Ireland Holiday 2008

Tuesday 12 Aug 2008: Lisburn, Scotland, and Home

2008-10-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

OUR LAST DAY IN IRELAND. HEAVY RAIN was forecast overnight and during the day, and remembering the floods that had preceded our arrival by a day, the floods that just missed us as we drove around Dublin on our way to Belfast, and the torrents that we’d driven through on our visit to the Giant’s Causeway, we’d gone to bed apprehensive that the basement carpark might flood overnight.

But come the morning, all was well, and we managed to leave the apartment early enough to drive to Lisburn and visit the Linen Museum shop. We didn’t have time to see the museum itself, unfortunately, but we bought some Irish linen: “natural” placemats and serviettes, and a white embroidered and lace-trimmed traycloth for Margaret to use as dressing table runner.

We drove back to Belfast, and to the ferry terminal, where we had a long wait in obedience to the instruction, on our tickets, to be there 90 minutes before departure. There were a couple of columns of cars there already, but how virtuous we felt as, over the next hour or so, car after car drove up and was shepherded into column after additional column. Come loading time, we were last to drive aboard, which we thought would stand us in good stead for being first off at the other end.

Shoulda known better. The crossing itself was uneventful (we got some magneti of the ferry!), but when we got to Stranraer, ours was the last vehicle but two, and last car but one, to be let off the boat. We felt like emailing the ferry company and telling them where to stick their “ninety minutes before sailing”!

Still, no harm was done, and the drive through the Scottish countryside from Stranraer down to Carlisle, and through England from there to Acton and home, was as uneventful as the crossing—for us, at least. Our route from Stranraer took us eastwards along the A75, skirting to the south of Newton Stewart, and from there along the scenic A712 tourist route called “The Queen’s Way” (in commemoration of her Silver Jubilee in 1977). It was about 20 minutes out of Newton Stewart that we heard on the traffic reports that the road there was now closed in both directions due to a very nasty accident at the intersection of the A75 and the north-south A714.

We got home about 9:30 p.m., tired after 2,300 miles of travel, but happy, and with some pretty linen, a small clutch of bookmarks, a larger clutch of fridge magnets, a pretty vase, some whistles, several books, a mountain of photos, and an ocean of memories.

It was three days later that the floods hit Belfast … “Some places in central and eastern Northern Ireland saw up to three-quarters of the August rainfall in a single day,” and the newly-built Broadway Underpass was under 5m of water. We were sorry for the Irish people who were affected, and so glad to be back at home.

Monday 11 Aug 2008: Newgrange

2008-10-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

WHEN WE DROVE FROM THE IRISH Republic back into the United Kingdom, there was no fanfare, and in fact the transition from one country to another seemed to be completely unmarked (possibly because it was straddled by road works), apart from the change from kph to mph—which may have caused a problem till Don suddenly realised he was driving at 30 mph, thinking that the 50 sign still meant kph.

It was much the same when we drove back down into The Republic today, and probably for the same reason—But pause! Rewind! We drove back down into The Republic today? What was that about?

It was about the fact that we’d intended to visit Newgrange on the way out of The Republic, but had been waylaid by Tara instead (having stumbled across it first). No regrets about Tara—everyone should visit!—but Newgrange remained very high on our lists of “must sees”, so—why not?

We made breakfast in our kitchen, from the supplies we’d bought at Tescos, then went down to the basement and took the car up onto the Lisburn Rd and down to the M1. About 100 minutes later (around 11 a.m.), we pulled up in the Newgrange car park.

People (including kiwis back home) say to us, “You’re from New Zealand? That’s such a beautiful country! What the heck are you over in the UK for?” Well, of course, the Republic isn’t part of the UK, but the same answer does for both: the British Isles are beautiful too, and they have something NZ lacks: ancient (pre)history!

(But they’re not really “home” …)

Ancient (pre)history! You might think from our travels so far we’d had enough of it, but not us! Newgrange is one of the places that ancient (pre)history buffs just have to visit if they get the opportunity just once in their lives! (Not to mention sprinkling exclamation marks around like crazy! But when you ain’t got much to say, say it with vigour, yassuh!)

And ancient (pre)prehistory buffs don’t come much more ancient (or buffy) than us … …

Ahem. After a bit of a quiet lie-down, Our Author continues …

You can’t get to the site except via the Visitor Centre, and when we got there we found you have to be organised into tours. Newgrange is part of a wide sacred landscape (the Brú na Bóinne complex), and initially we booked into a tour that would also take us out to Knowth (an associated site, about a mile away, apparently as spectacular as Newgrange, but in different ways). But a wee bit of questioning showed that if we took just the Newgrange tour, we might be able to satisfy one of Margaret’s ambitions, too, visiting the Lisburn Linen Museum on the way back (since the Nottingham Lace Museum which we’d hoped to visit on an earlier occasion had closed down); so we booked onto the 1:45 tour of Newgrange only.

If you have to visit a Visitor Centre, we’d thoroughly recommend the one at Newgrange. The initial exhibits are a series of brilliant models showing the landscape around Newgrange, both as it is, and at various periods during its development from around 3,300 BC, until it disappeared from view as a human structure around 2,000 BC; then you come to dioramas and reconstructions of Neolithic living.

So what is Newgrange? It’s a prehistoric chambered mound representing a tomb and religious centre with astronomical implications. It’s BIG (a rough circle 250 feet across and 40 feet high), and it’s OLD—older than the oldest Egyptian pyramid, and older than the stone circles at Stonehenge. And it’s ASTRONOMICAL: once a year, at the time of the winter solstice, the sun shines directly along the long interior passage into the central chamber for about 17 minutes as it rises, and illuminates the chamber floor for a very short time.

It’s also visually spectacular, but we’ll come to that shortly. We toured the Visitor Centre, bought the inevitable couple of guidebooks, and lunched in the café, and then it was time for our group to make their way to the bus stop. This took us across a footbridge over the flooded River Boyne, reminding us of the floods we’d missed just two days before. “Brú na Bóinne” means, “The Palace of the Boyne”; the river is supposedly named after the local river goddess Boaná, “She of the White Cow”; she was the mother of Young Angus, Aengus Óg, god of love and lovers, of poetry, and of the dawn. Newgrange was the home of the gods, the Tuatha dé Danaan (“Too-aha jay Duhnairn”, very roughly), and of Aengus Óg’s father, “the Dagda”.

Our first, exciting, view of Newgrange was from the bus. Seen over the top of the hedge that borders the lane, its white quartz façade gleamed against the lowering clouds. The façade is controversial: after the mound had gone out of use, its sides collapsed outwards until it looked like just another hill; its nature was only rediscovered during Michael O’Kelly’s excavations starting in 1962. As well as excavating, O’Kelly did much restoration, as part of which, the white quartzite and dark granite stones that were found buried in the slippage at the front of the mound were placed into a near vertical steel reinforced concrete wall. Critics say that the technology to achieve anything like this didn’t exist until modern times; a similar mound at Knowth has been reconstructed with the stones laid out to form a sort of “apron” before the entrance. But the sight of the arrangement at Newgrange, the white quartzite at the front shading round through the grey granite at the sides, is surely spectacular!

You can also see, on the last photo and on this, some of the “kerbstones” that line the perimeter of the mound. There are almost a hundred of them, most recumbent but some upright; many are decorated with megalithic art (incised rings, spirals, wavy lines, and lozenges), though Knowth is apparently much more magnificent in that respect. But the entrance to the passage that runs into the mound is guarded by a wonderful stone, reckoned as “one of the most famous stones in the entire repertory of megalithic art”, which may represent the sacred landscape itself, with the waves of the river at the base. (Well, that’s one of several interpretations.)

There are several ruinous prehistoric monuments around the mound (which is the only one that’s been restored), and there was time to wander round them while keeping one ear open for the guide’s explanation of the site. But the climax of the visit always takes place inside the mound. You have to climb up and down some steps that lead over the fronting stones, then duck your head (unless you’re vertically challenged) to enter the doorway. Inside, the 19-metre (20-yard) stone-lined passage follows a slightly wavy path up a slight incline, to the central chamber, the floor of which lies a fraction above the level of the top of the entrance doorway to the mound.

The central chamber has a magnificent corbelled (overlapped stone) roof, six metres high (20ft), which, the guide assured us, “has never leaked in 5,000 years.” (This is almost certainly true!) There are three semi-circular recesses off the central chamber, making a sort of cross shape, quite common in these prehistoric mounds both in Britain and Ireland, and in Europe. The guide talked us through all this, but the magical part came at the end, when she switched out the lights. We all stood in an expectant, and slightly awed, silence, until, after a few seconds, a golden glow crept up the floor of the passage, and fell on the chamber floor at our feet. It lasted for a breathless a quarter of an hour, before fading gradually away.

This was a simulation of the phenomenon that occurs each year at sunrise on December 21st, the Winter Solstice. After an interval of a couple of thousand years, Michael O’Kelly was the first person in modern times (1967) to see it. There are other megalithic sites that show a similar phenomenon, but only here does the light enter through a specially-constructed “light box” above the entranceway, and only here does it exactly graze the walls of the sinuous passage leading to the chamber. Photography within the mound is, of course, forbidden …

There’s never time enough, particularly with a site so rich as Newgrange, and all too soon we had to get back on the bus and return to the Visitor Centre. We took a last look round the shop (an excellent magneto of the front kerbstone, but no bookmarks or cross-stitch), walked back to the car, and headed north in hopes of getting to the Lisburn Linen Museum.

It was pretty hopeless, really, thanks to heavy traffic and constant road works: we got to Lisburn just as the museum and its shop were closing (5 p.m.); quite a disappointment, on our last day in Ireland (going home tomorrow). But as a consolation prize, we went back to the apartments via the Lagan Valley Regional Park, “a mosaic of countryside, urban parks, heritage sites, nature reserves and riverside trails”, though we had time for only one of its features: the Giant’s Ring, one of the finest raths or henges (circular earthwork enclosures) in the British Isles, dating from around 4,700 years ago. More than 200 metres across, with a bank now reduced to “only” four metres high (that’s 13 ft), it lies about five miles from Lisburn and four from central Belfast.

In the centre is a dolmen, the remains of an ancient earth-covered tomb, with the earth long-since gone. If you can do the “cross-your-eyes” trick, the two photos here, showing the dolmen and the bank beyond it, make a stereoscopic double.

During the 18th century, the Giant’s Ring was used for horse-races and ploughing competitions, but it was rescued in 1847 by the local land owner, who put up a wall round it. A stone let into the wall reads:

THIS WALL FOR THE PROTECTION OF
THE GIANT'S RING
WAS ERECTED A.D. MDCCCXLI BY
ARTHUR VISCOUNT DUNGANNON
[On whose] estate this singular relique of
[the ancients] is situated and who earnestly
recommends it to the care of his successors.

Thankyou, Lord Dungannon …

Sunday 10 Aug 2008: Giant’s Causeway and Bushmills

2008-10-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

YOU CAN GO LOTS OF DIRECTIONS FROM Belfast; we decided to go north.

Well, okay, a little west of North. Destination: the Giant’s Causeway. Getting there would have been easy, if we’d had an Internet connection and could dial up Google maps (or whatever); but all we had was the AA Road Atlas of Ireland, which was fine for general directions (M3, M2, A26 …), but deficient when it came to a map of Belfast: there was one, but we weren’t on it.

