford at the hostel where we would spend the night. I had picked up a new jacket for Tabitha while I was at home, so that is why she is wearing it so proudly. In the last picture below you can see our luggage. Mine is the small one, and Christina's is the big one. We thought they would fit in nicely in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Here is our planning session. One tip- if you are ever in a place that sells mint flavored apple juice, don't try it. If you do, don't say I didn't warn you. In the second picture below you can see our Focus. In the US, that's a compact car. In Ireland, it's an SUV.
Our first stop was the Waterford Crystal Factory. I've separated those pictures and put them in another page that you can see by clicking here. After the tour we were overdue for some lunch, so here is what we found. Tabitha had fish and chips, Christina had a sandwich, and I had a meat pie with potatoes and carrots and cabbage. After lunch we drove towards Skibbereen for our next night. Our route took us across the southern part of the island, and the scenery was very nice.
Our next stop was the Blarney Castle (near Cork), home of the famous blarney stone. The next few rows of pictures are of that castle and the grounds around it.
The castles look now like they were made just of rocks, but they tell us that the walls used to be lined with plaster that would make them smooth. The last picture above shows a place where some of that plaster remains. The second picture below shows a fireplace up in the middle of the wall. The builders of these castles used wood beams to support floors, and of course now the wood has rotten and dissapeared. The room with the fireplace on the wall would have actually been several floors tall when the castle was operational.
The second picture below shows the same phenomenon. The largest room would have actually been 3 large rooms, unlike the open courtyard that it seems to be now. Click on the detail of the third picture below to see the remains of a decorative molding that probably used to circle the entire room.
As we had come to expect, castles like this one were built in great strategic locations that provided excellent views of the surrounding territory. I'm sure this was an important security measure back before the days of police and law and order.
We decided to stay in Skibbereen for the night, and our hostel had been converted from an old mill. That is of course why it is called Russagh Mill. In addition to the sleeping quarters, they also had several other fun things going on. We got the impression that they hosted adventure camps in the summer for kids. They had a climbing wall on the side of the building, along with kayaks and archery targets. I enjoyed a few minutes of walking around the grounds and finding the evidence of the mill's operation. You can see those same reminders in most of the pictures below. It was a nice place to stay. The landscaping was a little bit wild, but I couldn't blame them- it seemed like they had better things to do than mow down the wild flowers. I also saw lots of wild blackberries that were just about ripe.
The roads were winding and narrow, and we almost never were able to drive as fast as the speed limit. They drive on the left side of the road over there, but after our practice in Australia it didn't take long to get used to it again. There were lots of good places to pull off the road to stop, and here is one that had lots of flowers and blackberries.
We passed a road sign that directed us down a small side road to see a castle, so we tried it out. It turned out to be one that is used as a vacation attraction, so we didn't get very close. We drove through lots of small towns, and they all looked about the same. In the town pictured below we got some fish and chips and browsed a few stores.
Between towns there were plenty of open areas for grazing. I guess they paint the sheep since branding wouldn't really work.
As we made our way north along the southeastern corner of the island, we overlapped briefly with the "Ring of Kerry." We found out from the locals that we talked to earlier in our trip that the Ring of Kerry is sort of where they quarantine the tour busses and tourists that don't know any better. The roads are just as winding and narrow as the rest of the island, and just as scenic as the rest of that corner of the island, but don't tell anyone else that. You can see how crowded it was during the short time that our route overlapped theirs in the last few pictures below.
We were driving through a protected area, sort of like a national park. You can see the wild flowers and such.
As the evening drew near, we stopped in the town of Dingle for supper. We found an Indian restaurant and got a lamb curry and some cheesecake. The end of the peninsula is the western-most point of mainland Ireland, which was a nice place to see the sunset from.
Our hostel for this night wasn't as full of character as the converted mill, but it was newer and cleaner. We also had our own bathroom.
Tabitha wanted to stick her toe in the Atlantic Ocean from the other side, so we drove to a beach. As you can see from the pictures (that I took from the warm comfort of the dry car) it was both cold and wet.
If you look at the western coast of Ireland you can see that it is made up of several east-west oriented peninsulas. There are rivers that feed into the ocean, and most of them have bridges to drive across. In one particular case, there isn't a practical place for a bridge, so there is a ferry. If we had decided to skip the ferry, we would have had to add several hours of driving time to get to the same place. Our destination was the Cliffs of Moor, yet another popular and scenic attraction.
The little caves are stores that sell things like music, t-shirts, and art. Tabitha and I each got a t-shirt that has 4 little sheep and says "the four seasons of ireland." I took the second picture in case I needed any more pictograms for my site navigation. There were some good ones for sure- you never know when I might start a spinning wheel section. To appreciate the height of the cliffs in the third picture, look at the big version and see if you can spot the people on top. They look really small, so look carefully.
The wind was very strong at the top of the cliff, and the last picture above and the first picture below aren't too far from the truth. It was also lightly raining. I'm sure the slug didn't mind the rain.
We stopped in Lisdoonvarna for lunch, and had a warm bowl of soup or two. The town is apparently famous for a matchmaking festival, and in the second picture below you can see some statues being matched up.
Tabitha wanted to stop at Aillwee Cave, and our admission price included a tour of the birds of prey exhibit. We also got to try some cheese for free, and you can see a cool folding cutting board in the second picture on the second row below.
We drove up to the cave entrance and got our tour slot. We had a few minutes to kill in the gift shop before we entered the cave.
These are the only pictures that I took inside the cave. It was fairly routine of a place, reminding us that for the most part the earth is the same over there as it is over here.
We drove through the buren on the way to the portal tomb, an ancient site attributed to very early human inhabitants. The ground in the buren is eroded to the bed rock, so only some highly adapted plants are able to survive there. They are also fairly rare plants, and thus also an interesting subject matter for scientists and such.
The hostel that we chose was one of the only ones around, but it turned out to be a nice place. It was run by a farmer who was somewhat particular and strict, but perhaps for good reason. We were able to do laundry there, only after being scolded by a tourist from the UK about the carbon footprint of us using the electric clothes dryer. I'm not sure what sort of alternative she had in mind, since it was raining outside. I was only carrying enough clothes for about 4 days, so I was glad to be recharged. There was a large family from Northern Ireland that was in town on their annual pilgrimage. They took over the kitchen and made a huge meal, and when they were cleaning up we came in to toast our cheese bread. They offered us some of their leftover turnips and potatoes, and we accepted. They were quite good, especially the turnips. The roots were stewed until they were the consistency of mashed potatoes, but were very flavorful.
The pictures below are the view out of the front door of the hostel. If you look closely you can see a rainbow that popped up just as the sun was setting. The "lake" is actually just a field that happens to be flooded. We were in Ireland during a period of unusually high rainfall.
The rest of our Ireland adventure is just down that road that you see in the picture above. Click here to continue.
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