So, we took totally the wrong direction (with the benefit of hindsight!), roughly 180º wrong, in fact; but we wombled around as usual, and eventually found the right route.

Once we’d got under way, the drive took about two hours. In southern Ireland, we’d seen several houses flying flags with the local county colours: the yellow and green of Kerry; the red and white of Cork; the blue and white of Waterford … In Ulster, our route took us through some extremely neat villages festooned with Union Jacks and St George flags, like bunting for a royal visit. Regrettably (in hindsight), we didn’t stop for a photo.

We also didn’t stop to photograph any of the bands of very heavy rain that were sweeping across from west to east. We must have passed through four or five of them, each one requiring us to slow down, turn on the headlamps, and put the windscreen wipers on full. We thought of the floods there’d been down south (and not very far down south, really) the day before …

We got to the Giant’s Causeway about 1 p.m., during a dry (non-raining) and even partially sunny spell. Despite the weather, there was a long queue for parking, during which we took some very atmospheric photos of the weather sweeping across the mouth of Lough Foyle. Fortunately, we managed to dodge it when it fell.

You have to pay to visit the Causeway itself, which we duly did, and that entitled us to use the courtesy bus (which was yellow). It’s quite a long way down to the beach, and along the way we had official guide Colin to regale us with myths and legends—and some real geology—about the Causeway and its origins. The ride down alone was pretty scenic, taking us past (amongst other attractions) Finn MacCool’s stone camel and his petrified granny (who overdid it one day at the Bushmill’s distillery. Colin later admitted to us that he’d made that bit up).

We learnt from Colin that the Causeway, and related formations in Ireland and Scotland, was made (or its foundations laid) 60 million years ago, when volcanic eruptions filled river valleys with lava which cooled and solidified. Where it cooled slowly and evenly, it formed the hexagonal pillars that everyone knows about at the Causeway; where it cooled rapidly, it left chaotic jumbled masses. You can see where pillars meet chaos in the cliffs to the east of the Causeway.

The locals know that this is just a modern myth, of course; the truth of the matter is that the Giant of the Giant’s Causeway was none other than the aforementioned Finn MacCool, whom we previously met on the Dingle Peninsula. Though he fought many battles in many parts of Ireland, hereabouts was his actual home, and the story is well known of how he built the causeway so that a rival Scottish giant, Benandonner, could cross the sea to be whomped.

But as big Ben approached, Finn realised to his horror that his opponent was a larger and more fearsome rival than he anticipated. He fled to his home in the nearby hills, and like any sensible man, asked his wife for advice. Oonagh, a practical woman, disguised Finn as a baby, complete with large nightgown and bonnet. She placed him in a huge, hastily made cradle, telling him to keep quiet and pretend to sleep, as Benandonner’s great shadow darkened the door. Oonagh brought the Scottish giant in for tea, pleading with him not to waken Finn’s child, Looking at the massive ‘baby’ lying in the cradle, Benandonner took fright, saying that if this was the child, he had no wish to meet the father. He fled back to Scotland, ripping up the Causeway behind him, terrified that the awful Finn might follow him home.

(According to Colin, who actually seemed to know what he was talking about re the geology, the “matching” formations in the Hebrides, including Fingal’s Cave—“Fingal”, a.k.a. Finagle, being Finn MacCool—are from a different lava flow of about the same period, and not directly linked to the Giant’s Causeway.)

We clambered (and sat) on the Causeway, fascinated not just by the scale of the thing, but by its fine detail. There are, of course, “features” to look out for, such as The Wishing Chair (made for Finn when he was a child, it will grant your wish if you sit in it), but Don was intrigued by “Finn’s patio paving” and “Finn’s patio pool”, never previously described …

The weather was still sunny, despite a couple of spits of rain, and we spent some time on the main Causeway (there are three parts; the photo shows the Wishing Chair on Middle Causeway) before catching the bus back up to the Visitors’ Centre at the top of the cliffs. There we shopped for magneti (found a good one of the Causeway), a bookmark (ditto), the inevitable guide books, and—at last—the very T-shirt we’d wanted for Don in Killarney, but been unable to get in the right size. No cross-stitch, but Margaret found one later on the Internet. And we sat and leafed through the booklets while we had another very late lunch.

Colin’s reference to Finn’s Granny’s love of Bushmills whiskey was an apt local reference. Ireland once had many thriving whiskey distilleries, but thanks to astute marketing and large-scale production, inferior Scottish whisky flooded the worldwide market, and Irish whiskey had to struggle to catch up. The spelling with an “e” was adopted in the 1870s to mark the distinction, but economic difficulties caused the closure and merger of many distilleries, so that Ireland now has only three to the ninety or so in Scotland (which all have improved immensely since the 19th Century). And one of them is at Bushmills, five miles to the south of the Causeway.

Don has a taste for peaty malt whiskies, which we indulged while in Scotland, coming back with both peaty Islay whiskies, and smoother Highland and Speyside whiskies, so we could both educate our palates. But neither of us had ever tried Irish whiskey (incredible as it might seem), so now was our chance.

We got to Bushmills (the name of the town, as well as the distillery—it’s on the River Bush, probably an old Celtic name) about four in the afternoon, just in time to miss the last distillery tour; but we’d toured the Aberfeldy distillery in Scotland, and weren’t too disappointed. Instead, we made our way to the shop and the Distillery Kitchen Restaurant in the hope of a tasting. There we had a treat: a tasting tray, with four whiskeys (two blends and two malts), arranged on a leaflet which explained what they were and what you should expect to smell and taste. We both enjoyed the flavours (and Margaret enjoyed her cheesecake); in the shop afterwards, we bought a Bushmills fridge magnet, half-bottle samples of several whiskies, and a Glencairn tasting glass to complement the one we’d bought at Glenfiddich in 2007.

On our way back to Belfast, we went out of our way a little to drive through Coleraine, “the capital of the Causeway Coast”, in honour of the wonderful and celebrated Coleraine wine from Te Mata in New Zealand’s North Island, of which we have several bottles from several vintages maturing as they await our return to Wellington.

But back in the Lisburn Road, we bought Irish KFC and blobbed in front of the TV again, while the rain pelted down outside. So ended an almost Gaelic-free day.

Saturday 9 Aug 2008: To Belfast, via Tara

2008-10-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

As I was goin' over the far-famed Kerry mountains,
I met with Cap’n Farrell and his money he was countin’.
I first produced my pistol then rattled forth my rapier,
Cryin’, "Stand and deliver, for there’s no-one here to save ya!”

Mush-a durum durrum da,
Whack fol the daddy-o. Whack fol the daddy-o,
There's whiskey in the jar!

WE FAREWELLED AGHADOE Cottage and Killarney, and drove off up the N71 and N21 to Limerick, then along the N7 to the M7 and Kildare, and onto the M50 that rings Dublin on the west side. From there, the N3 took us northwestward to Jordanstown, where we turned southwest, and so (after four hours or so driving) came to …

The Hill of Tara …

… (Teamhair in Irish, either “High Place” or, as scholars now believe, “Hill of the Dark Earth-Goddess”), was once a place of burial and ritual assembly, the supreme religious centre in pagan Ireland. It’s said that one hundred and forty-two High Kings reigned from there in prehistoric and historic times. There are more than thirty known earthen structures in the ritual landscape atop the Hill, forming an unbroken sequence spanning some 4,000 years from around 3500 BC up to the 6th or 7th Centuries AD.

You get there from the carpark by walking the footpath to the Information Centre, formerly St Patrick’s church, under the stern eye of De Oul’ Shintleman himself (real name: Maewyn Succat. St Patrick was Welsh). His biographers claim that it was here he had his most famous victory over the pagan druids, during the reign of the 5th Century king Laoghaire, whose father Niall had sold him into slavery.

The hill was busy with tourists and sheep, and (in a different sense) with a remarkable set of mounds, hollows, ditches, and walls. At least as remarkable was the view, despite the cloudy and rather moist weather; on a fine day, half the counties of Ireland are supposedly visible from the top, which must be one of the reasons for its ancient sanctity.

We crested the so-called Mound of the Hostages (Dumha na nGiall) in the King’s Fort, and gazed into the entrance of its passage tomb, where we could see the spiral forms of Neolithic art (perhaps 3,000 BC) carved into the orthostats (upright slabs). It is said—but a lot of things are said about Tara—that they represent the journey of the soul into and beyond death. The mound was used for burials over a period of 1500 or so years; excavation found the remains of many bodies (between 250 and 500) in layers beneath the passage, but the mound was very carefully restored when the excavations were completed.

We viewed the ring-mounded King Cormac’s House (Teach Cormaic) from inside and out, and saw the Stone of Destiny, the Lia Fáil, on top of the nearby mound called the Forradh, the Mound of Inauguration. Here (perhaps) the High Kings of Ireland were proclaimed and crowned, while the Stone roared with joy at their feet upon it, or at the touch of their chariot axles. It is from this stone that the divine race, the Tuatha de Danaan, named Ireland “Inis Fáil”. (But the Scots say it was taken from Ireland to Argyll by Kenneth MacAlpin, and became the Stone of Scone. Even at Tara, its original site and even its original shape are unknown. The stone that stands at Tara, five feet above the ground and seven feet below it, is the most phallic ancient stone in Ireland ...)

The weather had been chancy all day, and while Don was walking round the Teach Miodhchuarta, the so-called “Banqueting Hall” (a long, narow, banked enclosure which was probably a ceremonial avenue), there was a peal of thunder. We made it back to the car in time, but our drive northward to Belfast was punctuated by bursts of heavy rain.

We had intended to go to another neolithic site, ranking almost as high as Tara, Newgrange; but we heard from a guide at Tara that Newgrange closed at 5, and since it would be almost that by the time we got there, we saved it for another day.

We’d booked ahead for Belfast, an apartment in Cordia Serviced Apartments. According to its postcode, it was quite central to Belfast, which suited our intention to see a little of the city as well as of the province. But when we’d navigated our way there (aided by Google Maps), it was so obviously not the right location for the apartments! We phoned the number on the reservation confirmation, and found the actual address was further out of town than we’d wanted. We found the place (on Lisburn Rd), but the first apartment we were sent to lacked several of the features we’d been promised, in particular an en suite and a view of the Black Mountains (it was on the wrong side of the building!); so we complained and got moved to a much nicer two-bedroom apartment on the top floor and on the opposite side; so we got our Black Mountains view after all, and a balcony to view it from!

Having settled in, but having little by way of food and drink, we made it to the next-door Tescos (dashing through the rain) just in time to buy dinner and supplies before they closed. Then we blobbed in front of the TV (watching I Robot); and saw about the record-breaking flooding on the roads around Dublin, not more than half an hour after we’d passed through. Shades of our arrival a week earlier!

Friday 8 Aug 2008: Around Killarney

2008-09-28T14:30:00.000-07:00

WE'VE ALREADY WRITTEN A little about Killarney. It’s not seen as a tourist town without justification: there’s lots to see and do in the immediate vicinity of the town, and today we decided to do some of it.

So we took the N72 westward to Fossa, and thence south to the Gap of Dunloe (Bearna an Choimín), which lies across the far side of Lough Leane from Killarney. The Gap provides “a single-lane dirt track up a 6-kilometer ravine carved by glaciers;” it slices a deep V southward through Ireland’s highest mountains, with Tomi’s Mountain (Ná Tóimi) and the heather-covered Purple Mountain (An Sliabh Corcra) on its eastern side, and McGillucuddy’s Reeks (Cruacha Dubha) to the west.

The Gap’s craggy scenic grandeur is internationally famous, and it’s very popular with tourists, as you’d expect of a feature billed as “One of the most beautiful glaciated valleys in western Europe”. The route there takes an “unmarked road to the left” from the N72 (thus Guide Killarney, but when we got to it, the turning was clearly signposted: “Gap of Dunloe”), and down past Dunloe Castle, from which the Gap gets its English name.

The upward-sloping southward road leads towards the mouth of the funnel formed by the mountains to either side, and it’s there, at the bottom of the pass, that you’ll find the car park and Kate Kearney’s Cottage, now (and for a long time since) a café and pub. No-one knows who Kate Kearney was, or even if she really existed, but her reputation is as a moonshiner and a bit of a goer:

Oh have you not heard of Kate Kearney,
Who lives on the banks of Killarney,
At the glance of her eye,
Shun danger and fly,
For fatal's the look of Kate Kearney.

Tho' she looks so bewitchingly simple,
There's mischief in every dimple;
And who dares inhale
Her mouth's spicy gale,
Must die by the breath of Kate Kearney.

The car park turned out to be important. Although cars aren’t banned in the Gap, they’re strongly discouraged “between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.” (as the sign said) because, as already remarked, it’s “a single-lane dirt track” which (more to the point) is chocker in the season with the slow-moving traffic of pony-drawn jaunting carts.

So we parked the car, and negotiated with the jarvies. This proved a little tricky as (not anticipating being unable to use the car) we’d got plenty of money on us, we’d thought, but it was still less than they wanted. But one took pity on us and arranged for a young colleague, “Michael O’Sullivan” (we later learned), to take us up “to the fifth lake” at a discount.

The fifth lake is the topmost one, beyond which you come to the precipice called “the Madman’s Seat,” at the Head of the Gap, and begin the descent into “the Black Valley” on the far side. (It costs extra to complete the last stretch to the top, and a lot more to go down the other side.) The lakes are connected by the Loe River, after which Dunloe Castle is named.

The jaunting cars are widely described as “a rip-off”, and Margaret’s colleague Tom had warned us against them along those lines. Perhaps such critics mean the cars in Killarney itself, for we both felt that Michael and his pony, Mingey (if we caught the name correctly, but it was probably something in Irish; the photo is a different car and pony) worked hard to give us value for money, over more than an hour’s round trip.

We sat side-by-side in the car, with Michael in front driving Mingey. At first we ascended a leafy lane, with trees either side to conceal the scenery (though of course, the trees were scenery!). Soon the view opened out to show the steep glaciated sides of the mountains, with heaps of till at the feet of the cliffs. It wasn’t cold, though cloudy and breezy, but it was a rather bleak scene, with bare rock, grass, ferns, and heather; the trees had been left behind.

The first lake is called Coosaun Lough (“Lough” being, by the way, an English spelling; in Irish, it’s spelt “Loch,” just as in Scottish!). The breeze rustled in the grasses, sent the dandelion heads nodding, and ruffled the waters of the lake, by the side of which there were several fishermen. At the head of the lake, the road climbed up to the next little valley, crossing the river by a low- walled bridge, and thereby crossing from the western to the eastern side of the Gap. Looking back, we could see another jaunting car coming up behind us, and a panorama over the Killarney hills in the distance beyond.

Above Coosaun is a larger lake, known as the Black Lake because (it’s alleged) of the shadows cast by the mountains. Ironically, The Irish name for the Black Lake is Loch an Chuasáin, “Lough Coosaun”, which the strangers (as the Irish call the English when they’re being polite) have apparently applied to the wrong lake! (It's Ventry all over again!) Here we saw a heron; although there are supposed to be eagles in the mountains, this was the only bird we saw (or heard, not that it made any sound) throughout our ride up the Gap and back.

At the head of the valley is a cottage which we didn’t photograph because we didn’t know its significance. Reputedly, it’s the cottage of “the Colleen Bawn” (the “Fair Lass”), a fifteen-year old girl “of outstanding beauty” (real name Ellen Hanley) who was murdered in 1819. In reality, the tragedy unfolded in Counties Limerick and Clare, but when it was fictionalised as The Collegians by Gerald Griffin, a reporter of the original trial, the author transferred the central action to the romantic landscape around Killarney (whence the title of Sir Julius Benedict’s later opera, The Lily of Killarney).

Griffin renamed the girl “Eily O’Connor” and had her secretly marry one “Hardress Cregan”, who prepared a hideaway for her until the secret could be made known: “You have heard me speak of Danny Mann's sister, who lives on the side of the Purple Mountain, in the Gap of Dunlough? I have had two neat rooms fitted up for you in her cottage, and you can have books to read, and a little garden to amuse you, and a Kerry pony to ride over the mountains.”

Ultimately, Danny Mann (Cregan’s manservant) murders Eily by throwing her off a boulder into a river, and enterprising locals have identified the very rock near the northern shore of Mucross Lake; a little south of Killarney—reputedly a very nice place to swim! “A stones throw from the beach lies a small but most striking rocky island, perhaps the most famous piece of limestone in Killarney, the Colleen Bawn Rock.”

The road became very narrow above the Black Lake, and it became very clear why cars are frowned upon. Not that everyone bothers to read, or regard, the notice down at Kate Kearney’s. Michael told us that there’d been a serious accident on the road about a year previously, involving a tourist’s car and a pony and trap.

The upward road passes Cushnavally Lake on the right, before leading up to the largest lake, Auger. There are ruins at the north end of the lake which, if we have it correct, are the remains of an old police barracks.

At the other (upper, south) end of Auger Lake, the road rises very steeply between tall, boulder-strewn cliffs, and here Michael had to get down to relieve the weight, and lead Mingey into a trot to provide momentum for the upward trail. The valley walls closed in on either side, with the road clinging to the western flanks of the Purple Mountain, the river below concealed amongst the jumble of huge squarish boulders that had fallen from the sandstone hillsides. Tennyson visited the Gap in his youth, and the famous echo hereabouts (we later read) is said to have inspired his poem, The splendour falls:

The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

The roadway led back across the Loe by a stone bridge, and looking back, we had a wonderful view northwards down the valley towards Beaufort and the fertile lands to the west of Killarney. (And the walkers following up behind us.)

We came at last to the uppermost lake, Black Lough, whence St Patrick is supposed to have banished the very last snake in Ireland. Here we were allowed a glimpse of the next bridge over the Loe, but we hadn’t paid to be taken that last, difficult, kilometre to the Head of the Gap, so Michael turned Mingey and the car around, and we began the journey back down.

Our jaunting-car ride had certainly been worth what we had paid; and it had made a change, being driven instead of driving, and so being able to watch more (and photograph more) than might otherwise have been the case. However, it had consumed virtually all the money we had on us, so we drove back up to the N72 and back into Killarney to find an ATM.

Moneyed up again, we drove south through the town and past the “Lower Lake” and Muckross or “Middle Lake” with the purpose of seeing for ourselves the celebrated Bricín Bridge (see Tuesday 5 Aug 2008: Killarney) which crosses the “Meeting of the Waters” where the water from the “Upper Lake” (Loch Uachtarach, “Lake Superior”) is channelled down through the rocks into Loch Mhucross. This is one of the great beauty spots of Ireland, but we were destined not to see it, since it can only be reached on foot or by jaunty car, and we’d had our jaunt for the day!

Instead, we reversed out course and drove back through Muckross village (Mucros, “Pig Wood”) almost to Killarney. Turning left at Scrahane, we drove through cultivated woodland onto the Ross Peninsula and so to the car parks of Ross Castle.

The peninsula juts out into Lough Leane (Loch Léin), the “Lower Lake”, about a third of the way up its eastern shore. The castle was built in the 15th Century for the O’Donoghue chieftains, on a site overlooking Ross Bay, formed by the northern shore of the peninsula. The interior can only be visited as part of a tour party, and we were unwilling to join one since they always go so much faster than we want to, being incurable seekers after fine detail. We contented ourselves with viewing the castle’s exterior, and the lovely views out over the bay—and watching the happy bridal parties who are drawn like summer mosquitoes for their photo-shoots. (There were three there already, and another was arriving as we left!)

Ross Castle was one of the last stongholds in Ireland to surrender to Cromwell’s forces, in 1652, and there is a romantic legend of Amy Browne, The Maid of Ross, daughter of the castle warden at the time. The beginning of the story is told at AnswerBank, but the full account doesn’t seem to be on the Internet, so we are providing it for ourselves right here: The Maid of Ross: A Killarney Legend! (Googling “Maid of Ross” returns several hits for an Australian race horse of that name.)

Had we been able to continue through the Head of The Gap of Dunloe, we would have been taken down to the west end of Loch Uachtarach, the Upper Lake, and boated its length to Newfoundland Bay, where the N71 from Kenmare via Moll’s Gap almost touches its eastern shore (see Monday 4 Aug 2008: Ring of Kerry, and our First Seisiún). Not having done that, we decided to do the best we could, and reverse that course, to some extent at least. We drove back down the N71, past the turnoff for the Bricín Bridge, and pulled in at a parking area overlooking Newfoundland Bay. There was a camper-van already there, and we had a pleasant exchange with an elderly couple of vintage hippies … The rocks at the lake’s edge had been worn by the water into fascinating and beautiful rounded shapes …

We continued down the N71 and up to Lady’s View, where we took still more photos of the panorama out over Loch Uachtarach before crossing the road for afternoon tea at the tea shop. We looked for souvenirs (magnets, bookmarks …), but still didn’t find any we wanted to buy. Turning back to Killarney, we tried for Muckross Abbey, but again it seemed we could only get there by jaunting car or on foot, so we went back to Killarney to do some shopping.

We parked again off College St, our usual location, and went shopping down College and Plunkett Sts, and then along Main St and High St. We popped in and out of various shops, looking for souvenirs of various sorts, with mixed success. Early on, we found just the right T-shirt for Don, but a search through the racks and boxes found none in his size. Tip: “L” seems to be the most popular size for men’s T-shirts, and the one most likely to run out.

There’s a music shop (Variety Sounds) in College St, and there we found some whistles and wooden spoons for Don. One of the whistles was a Guinness whistle (black with a white fipple for the head …), which Don wanted essentially as a souvenir, but the shop assistant allowed him to try it, and it had a wonderfully sweet tone. The other was an oddity: a wooden whistle, rather than the usual “tin” (light metal alloy), with a plastic fipple. It had a rather slow attack, and a pleasantly breathy, woody tone, and was irresistible.

Along Main St and High St, we found a few relevant fridge magnets (Ireland, Kerry, Killarney, Gap of Dunloe) amongst the thousands of Guinness bottle caps, shamrocks, leprechauns, colleens, and anonymous cottages, and bought several boxes of Irish sweets for work colleagues. But despite all the shops we went into, we still couldn’t find “the T-shirt” in Don’s size, or any other that either of us liked as much.

Since it was to be our last night in Killarney, and our last seisíun there, we decided on dinner at Farrell’s “Crock of Gold”; but it was very full, and they were only accepting foursomes (i.e., tablefuls). After waiting at the bar a while, we caught the maître d’ and said we’d be happy to share. He was back in a short while, to lead us to a table where a young Canadian couple were sitting. We chatted as we waited for food, and for the seisíun: their names were Scott and Diane; they were taking the opportunity to visit Western Europe in conjunction with a conference Diane was attending in England.

The seisíun was good, but it was a different pair of performers. Although they sang a couple of chorus songs we were able to join in with, they mostly played instrumentals, jigs and reels that we didn’t know and Don couldn’t play along to. Not quite what we’d wanted for our last night in the Irish Republic; but it had been a good session nonetheless.

And so back to Aghadoe Cottage, for the last time …

The Maid of Ross: A Killarney Legend

2008-09-28T10:41:00.000-07:00

One evening in 1692 [1652!], Captain Browne, Confederate warden of Ross Castle, was standing among its battlements watching his sentries below and glancing every now and then at the drawbridge a little to the east.Today, he knew, the Confederates and the Cromwellians had given battle at Knocknaclashy, County Cork, and veteran that he was he felt that the Confederates must lose. They would then retire to this very castle of Ross, the enemy at their heels, and here the Irish would make their final stand. "And then what?" Captain Browne feared, not for himself, but for his only child, Amy, who lived with him and who was in the full bloom of young womanhood now.

Known as "The Fair Maid of Ross," Amy was sought after by all the young officers of the garrison, the most persistent being a lieutenant Raymond Villiers, descendant of an old English settler and owner of considerable estates along the river Maine. Well acquainted with the young officer's circumstances, the warden favoured his attentions but for reasons best known to herself Amy remained cold and aloof. "By my faith,' thought Captain Browne, who had been considering the matter, "I'll settle the question now," and calling his gilly, he asked that Miss Amy be sent to him ...

Captain Browne rebuked his daughter for her rejection of Villiers. “You must marry young Villiers. He is worthy in every way.” But Amy’s heart was set on Donough McCarthy of Glenmourne, who “was robbed of his estates by Cromwell; but that,” declared Amy, “is all the more reason I shouldn’t play him false.”

Their talk was interrupted by the arrival of Donough himself, bringing the bad news that, that very morning, their Irish comrades-in-arms under Lord Muskerry had been defeated by Cromwell’s men, and were making their way to the castle. Donough himself had been sent ahead to help prepare the castle for siege.

Some days later, with the castle besieged by Cromwell’s forces under Edmund Ludlow, Villiers approached Amy one evening and requested once again that she consent to marry him. Once again she refused; and he left her, vowing revenge on her and Donough McCarthy both.

From then onwards, Amy watched Villiers closely; and one night she saw him unmoor a boat and start to row silently towards the woods on the east of the bay. Amy followed him to the enemy encampment, and hiding nearby, overheard him bargaining with Ludlow for a captaincy in exchange for betraying the castle. He might, he said, be able to help the English gain entry via the drawbridge; but there was also the matter of an ancient prophecy, “that Ross can never be taken until enemy ships sail upon the lake;” and if Ludlow could arrange for boat sections to be brought overland from Kinsale, assembled on the shore, and floated onto the lake, then the castle might surrender.

Returning before Villiers, Amy persuaded her father to strengthen the guard on the drawbridge; but she did not yet reveal Villiers’ treachery. Seeing that it was impossible to take the castle via the drawbridge, Villiers deserted and, choosing the cloak of night again, once more rowed across to the enemy camp. Once more Amy followed him, but this time he heard and fired at her, and she fell wounded back into the boat.

Fortunately, a stiff breeze sent the boat back across the bay to the castle shore, where Donough McCarthy himself found her the next morning. With attention to her wounds, she was soon up and about again; but meanwhile, Ludlow had indeed fetched the boat sections from Kinsale, and his men were even now bringing them up the River Laune. Taking some men of his own, Donough attacked the convoy on the river, and had the satisfaction of killing the traitor Villiers, but the ships got through, and seeing them one morning on the lake, flags waving and cannon mounted on attack, the castle’s defenders remembered the prophecy and surrendered on honourable terms.

... Shortly afterwards, Donough of Glenmourne and his troopers rode westward over the mountains and dispossessed the puritan undertaker who held his home and lands. Then taking to himself as wife “The Fair Maid of Ross,” he also took into his care the stout old warden who lived with them for the rest of his days in contentment and ease.

Abridged from “Legends of Killarney”, a MAC Publications 1999 reprint of Donal O’Cahill’s edited collection of 1956.

Wednesday 6 Aug 2008: Waterford and County Cork

2008-09-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

AFTER YESTERDAY'S LIE-IN, WE got up early today for a trip east to Waterford. Our objective: Get some Waterford Crystal! (But we had identified a few other things to do, too.)

From west to east, Kerry, Cork, and Waterford are the three southernmost counties of Ireland. The route from Killarney to Waterford would take us to Mallow (well-known to folk musicians from the air, The Rakes of Mallow, though the tune may be English in origin), then we could bend southward via Fermoy and Dungarvan, or northward via Caher, Clonmel, and Mooncoin. The difference in distance and time was slight (about five minutes in it), so it was another Irish tune, the Mooncoin Jig, decided it for us.

We expected to get to Waterford by midday, but the journey took much longer, mostly stuck behind slow trucks (50 kph at most) on “A-class roads” (National Highways, nominally 100 kph) that are actually country lanes. As a result, it was mid-afternoon by the time we got to Waterford and found the Waterford Crystal factory at Dungarvan.

Our first priority was lunch, which we took in the excellent café, but we decided against the factory tour because it was so late, and we’d already watched glass-making in Scotland and Venice. Instead, we toured the exhibition and gift shop, but most frustratingly we were unable to take photos because all our batteries seemed to be flat. Still, we’d travelled with intent, and looked round the gift shop for a suitable piece of glassware.

In the end, we bought a “Stuart” vase featuring fuchsia decoration, in recollection of all the wild fuchsia we’d seen on our Ring of Kerry tour. (We deliberately overlooked the fact that it was made in Germany, and not in Waterford; most “Waterford Crystal” seems to be made in Europe nowadays, and there are rumours that the factory in Waterford is to close. In any case, “Stuart” crystal was originally English, and was bought up by Waterford Crystal last century. It’s a global economy!)

We left Waterford around 6 p.m. and drove down to Ardmore, a fishing village and beach resort at the foot of a short, rocky, and somewhat elevated promontory which juts out into the Celtic Sea to the south of Dungarvan Harbour (pictured). Driving through the village and up the hill, we found a narrow parking space across the road from the top end of the Sailors’ Graveyard.

Do cemeteries have a special attraction for us, in view of Aghadoe? Not exactly; the Ardmore cemetery surrounds St Declan’s cathedral, with its historic oratory and spectacular round tower. Margaret stayed in the car while Don went to Investigate and Record (despite the camera, or its new batteries, as the case might be, refusing to play ball).

Everyone knows that St Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland; except local people, and historians, know that St Declan was one of four bishops who preceded him in converting parts of Ireland to the new faith—and what’s more, where St Patrick was a Welshman, St Declan was a native Waterford man, born somewhere between Cappoquin and Lismore, and almost became the country’s patron saint. Yet most Irishmen know little about him.

The tower, built of pinkish sandstone blocks, is easily visible for miles, and dominates the village from all directions. Dating from perhaps the 10th century (perhaps five centuries after Declan himself) but excellently preserved, it stands about 5 metres across at ground level (17 ft), tapering to about 3 metres just below its conical cap, the tip of which is about 30 metres aloft (100 ft).

These towers were commonly built by monastic communities for self-defence in times of trouble (this was the period of the Viking raiders). The entrance doorway (long lacking its door) is something like four metres up (12 to 13 ft). When danger threatened, the monks would scramble up a ladder with the monastery treasures and pull the ladder up behind them. (There are three storeys inside, reached by internal ladders.)

The ruined church (known rather incorrectly as St Declan’s Cathedral) has its own points of interest, especially the 12th-century west gable, with several carved panels showing scenes from the Bible. Nearby is “St Declan’s oratory”, dating from the 8th century, reworked in the 18th, but reputedly the saint’s grave. As Don wandered round, a gardener trimming the lawn kindly gave him an information leaflet!

From the top of the cemetery, we drove back down into Ardmore and through to the seafront, in search of toilets. It was probably the finest weather we had during our Ireland visit, and while the beach wasn’t exactly packed, there was an appreciable number of holidaymakers on the sand and even (brave souls) in the sea! (And of course, the Round Tower was prominent above the village rooftops.)

We bade farewell to Ardmore and drove westward and into Cork County, crossing the River Blackwater at Youghall, skirting Cork itself, and heading south-westwards towards Clonakilty and Skibbereen. Between the two, near Ross Carbery, we turned off the main road (the N71) onto the Glandore Road and so down a farm lane to a parking area marked for the Droumbeag (or Drombeg) Stone Circle. From there it was a ten-minute walk to the site, down a lane densely packed with wild fuchsia.

The counties of Cork and Kerry have 100 of the 145 known stone circles of the Irish Republic, and Cork itself has 86. Drombeg is one of the finest, made up of an above-average number (17) of above-average size stones, which grade in height from the tallest (the “portal stones”), at the north-eastern entrance, to the lowest, either side of the recumbent “axis stone”. (Four of the stones are now missing.) The photo is taken along the north-east—to—south-west axis, with the portal stones closest and the axis stone opposite, behind which the sun sets at Midwinter, gliding from upper left corner towards the left-of-centre, to disappear into the cleft of the hills.

Drombeg is obviously a pre-Christian site, though not Stone Age (its age is disputed; some authorities reckon it Iron Age, perhaps around 150 BC, while carbon dating suggests it was in use a thousand years earlier). Its exact function can only be guessed at, but it seems to be almost complete. It was excavated in 1957, and in the centre was found a pit containing a deliberately-broken pottery urn, wrapped in coarse cloth, containing the cremated remains of a youth. A (very) small fortune in coins, with other modern offerings, marks the location.

We’d known about the Drombeg circle before we came (it was why we were travelling back to Killarney the long way round), but the site included two extra features which surprised and delighted us. A few metres to the west are the foundations of two round stone-walled huts, probably of similar age to the circle. You can walk through them from one to another and gain a little of the feel of Iron-Age life.

The other surprise was south of the main site, where a small spring marks the start of a shallow stream which keeps the site somewhat marshy (at least, that’s how we found it). The spring has been protected by a low stone wall and partially roofed, with a stone embankment extending south from it to enclose a trough and hearth. The assemblage is called a Fulach Fiadh, a hunters’ cooking site; they would fill the trough with water from the spring (or “well”), heat stones in the hearth, and use the hot stones to boil the water and cook meat and vegetables. (An experiment showed that hot stones placed in the filled trough could boil 70 gallons of cold water in just over a quarter of an hour.) All three parts of the site—the circle, the huts, and the cooking site—are probably contemporary, though the cooking site was still in use in early Christian times.

By now, the sun was well on its way down; we left for Killarney about 8 p.m., and arrived in town at 10:10 via back roads. It was not too late for seisíun at Farrell’s, so we joined Megs and Peter for the last time. On this occasion, they finished early (11 p.m.) as they’d already played for two hours for a tour party before coming to the pub. Don sang the first verse of The Parting Glass, quietly, as we exchanged mail addresses and said farewell …

Thursday 7 Aug 2008: Dingle Peninsula

2008-09-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

SOUTH-WESTERN IRELAND looks a little like a hand (or paw), with five “fingers” (toes?) stretching south-westwards into the Atlantic Ocean. From north to south, there’s:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
~~~~~~~~~~/
(Dingle Peninsula o Castlemaine
~~~~~~~)Dingle Bay o Killarney
~~~/
~(Iveragh Peninsula
~~~\
~~~~~~~~~)Kenmare River estuary
~~~(Beara Peninsula
~~~~~~~~~~~~)Bantry Bay
~~~~(Muntervary Peninsula
~~~~~~~~)Dunmanus Bay
~~~~~(A nameless peninsula bounded on the south by …
~~~~~~~~~~)Roaringwater bay …

On Monday, we “did” the Iveragh Peninsula (Ring of Kerry). Our next choice? Well, the Beara Peninsula is well spoken of, and had its attractions because of Bantry Bay’s role in folksong (Star of the County Down: “From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay …”). But Megs and Pete had given us some names of pubs in Dingle that had seisiúns; Dingle Peninsula is in Kerry, and we were temporary “Kerrymen”, (whereas most of the Beara is in Cork); and Margaret’s Irish colleague Tom had suggested Dingle for sightseeing, so those three facts decided us on The Dingle Tour.

The day was windy and wet, so we spent the morning saving yesterday’s photos to the laptop and then writing up a couple of days’ worth. We left for Dingle about midday, driving across to Castlemaine, famed in Australian folksong as the home of The Wild Colonial Boy (“Jack Duggan was his name, He was born and bred in Ireland in a place called Castlemaine”—and the pub named after him is on the Tralee Road, except his real name was Jack Donohue). From there, we took the R561 westward and along the north shore of Castlemaine Harbour, which is the start of the south shore of the Dingle Peninsula.

Castlemaine Harbour (which is really the mouth of the River Laune) is remarkable for the pair of long sand-spits that almost enclose it, one (Inch Strand) stretching south from the Dingle Peninsula, the other (White Strand and Rosbehy) stretching north from the Iveragh Peninsula. We passed through Inch village (Inse) at the north end of Inch Strand, and made our first stop at the top of a ridge that forms the base of the Strand. The sky had cleared a little, but there was still a near-gale wind blowing from the west, bringing lots of raindrops (not enough to be called “rain”, but enough to be annoying), so we took photos from inside the car. You see here (above) a view south-east along Inch Strand, and (left) due south to the Iveragh Peninsula and King’s Head—where we stopped on Monday, to photograph the Dingle Peninsula …

The town of Dingle lies on the south coast of the peninsula, about two thirds of the way along from the mainland towards the ocean. We drove there, with the sea on our left hand and the glacier-scored Slieve Mish mountains on our right, with the intention of getting late lunch; stopping a couple of times along the way to snap “the scenery”—like this patchwork of fields to the south of the road, a little west from Milltown.

We found Dingle to be very busy (there was a funfair in town), and there seemed to be no parking available, but plenty of other people looking for some. So we went on to wherever the next likely spot would be.

This turned out to be the (relatively!) large village of Ventry, at the head of Ventry Bay. In Irish, the village is called Ceann Trá, which means “Head of the Beach”, because it lies at the top of the bay and at the north end of a rather fine sandy beach that sweeps round the bay’s west side. Midway round, the sea god, Mananann Mac Lír, came to the aid of the hero Finn MacCool (Fionn Mac Cumhaill) and helped him repel the invading armies of Daire Domhain, “the King of the World”.

(But hang on—the bay is Cuan Fionntrá, which translates as “Ventry Bay”—so what’s going on, if “Ventry” is actually Ceann Trá? It turns out that the real Ventry, Fionntrá or “White Strand”, is a tiny cluster of cottages half-way round the beach, the site of the Cath Fionntrá or “Battle of Fionntrá”; and the English have transferred their version of its name to the larger Ceann Trá. Huh! What do the English know?)

Prominent at Ventry (Ceann Trá, that is) is a triangular intersection where the coast road west meets the village road that stretches back (north) into the peninsula. That’s where you’ll find the Ventry Inn with the Paud Quinn (Quinn’s Bar). The road up through the village climbs a slope, and the Inn sits on a small rise at the foot of it, with a good view over the bay. Inside is a traditional-style pub, but with some charming portraits of local people on the wall. Outside, if the weather’s okay, you can sit at wooden tables and enjoy the view. Which is what we did, in fine sunshine, while enjoying lunch from their full menu.

On our trip along the southern edge of the Dingle Peninsula, we’d once again passed several examples of the astonishing outbreaks of brightly-coloured wildflowers that had so delighted us on our Ring of Kerry tour: the scarlet fuchsias, purple loosestrife, and white and, especially, startlingly orange blossoms, whose names we didn’t know. There was a clump of these wildflowers behind a wall, across the road from where we were sitting, and Margaret asked the waitress if she knew what the orange flowers were. She did: “Montbretias.” So now we knew.

By now it was mid-afternoon, around 3-ish (we were getting used to these late lunches!). We farewelled Ventry (Ceann Trá) and continued round the bay, looking out for what we hadn’t found in our Ring of Kerry tour: a good place to pull off the road and photograph those wildflowers. A little south-west of the real Ventry (Fionn Trá), the main road turned right at a cross-roads, and there was exactly what we were looking for, a gorgeous display of wildflowers, and a place to pull over for them!

Before setting out, we’d consulted the Guide Killarney to see what the Dingle Peninsula had to offer, but mostly we were playing it by ear. But as we continued west on the Slea Head road, we approached the Celtic and Prehistoric Museum, and Don remembered that it was said to be very well worth a visit. And despite a rather unpreposessing first appearance, once we’d paid our €4.00 (each) entry fee, it proved to be a treasure trove of antiquities, reminiscent of the Tardis—much bigger on the inside than there seemed to be room for on the outside (as well as a trip through time)!

Here there are over 500 artefacts—statuettes, ornaments, pottery, coins, weapons …—from the Irish Stone, Bronze, and Celtic Iron Ages, as well as Viking, Saxon and Roman objects, and others from the Middle East, all well displayed in cabinets. Here too is the world's largest fossil Woolly Mammoth skull and tusks (dredged up from the North Sea and painstakingly reassembled from hundreds of fragments; see the rare photo of Don!), a nest of fossil dinosaur eggs, and a complete fossil baby dinosaur skeleton. The museum shop was a wonderland of antiques, fossils, handmade jewellery, crafts and gifts, and while we tried to be restrained, we nonetheless bought an antique (reproduction …) map of Ireland and an Irish phrase-book (Don couldn’t resist).

After about an hour in the museum, we set off westwards again along the Slea Head Road, heading this time for a specific target: Dunbeg (Dounbeag). Dunbeg is a prehistoric (Iron Age) stone fort set dramatically on a sheer cliff at the base of Sliabh an Iolair, Mt Eagle. The fort stands within the triangle of a small promontory, with four parallel stone-faced banks and ditches to protect it on the landward side. There’s a large inner clochán (stone hut, roofless of course), and the “paving stones” that form a path to the fort entrance are also the roofing-stones of a long souterrain, a type of underground dwelling-space, the first we’d encountered off the pages of a book.

Across the road from Dunbeg is the little community of Fahan, a handful of cottages on the south-eastern flank of Mt Eagle. This stretch of country is littered with the remains of clocháns, “beehive huts” (there were once over 400 of them, but many have been destroyed), collectively known as “The City of Fahan”. These drystone huts, with their corbelled roofs (overlapping rings of stone like an upside-down circular staircase, giving their “beehive” shapes from the outside), are often impossible to date; corbelled roofs date back at least 5,000 years, but clocháns were still being built for animals into the mid-20th Century.

Continuing west towards Slea Head, the road kinks to the north to accommodate the ravine of the Abhainn an Ghleanna, the “Glen River”, not much more than a stream really, but it has cut a 1.5km long runnel from halfway up the mountain down to Dingle Bay. A little way up the glen, the road performs a hairpin which takes it through a ford, which was in good flow with all the summer rains. A little further along, at Glanfahan, we stopped to visit a group of Iron Age clocháns within a stone-walled enclosure. Within the walls was a mix of open spaces, smaller enclosures, clocháns, and passageways, with large slabs punctuating the walls and edging doorways.

A couple of the clocháns were very well preserved, with their capstones still in place, though they looked rather leaky from the inside, and may have been livestock shelters rather than dwellings, for all we knew.

Here too there was another souterrain, and unlike the one at Dunbeg, it was partially uncovered so you could see how it looked inside, or even climb down into it.

Leaving there, we came at last to Slea Head (Ceann Sléibhe), where the road turns northwards and skirts Coumeenoole Bay (Tráigh an Choma). There’s a scenic lookout providing a panorama westward, over the Blasket Islands (Na Blascaodaí) about three kilometres offshore. Some of the finest Irish folk literature and oral history were written down on the Blaskets between 1900 and 1950, but population decline led to the islands’ being abandoned in 1953.

There were a couple of other cars parked at the lookout, and as we drew in we saw a girl holding out food for the hovering seagulls to take from her hand. One of its fellows flew down onto the wall next to the car, and looked at us with the half-cocked sideways look gulls have when they’re hoping for food. Margaret stayed in the car and watched, while Don got out and sat on the wall a few feet from it, and fed it fragments of crisps from his outstretched hand.

Across the road is a larger-than-life whitewashed sculpture of the Crucifixion, with the three Maries weeping at the foot of the cross: “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of” Christ Himself, bowed down and overwhelmed by her grief. (The locals know the sculpture simply as An Cross, Anglo-Irish for “The Cross”.) Rust stains the palms and legs of the crucified Man like blood, and has dripped onto His Mother’s hair and face. The landscape behind Him is stark and rocky, the view before Him beautiful, or bleak. Here, just short of the end of Europe, we are reminded of the world that lies beyond, and the Doorway to that world.

The road continues north a short way, then bends to the west, towards Dunmore Head (An Dún Mór, headland of the Great Fort), which is the most westerly mainland point of Ireland, and so the most westerly in Europe. It forms the northern wall of Coumeenoole Bay, as you can see in this photo (with the gull still next to our car ) taken northward from opposite An Cross. It is there, where the end of the land meets the vastness of the ocean, that Christ’s sombre gaze is fixed.

It is possible to walk out to that westernmost tip, but it’s more than a kilometre, and a rugged tramp over or round the hill; so we contented ourselves with taking photos of the headland, the Blaskets beyond, and the landward countryside, where cottages, ruined barns and homesteads, clocháns, and drystone walls scrawled mysterious messages up the side of Mt Eagle.

We continued north on the R559, then turned eastward and inland-ward at An Ghráig. There were many sites we would have liked to visit, but time was getting on, and we were forced to be selective. Passing through Ballyferriter (Baile an Fheirtéaraigh) and skirting the southern shore of Smerwick Harbour, we arrived at the Gallarus Oratory about 18:30.

Gallarus was built by local farmers of the area, at a date estimated generally between the 6th and 9th Centuries, for use as a centre of worship. The oratory’s simple architecture (shaped like an upturned boat) and unrestored state (since it is so well built, it has never needed repair) has withstood the Atlantic Margin weather for over 1200 years. Like the ring forts and the clocháns, it’s built of local stones fitted together without mortar (“drystone”), and has developed only a slight sagging in the roof. Just alongside the oratory, in a bed of stones to the northeast, is a metre-high slab with an encircled cross and an inscription in half uncial script that reads “COLUM MAC DINET” (“Colum, son of Dinet”).

From Gallarus, the R559 turns northwards via Murreagh, Cloghaneduff, and Kilmalkedar, but evening was drawing on, so we cut across via a country road to rejoin the R559 little more than a kilometre to the east (just south of—wait for it—Ballynana). From there it was only 10 minutes back into Dingle.

At first we drove round Dingle (An Daingean) a little (it’s only a little town!) to suss it out. The funfair was still going, but things had calmed down somewhat. We drove round Strand Street (the seafront), up Dykegate St, and left up Main St to Upper Main St, where we paused to photograph the genuine old cottages on the north (left) side of the street, and the modern ones on the south side …

We drove back down to the Strand, and found a car park in the harbour-side parking area, which had previously been full. Across the road was the recently-built Dingle Bay Hotel hosting Long’s Restaurant and Paudie’s Bar. This was on the list of traditional Irish music sessions that Megs and Peter had given us, so we reviewed the sign on the window (“all musicians welcome”) and the menu, decided it looked good, and went in.

Our meals were excellent, and further enlivened by a friendly young English waitress who’d lived in Dingle from the age of eleven, and who relished the opportunity to sit and chat “about the menu” for a minute or two (and who also taught us how to say “thankyou” in Irish: go raibh maith agat, “guh rah mah hahgut”).

After eating, we ordered a couple of drinks, managed to find seats at a table right next to the musicians’ performing area, and waited for the seisiún to start, which it did around 9:30. There were two performers initially, a youngish man on guitar and a young woman with a good voice on vocals, but they chatted together and bumbled around (knocking over a full glass of drink in the process) and had only managed a couple of songs in half an hour, after which they were joined by an older man with an accordion. Sadly, the unprofessional performance continued, with more chatter between the musicians than there was music, and with songs that discouraged audience participation (so much for "all musicians welcome"). After another half hour, we left to find an alternative seisiún.

Our memories of what was where, gained from our earlier drive round, were roughly accurate, but coloured by the speed a car moves. Walking up to Main St, where there were other pubs featuring sessions, took much longer than we expected, and when we got there, the pubs were very full (to overflowing), and what we could hear of the “seisiúns” was solo performance without participation (apart from a truly awful version of Fields of Athenry, from—ironically—the only “audience participation” session we found!).

On the other hand, we did see a number of shops with strikingly original decoration!

Giving up on the seisiúns, we had a pleasant, if slow, walk back to the car, and drove back to Aghadoe Cottage under a clear, brilliantly starry sky, getting there about 11:30. And so to bed …

Tuesday 5 Aug 2008: Killarney

2008-09-14T03:55:00.000-07:00

WE’D BEEN WARNED against Killarney: a tourist town, they said, where you’ll just get ripped off.

Well, we were tourists, and tend to avoid the kind of pleasures that get you ripped off in any big way. We’d done a lot of driving over four days so far, and the weather continued distinctly sub-standard—wet and (for early August) cool. So a lazy day around Killarney seemed just right.

Having got to bed after midnight, we had a long-overdue lie-in and got up very late, had brunch, and downloaded all 114 of yesterday’s photos from the camera and labelled each one on the laptop.

We went into Killarney about 15:30, hoping to get an up-to-date Guide Killarney visitor magazine. They’re published quarterly, and the copy we’d got from the timeshare ran out at the end of June. A July-September issue ought to be available in August, surely, and the Visitors’ Centre seemed an obvious place to look for one.

Coming in south-eastward along Rock Road, top centre (past an amazing Marian artificial grotto, which we never photographed, more’s the pity), we were quickly herded east and then southward by the one-way system, and wound up coming in westward along College St. Despite signposts to it on every street corner, it seemed, the Visitor’s Centre had previously steadfastly eluded our efforts to find it via the self-same one-way system. But this time we fooled it by parking off College St (north of location (22) on the map), walking round to where it was hiding, and, well, visiting.

In the end, the Visitors’ Centre only afforded a fascinating booklet on local folklore, and the nearby address of where the Guide is actually published: Frank Lewis Public Relations in his art gallery in Bridewell Lane. Sadly, we’re not crows, and though the gallery was very close as the crow flies (location (17)), Margaret had to walk round the long way while Don went shopping (in New St, pictured) for some camera batteries.

We met up again, by arrangement, at the intersection of New St, High St, and Main St. Neither of us had met with success (Guide Killarney wouldn’t be available until Thursday, nearly halfway through the second month of the current quarter!), but Don had spotted a good shop very nearby which promised to make up for it a little. So we had a delicious “afternoon tea” of locally-made ice creams in Dessert House, before wandering along High St and investigating other souvenir shops.

In view of the effect of the previous night’s latish dinner—we missed about an hour of a good session—we decided to have an early dinner, and picked a High St business named Bricin to have it in.

Bricin is next door to Gaby’s, where we dined the previous evening. Downstairs is a craft shop with actually quite good-quality pottery, woollens, and so on. Upstairs there’s a restaurant, which among other things features traditional Irish boxty on its menu. Boxty is a sort of potato pancake:

Boxty on the griddle,
boxty in the pan,
If you can't make boxty,
you'll never get your man.

You serve it folded round, say, bacon, black pudding, and mustard cream (or many other fillings and sauces). We’d tried it, and enjoyed it, at Gallagher’s Boxty House in Dublin, a couple of years ago.

The restaurant had lots of highly decorative, Vixtorian Romantic-style, stained glass windows depicting local scenery (“Killarney’s Lakes and Fells”). Among them were pictures of the little mediaeval Bricin Bridge (the pointed-arched “bridge of the wee trout”) at the “Meeting of the Waters,” where the Lough Leane and Mucross Lake flow together. Sadly, the food didn’t match the décor: once again we had far, far too much of a greasy “salad”, as at the Old Killarney Inn, and the food itself wasn’t even as good (and nor was the service). But it did have for entrée the deep-fried camembert we hadn’t been able to get at Gaby’s!

When we’d finished the meal, we went back up the High St and (because it was still too early for Mags and Pete’s seisíun at Farrell’s Town House / Crock o’ Gold) found a couple of quiet seats in another pub and read over a Guinness and rum-and-coke. Then it was session-time!—but Farrell’s was still full of diners, and for a while we had to sit out front (still inside the pub) and, frustratingly, listen without being able to join in.

Around 10:15, we found seats at the table next to Mags (banjo and vocals) and Peter (accordion), and were able to join in on choruses and with Don’s (new) whistles. Before long, Mags and Peter (on their own this time) invited us to join them at their table, and Don ventured some wooden “spoons” accompaniment.

After a while, Mags invited Don to perform a solo, so he picked a well-known Irish anti-war song, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye, which the others—and several of the bar patrons—were able to join in with each time the choruses came round. A little later still, he plucked up courage for a whistle solo, and picked the lovely and haunting rebel song, Women of Ireland (usually identified as “trad” but actually by Seán Ó Riada).

There was a young Irish (surprise!) couple in the bar, and at one point the girl approached our table and said she could do an Irish dance, if we’d play some music. And dance she did, three times! On top of that, she said that her boyfriend was a singer, and with a little persuasion, he sang Jimmy McCarthy’s beautiful, mystical song, Bright Blue Rose.

Altogether, we both had an excellent, most enjoyable evening. Oh yes, we love Ireland!

(And everywhere else …)

Monday 4 Aug 2008: Ring of Kerry, and our First Seisiún

2008-09-07T08:37:00.000-07:00

WHILE WE WERE planning our trip, Margaret consulted with an Irish colleague (Tom) for ideas, and one that he listed was the Ring of Kerry. This is a drive of almost 170 kilometres around the Iveragh Peninsula, which stretches into the ocean to the west of Killarney. The Guide Killarney provided an itinerary, with bracketed excursuses from the Ring itself (which increase the distance, of course), and recommended that it was “A route for a day or a week,” and to allow a minimum of five hours.

It also said there were “over 2,000 archaeological remains” in this, “the most extensive and most varied of the Peninsular fingers” that form Kerry’s Atlantic coastline, so we reckoned it would take us more like twelve hours than eight, especially as we’d decided to start with one of the bracketed excursuses! So we were up at 8 a.m., showered, and breakfasted, before heading into Killarney to check oil, water, and tyre pressures.

We started off badly, down the N22 instead of the N72 (having misread a road sign), but put that right before long, and set off westward.

A few kilometres out of Killarney, we turned off to the left, passed through Beaufort, and followed a narrow lane that leads to (and past) the Dunloe Ogham Stones. This is a group of seven memorial stones (“X-son-of-Y” sort of style) written in Ogham script, dating from the fourth century to the seventh century. They were collected from a nearby location and set upright (the tallest being more than two metres tall) in a road-side semi-circle in the nineteenth century. An eighth from another location is recumbent among them. The seven were anciently used as roofing stones for a souterrain, and thus protected from weather erosion, so the inscriptions are exceptionally well preserved.

The Dunloe stones are off-track even for an excursus from the main Ring of Kerry route, but they lead down to the excursus we’d decided to follow. Instead of staying on the main road from Killarney to Killorglin, we took the narrow country road that crosses the rocky northern flanks of MacGillicuddy’s Reeks (Ireland’s tallest mountains), past signs pointing to tiny villages the likes of Ballagh, Cappaganneen, Carhoonahone, and Cloghbaun Rock.

After a while the road turned south, rounding the mass of Skregbeg (Screig Bheag, 573m) on our left, and leading us in towards the heart of the Iveragh Peninsula. This was the way to Lough Acoose (Loch an Chuais), tritely but aptly described as “picturesque”. The day was overcast but tranquil, with only the slightest of breezes rippling the lake’s surface, so the mountains to the east (MacGillicuddy’s very own hayricks) were brilliantly reflected in the water. It was such a pretty spot, we lingered there for some time before, knowing we had a long way still to go, we finally moved on.

Both sides of the road showed stunning scenery, either wet or vertical, and the verges were brilliant with masses of beautiful wildflowers: scarlet wild fuchsia overhanging purple loosestrife, unidentified orange blooms, anonymous creamy white flowers, nameless yellow blossoms … We saw the same wildflowers over again, at numerous points along many narrow lanes, but only where there were no safe stopping points to photograph them!

Skirting the west edge of the Lough, we turned northwestward away from it just after the few houses that make up Gortmaloon East. Passing through Shanacashel and Dromstable, we turned more westerly and came to the Blackstones Bridge over the River Caragh, which flows northwards and into Lough Caragh. The area is known as Glencar after the McCarthy clan, who were lords of this region. The five-arched bridge is a splendid specimen of nineteenth-century architecture, named for the black-stained boulders that the river rushes through. Here, hikers come to walk the Lickeen Wood; and here, the salmon-fishers gather …

Having crossed the bridge, the road turned northwards along the western shore of Lough Caragh (Loch Cárthaí), with more beautiful views of Mt Seefin to the west and the lake to the east; but at Cosha North, we turned westward away from the lake, rounding the north end of the heather-clad mountain, and so rejoined the main road (the N70, the Kerry Way) a little to the east of Glenbeigh. We passed through the town (where the tragic couple Diarmuid and Grainne hid in a cave), drove a few miles more, and suddenly, as we rounded a bend, Dingle Bay opened up before us. We stopped awhile at a viewpoint, with the steep cliffs of Drung Hill behind us and a view over the purple heather, north to the Dingle Peninsula, and north-east to the amazing sandbars—White Sand stretching north from the Iveragh Peninsula, and Inch Strand stretching south from the Dingle—which protect Castlemaine Harbour and its vital wetlands. (Here could be heard the fourth Ominous Wave of Ireland, the Tonn Toime, whose moaning once portended great disaster, and later lamented the disappearance of Ireland’s ancient nobility.)

At Cahersiveen (“Cah-here Sigh-veen”, Cathair Saidhbhín), we stopped again to photograph the sculpture of St Brendan’s boat. St Brendan (Bréanainn) the Navigator, a monk of Clonfert, sailed far out to the west in the early sixth century, in search of Tir na nÓg, the Isle of the Blessed. He and his group of fellow pilgrims voyaged for seven years in a leather-clad wickerwork boat, and may even have reached North America.

Cahersiveen was celebrating a music festival but, sadly, we had no time to spend at it. Instead, inspired by another excursus in the Guide Killarney route, we turned north in the middle of the town, drove past “The Barracks”, and crossed the bridge over the Valencia River to the unnamed mini-peninsula to the north (still part of the Iveragh Peninsula). Here we drove west along another narrow lane until we met up with a car park, where we got out and walked a trackway to An Chathair Gheal, Cahergall Stone Fort.

Cahergall (“the Bright Fort”) is a particularly fine and impressive specimen of a stone-built ring-fort (cathair), with walls five metres thick at the base, and from two to four metres tall. Its age is uncertain, either Iron Age (500 BC to 400 AD) or early Christian to mediaeval (400 to 1200 AD), and it was more likely a farmer’s stronghold than a military fortress. Either way, it was carefully and skilfully reconstructed a decade or so ago. The insides of the walls are terraced for easy ascent, and the grassed wall-tops, about two metres wide, are comfortable to sit on and easy to walk round. From there, you can get good views of the companion (unreconstructed) cathair to the north (Leacanabuaile) and Ballycarberry Castle to the south.

We crossed the bridge back to Cahersiveen, where the Kerry Way turns south towards Waterville; but, thanks again to Guide Killarney and its excursuses, we had other plans. If we continued along the Dingle Bay coast, then before us lay the Skellig Ring: the authentic, rural tip of the Iveragh Peninsula, a maze of lanes and unmarked crossroads labelled “Cars Only”.

The Skelligs are two small, rocky islands off the south-western tip of the peninsula. They are famous for their thriving puffin and gannet colonies, and for the long-abandoned sixth-century monastery perched on the larger. It’s difficult to avoid sights of them, or references to them, as you drive round this looping route and its weather-worn landscape …

So we took the R565 to Portmagee, a delightful small fishing village which lies, not on the shore of Dingle Bay, but on the south side of the channel that separates it from Dairbhre (“Place of Oaks”), known in English as Valencia Island. Portmagee (An Caladh) is a watercolour of pretty pastel cottages; but we were there for two particular purposes, the first being lunch! And indeed, having been told there was a forty-minute wait in the café we first tried—the village was packed with visitors!—we bought excellent fresh-made sandwiches at O’Connell’s Foodstore.

There are two main ways to visit Valencia Island (also spelt “Valentia”, and either way a misnomer derived from Béal Inse, “the Estuary of the Island”). One way is by ferry from Cahersiveen, or from Reenard Point a little further west; but we chose to cross the Maurice O’Neill Memorial Bridge from Portmagee (commemorating an IRA activist from Cahersiveen, who was executed by firing squad in 1942).

The far side of the channel afforded a wonderful panorama of Portmagee and the north Iveragh coastline out westwards towards where the Valencia River enters the Atlantic Ocean.
On Valencia, we followed an unmarked road westward to Foilhomurrin Bay, beyond which the road to the island’s south-western tip is unsuitable for cars. Here there was another fabulous panorama over the Valencia estuary, westwards to the Atlantic, where the pyramid-shaped Skelligs poked up on the horizon: Sceilg Beag, “Little Skellig”, the closer, and Sceilg Mhicíl, “Great Skellig” (also known as “Skellig Michael!”) the more distant.
We crossed back over Maurice O’Neill’s bridge, turned right on the R566, and continued westward through Portmagee on the Skellig Ring.

A short way down the road, at Reancaheragh, we turned almost due south and began to climb the glaciated ridge that forms the broken backbone of the Iveragh Peninsula, stretching some 40 kilometres westward from MacGillicuddy’s Reeks. To the left of the road, the slope fell smoothly away from the ridgeback to Portmagee on the Valencia Estuary below, with the Dingle Peninsula beyond it; to the right, it climbed to a jagged edge, the white cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The view was serene and beautiful; but below us we could see abandoned farmhouses and cottages dotting the green fields.

Towards the top, we stopped at a roadside shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. “May Our Lady bless you in your going your coming and your staying,” the inscription read, “Till you meet with her and Jesus, where you never more will part.” The Ordnance Survey map that we bought later told us that the grotto was the location of a “Holy Well” with an associated “cross slab”.

(The dedicatory inscription named a “Fr. P Sugrue,” a surname already familiar to us because of the apparent stranglehold on property sales in the Iveragh Peninsual held by one Pauline Sugrue, whose name we had seen on many “For Sale” signs as we drove round!)

Crossing the ridge, we took the zigzag road down to St Finan’s Bay, rounding its eastern end and cutting through to Ballinskelligs Bay and Ballinskelligs town (Baile an Sceilg) itself. Near Curraghnanav (Curach na nDamh), we took a right turn off the R566 onto the R567, and rejoined the Ring of Kerry road, the N70, heading south to Waterville.

Skirting the east shore of Ballinskelligs Bay, we climbed the northwest flank of Farraniaragh Mountain and came to the Beenarourke Pass, at the crest of the ridge that joins Farraniaragh Mountain on the east with Knockstooka to the west. Here a powerful statue of Our Lady marks the entrance to a large car park which straddles the ridge. Knowing a scenic viewing-point when we see one, we pulled in and parked, and indeed there were magnificent views to north and south.

To the north, the way we’d come from, a green valley stretched back into a blue distance where the peaks of Aghatubride, Foilclough, and Beenduff made a ridge across the horizon. But most remarkable was the round fort, in excellent condition, (presumably reconstructed) that stood near the farm buildings below the car park walls.

The view southwards was much more panoramic, from the Atlantic to the right, over the bright yellow sands of Derrynane Bay (“pronounced ‘Derrynaan’, meaning the ‘oak wood of St Fionán’”)., and eastward up the Kenmare estuary. Across the other side, the Slieve Miskish mountains formed the backbone of the Beara Peninsula.

Descending towards Caherdaniel (Cathair Donál) and driving along above the bay, we passed through Caherdaniel West, where yet another ring fort—this one rather tumbledown—was visible on farmland between the road and the sea. (Google Earth shows the remains of yet another close by, a little further down the hill, little more than a ring of stones at ground level.)

The drive along the north shore of the Kenmare Estuary has its points of interest, especially Sneem, “the Knot in the Ring of Kerry”, which still revels in its title of “Ireland’s Tidiest Town”, even though that was 1987! But not only was there less of direct interest to us, there seems to be “less” in general, certainly less “spectacle”; and though we’d have liked to see Sneem, time was getting on and we still had a long way to go to complete the Ring. We did make one exception, though: just after Caherdaniel and somewhat before Castle Cove, we turned off northwards (stopping for coffee at the Staigue Fort Hotel) to follow a narrow old road that leads to—can you guess?—another (unrestored) ring fort at Staigue … (The photo shows the view south from inside the fort’s low doorway.)

We’d proposed having dinner at Kenmare (an Irish name, but the town is actually called Neidín), at the head of the estuary, but we decided instead to return to Killarney by turning north and passing through Moll’s Gap (in MacGillicuddy’s Reeks, on the watershed of the peninsula) while it was still daylight. The panoramas are world-famous, but although the best views seemed to us to be on the south side, there was a fair amount of traffic and nowhere to pull off, so we pulled in to the parking area on the north side. Here we were able to take photos of the N71 winding in from the west and eastwards towards Killarney (and of some of the roadside sheep, perhaps even “adopt-a-sheep” sheep from the Kissane Sheep Farm. (Their site has a scanning panoramic view across the Owenreigh River valley.)

From Moll’s Gap, we drove down to the Killarney Lakes, pausing for photos from Ladys (Lady’s, Ladies’) View, which is considered the high point of the Ring of Kerry tour. (The Wikipedia explanation of the name, that it “apparently stems from the admiration of the view given by Queen Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting during their 1861 visit,” is the commonest of several.) Our selected photo, the last of the day (in fading light), looks north-east over Upper Lake to Newfoundland Bay and the Long Range.

We drove down into Killarney, parked in the centre of town, and wandered along High St (An tSriad Ard), looking for session pubs, and deciding on “Farrell’s Town House” (aka “Crock O’ Gold”) for a 9:30 seisiún. It was about 8:30 now, and we were hungry, so we picked Gaby’s Seafood Restaurant, figuring there’d be something on the menu that would overcome Don’s seafood aversion. It was an excellent choice (if a little expensive); Margaret had asparagus, lobster, and chocolate cheese cake (not together, you understand); Don had vegetable soup, and sirloin steak with pepper sauce; and we each had a glass of champagne and a glass of wine. (Deep-fried camembert was on the menu but was sadly “not available”).

We got to Farrell’s / Crock O’ Gold well after the seisiún had started (we probably should have gone for an earlier, or shorter, dinner) but managed to find a table quite close to the musicians. There we made our presence known by joining in choruses (Don hadn’t brought his whistles). Before long, there was an invitation to move in closer, and mutual introductions with Mags (guitar, banjo, vocals) and Peter (accordion), plus two hangers-on (Mary and Bernie). We stayed with them to the end, singing our hearts out, and promised to return next night.

Sunday 3 Aug 2008: Aghadoe Heights

2008-08-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

WE'D HAD A TIRING WORKING week and two long journeys at the end of it, so we began our Ireland holiday with a lie-in followed by a bit of blobbing followed by a bit o’ brunch. While blobbing, we had a look at the tourist literature that had been stashed in a drawer. In particular, there was a locally-produced magazine, Guide Killarney, which had an interesting and informative article on St Brendan the Navigator, a useful map of Killarney, and—more to the point—a series of day-trips and tours around County Kerry (a.k.a. “The Kingdom”), with maps, panoramas, and step-by-step driving instructions.

And the very first panorama was the view from Aghadoe Heights, just minutes up the road from our very own Aghadoe Cottage.

About 1 p.m., we roused ourselves for a drive up the road. Aghadoe Heights runs lengthwise (east-west) along a ridge, with a pretty rural view to the north and a magnificent panorama to the south.

The day was dull with occasional spots of rain and a slightly hazy atmosphere; the view would have been even more wonderful on a fine day. To the far left (east, above left) were Aghadoe Church and the tiny Norman castle; to the far right (west, above right), the distant peaks of the Iveragh Peninsula. Between them were vistas (below, L to R) of Killarney; Lough Leane with the romantic “Bricin” Bridge (just visible if you click on the middle photo); the unnamed mountain range south of the lake; and to the south-west, Ireland’s highest mountain range, Macgillicuddy’s Reeks (“reeks” being related to “ricks” as in “hayricks!”) .

When we’d looked our fill, we walked over to the castle. Its official name is “Parkavonear Castle,” which comes from the Irish paírc an mhóinéir, meaning “field of the meadow.” (’Sfaras we can tell, the English spelling is a pretty accurate reflection of the Irish pronunciation.) Not much is known about its history, but it’s Norman (13th century) and, unusually, cylindrical rather than square.

Originally you’d have had to get into it via a ladder to the 1st floor (it probably had three or four storeys when built), but someone made a convenient ground-floor entrance at some time, which is right next to the staircase that leads up inside the 6ft-thick wall to the doorway to the upper story. We went in, and up, and looked across the space where the wooden floor and its timber beam supports long ago fell away, leaving the sockets; there’s the remains of a first-floor fireplace, and a window opposite it (unless it’s the original doorway!), but the whole castle’s quite tiny, just a few metres across—more of a stumpy tower, really.

One thing that struck us as mysterious was a fine layer of black, fibrous- or tarry-looking material, which meandered round the tower at a little above head height. It would have separated layers of stones, except that as well as extending horizontally, it went up several layers at some points and down at others. Occasionally it would divide and go both up and down. We later saw the same sort of thing at the nearby church, which is mostly a century or so older, and wondered if it had something to do with modern conservation work. If any reader of this blog knows what it’s about, please leave us a comment!

The castle is surrounded by an overgrown squarish bank with a shallow ditch outside it: a wall and moat, with a gap in the north-east corner. This led us through to the lane that runs down between the castle and Aghadoe church, so we walked down the road to a stile that gave us access up through the wall and into the churchyard.

The church is roofless and ruined, we don’t know how recently, but was founded (as part of a small monastery) in the 7th Century. Before getting to it, we had to pass through the graveyard, which is still in use. There were quite modern graves and headstones, redolent of Irish Catholic piety; but also more-or-less simple iron crosses to mark the locations of graves whose headstones had vanished. We were particularly touched by a grave quite near to the road; it commemorated Cornelius Harrington, an obviously much-loved father and avid soccer fan, who died in 2006 at the age of 59. It was evident from the surrounding decoration that his headstone had only very recently been dedicated.

Ruined though it is, the church itself has several interesting features, including the stump of a round tower, the Romanesque west doorway (12th century), the lancet windows at the east end (13th century), some carved wall decorations, including a human head (also 13th century), and a rather naïve-looking stone-carved crucifixion scene (17th century, shown). There’s also a rectangular stone, broken at both ends, deposited atop the remains of the south wall, with an ancient (6th century?) inscription in the Ogham (“Owe-um”) alphabet: almost certainly a gravestone or similar memorial marker. It once commemorated someone named BRRUANANN, but of course no-one now knows who Bruanann (or Brenann) was.

We went back to Aghadoe Cottage to drop the photos to the laptop and annotate them before we forgot. Then about 8 p.m., we walked down to the Old Killarney Inn (so called) for dinner.

The Old Killarney Inn provides a dining experience we’d definitely recommend. Stay away from it!—that’s our recommendation! Well, okay: maybe we’re being a bit harsh; if you exercise careful control over what you ask for, you might have a better experience than we did.

We both ordered the “prawn salad” for entrée. The prawns were plentiful but were actually rather flavourless tinned (we think) shrimps, presented with a Marie Rose sauce on two slices of a rather coarse brown bread—not a criticism of the bread, it was good and tasty, but made a bit soggy by the liquor from the “prawns”. The main spoiler, though, was the huge quantity of “salad” that came with it: chopped up stale vegetably stuff made anonymous by the greasy creamy dressing, and occupying fully half of a large dinner plate.

Neither of us ate very much of the salad, but finishing off the shrimps-n-bread left us overprepared (or underprepared) for the main course. Margaret’s sirloin steak was a little overcooked, and “okay but not stunning”; Don’s burger (“Mac’s Famous Rock Burger, €9.50”) was actually very good, but what we’d failed to do was say, “please hold the salad,” because each dish was served with another half-plate of the same turgid vegetably mess. Moreover, Don’s dinner plate being full, the chips were served separately in a vast basket!—excellent chips, but thousands of them (you think we exaggerate?) …

We ate as much as we could, but, after the huge “entrées” (even though we hadn’t finished them), neither of us had room left to do justice to the mains. A pity, and overall it left us with the negative impression you might have picked up by now.

So … back to Aghadoe Cottage, and a good night’s sleep to make up for it.

Saturday 2 Aug 2008: Ferry ‘Cross the Irish Sea

2008-08-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

AFTER A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP IN a comfortable bed, we got up about 8 o’clock and went for a full Welsh breakfast (which turned out to be very tasty and much the same as a full English breakfast, except they forgot Margaret’s black pudding!). Afterwards, we repacked our suitcases into the car and left for Anglesey a little after 9 a.m.

Our ferry was due to leave Holyhead (a little over half an hour away) at midday; we had to be there by 10:30; so we had time to go back to Llanfair PG for souvenirs. We were attracted to the large shop in the station carpark, if only by its name: James Pringleweavers; or so it seemed to say on the roadside sandwich board. But really, it’s James Pringle Weavers; one of a chain of shops, originating in Scotland, which specialises in woollen-wear, local crafts, and souvenir tat … Which was exactly what we were after; and our “Wales” fridge magnet, a colourful cartoony creation quite unlike any other we’ve ever bought, featuring some “traditional Welsh” characters standing on the Llanfair PG railway platform, was the first of this holiday …

Our ferry was the Jonathan Swift, run by Irish Ferries, and named after the great 17th-Century Anglo-Irish satirist. It was a comfortable fast ferry which easily handled the high Irish Sea, though we still needed our sea legs mid-crossing.

From the ferry shop, Don bought an AA Road Atlas of Ireland and an Irish newspaper. The lead story concerned severe flooding in precisely that part of Ireland we were heading for. The worst affected towns were Mallow in County Cork and (for the first known time) Newcastle West in Limerick. This caused us some anxiety; not only were we concerned for the people and businesses affected, but Newcastle West lay directly on our route to Killarney. A fortunate thing from our viewpoint was that there’d been no flooding in neighbouring County Kerry, which is where Killarney lies.

Otherwise, the crossing was uneventful, and despite taking the inevitable wrong turn a little after rolling off the ferry, we left Dublin about 2 p.m. and headed south-west on the M7, N7, N21, N22, and N23 (“N”-class roads being Ireland’s equivalent of England’s “A”-class roads). It was a 300 km trip (we were no longer working in miles!) and took about four and a half hours. It would have been less, but the traffic slowed to a near-standstill as we approached Rathkeale, and stayed slow through Newcastle West. We think it was simply the pressure of large amounts of weekend holiday traffic on small-town roads, rather than an effect of the flooding.

The weather was cloudy but dry, and there were many fine views of Irish countryside, but with such a long journey we didn’t stop for photos; there’d be opportunity over the next week. (But Margaret did manage to snap a fine view of the castle at Adare as we crossed the bridge over the River Maigue.)

We got to Killarney (“Hill of the Sloes”) about 6:30, and followed the Google directions that led us off the N23 and onto Aghadoe Rd, to the timeshare resort called (quite without any historical justification) “Old Killarney Village” (“opened in April 1999”!).

Our cottage was #1, closest to the entrance, and was called “Aghadoe Cottage,” Aghadoe (Achadh dá Eo, “Field of the Two Yews”—we had a lot of fun as time passed, wrestling with Irish pronunciation) being the local community, lying along the northern shore of Lough Leane. The resort features modern-built “traditional Irish cottages”, with thick walls (and double glazing for the winters!) and thatched roofs. There was also a “village pub,” the “Old Killarney Inn”: of the same vintage, naturally, as the rest of the “village”!

The cottage was roomy and comfortable—three double bedrooms, one with en-suite, separate bathroom, lounge, kitchen, laundry … We unpacked, then drove down into Killarney, where we drove round the town centre, and bought supplies at the mini-supermarket attached to a petrol station, and a Chinese meal at the adjoining takeaway. We got back to Aghadoe Cottage about 7:30-ish, sat ourselves comfortably with Chinese food at hand, and watched Irish TV …

Friday 1 Aug 2008: To Welsh Wales

2008-08-16T12:13:00.000-07:00

THIS HOLIDAT BLOG IS BEING written entirely retrospectively, starting several days after our return. We had no Internet access for most of the trip, and have been busy and tired since getting back. But we had the most wonderful time (again), and want to share it with the world!

Our trip took us through five countries in ten days: England to Wales to Ireland to Northern Ireland to Scotland, and so back to England and home. But it started with Don already away from home, running training in Manchester. On the Friday, first day of August and last day of the course, Margaret left work mid-morning (about 10:40) and drove the 190 miles to Glossop in Derbyshire (more precisely, Hadfield). She now has quite a large collection of cross-stitch patterns (as well as the completed cross-stitches), souvenirs of places we’ve been and things we’ve seen, and wanted some coloured embroidery canvases for future use.

Hadfield’s only about 10 miles from where Don’s course was, but the road took Margaret into one of those dreaded one-way systems where you can’t get where you need to and wind up lost. She left Hadfield about 3:30, but didn’t get to the Manchester venue until about 5:10!

We loaded Don’s stuff in the back of the car, took a loo break, and drove down to Anglesey, another 100-odd miles. We were due on the ferry from Holyhead the next day, and were going to stay in a North Wales hotel overnight; but first: we had to visit

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantisiliogogoch!

It was around 7:15 p.m., and not dark, but the village was closing down for the night. We visited and photographed the railway station (now a souvenir shop, though the station is still working), and the platform, which has a handy (approximate) pronunciation guide for those a bit challenged by Welsh spelling; but we’ve adjusted it a little to make it even easier:

Llan-vire-pooll-guin-gill-gog-air-uh-quern-drob-ooll-llandus-ilio-go-go-gock

(Of course, you need the Welsh “ll”. And the “q” and “ck” are really Scottish-style “ch” sounds.)

Wherever we go, we need those fridge magnets so that we know where we’ve been!—but the souvenir shops were all closed, so we went down instead to the little Church of St Mary (“Llan fair”) in the hollow of white hazels (“pwll gwyn gyll”) near the rapid whirlpool (“goger y chwryn drobwll”) by St Tysilio’s (“Llan tysilio”) of the red cave (“gogo goch”), which lies (St Mary’s) down a lane at the edge of the village. The village itself was originally named “Pwllgwyngyll”; the rest was added in the 1860s by a local tailor (or cobbler) as a publicity stunt, to form the longest railway station name in the world. (There’s a longer one still, also in Wales—Gorsafawddachaidraigodanheddogleddollonpenrhynareurdraethceredigion—, but everyone ignores it because it’s just a copycat attempt to get into the Guinness book of records!) Llanfair(etc.)gogogoch.com is also the world’s longest Internet domain name.

(We didn’t see the red cave, or the whirlpool, or any white hazels, come to that.)

Back up in the village, we went to Tafarn Tŷ Gwyn (“White House Tavern”) for dinner, which was good-enough pub food (certainly value for money).

Then we drove back over the Menai Straits (Britannia Bridge), west through Caernarvon, and to a tiny village called Llanwnda (“Llan-oonda”), where we got a little lost before finding The Stables Hotel and Restaurant.

The accommodation was one in a row of (presumably) former stables, each suite named after a racecourse. Unfortunately, our first suite proved to have a leak in the bathroom, but the staff moved us quickly to the next suite along (which was closer to the car, actually), and there we passed a comfortable night.