It was time to fly away from our comfortable nest with the O'Connells of Tralee for a few days exploring on our own, Perhaps you have been amused by tales from friends or in movies of the complex and verbose was Irish people give driving directions. The American tourist is invariably lost, and the friendly local goes into minute and confusing detail (ie: "Sure, well you'll be going straight down this lane to the third round-about. Take the third left, go down two stop signs to the street on the left. Turn right just past the green pub. You can't miss it. If you get to Galway, you've gone too far"). That is NOT an exaggeration, but is also unavoidable because rural Irish roads are a rat's nest of intersecting two-lane or less passages, and roads are rarely marked, particularly at intersections. Another driving challenge is that apparently Ireland has strictly banned even a hint of a shoulder or place to pull off, and the roads are bordered by high hedges or worse, stone walls, creating something akin to a toboggan chute. Mix in the tour buses and the multitude of large farming equipment of all sorts, and you have It is not unlike Mr. Toad's wild ride.
My only previous experience with a GPS had been a passenger as my daughter argues profanely and profusely with a pleasant female voice that tells her it is "recalculating" and she should make a U-turn in 100 yards. As our luck would have it, friend Michelle Philliber had visited Ireland three weeks earlier, and had loaned me a road atlas and her son Tyler's device already loaded with Ireland data. (She also alerted Sheila at the Skellig Visitor Center we were on our way.) Thank you, Michelle, they both proved indispensable. The GPS wasn't always right but tended to get us close enough to the target to make do.
Florry suggested n itinerary, so we headed off up the Shannon Estuary towards Limerick. Through Foynes we passed by the Flying Boat Museum, preserving the memory of Pan-Am clippers that lande here during WWII, bringing vital supplies from the US.
We were advised to stop at Bunratty Castle and Folk Park in County Clare. The restored castle was worth a visit because great pains had been made to refurnish it with authentic15th century decor, and the guides were quite informative.
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| Bunratty Castle |
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| Bunratty bedroom |
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| Castle meeting room |
Befitting a site calling itself "Ireland's premier visitor attraction" there is an evening medieval banquet option, replete with harps, jesters, mead, and pulchritudinous wenches. It was time, not good taste, which prevented our attendance.
The "Folk Park" part of Bunratty is a family-friendly cheery homage to medieval good times with a quasi-educational reconstructed village. We were told to seek out the "Crazy Scone Lady", a local preformer demonstrating ancient baking tips in a rural kitchen in completely unintelligible Irish brogue. We found her preparing brown soda bread, not scones, and to be largely understandable.
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| C. S. L. |
Despite the GPS trying to direct us into a river about 5 miles from our true destination, we arrived at Craggaunowen, another tourist stop designed to help to keep the tourist in touch with Ireland's past. I wanted to see the
crannog, the reconstruction of a typical stone-age lake-dwelling. Prehistoric peoples built artificial island componds in lakes, mostly for defensive reasons.
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| A crannog |
My attention was also caught by a boat built to duplicate a medieval ocean-going craft.
The Irish are quite insistent that the first European to visit the New World was
Saint Brendan the Navigator around 500 AD. To prove the point, recently an adventurer took off in this boat (Kon-Tiki-like) to prove it could be done. It could.
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| Map of route to the New World |
Next we were off to the western edge of County Clare to see the
Cliffs of Moher basically because everyone goes to the cliffs, They are "Ireland's Most Visited Tourist Attraction" with upwards of 1,000,000 visitors a year. These cliffs to the sea are up to 700 feet tall and run over five miles. They have appeared in films such as "The Princess Bride" where they played the role of the Cliffs of Insanity. I'm not sure how their height compares with other sea cliffs around the world. They may be quite lovely, but the weather was lousy, gale winds and driving rain, and the visibility limited. The Visitors Center was nicely warm and dry with festive Gaelic music.
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| The Cliffs of Moher? |
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| Me at the Cliffs: Imagine taking a shower in a wind tunnel. |
Fortunately, there is abundant daylight at this time of year, so we pulled in late to
Galway after a long tourist day. Located where the short River Corrib meets Galway Bay, the city has a pedestrian-friendly city center.
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| Blessed are the cheese-makers |
JFK visited during his historic trip 50 years ago, which is commemorated by a plaque in Eyre Square.
Time allowed a brief stop at the museum, where we found this lovely example of a Galway Hooker (no, not that kind: a boat).
On the banks of the River Corrib there is a monument to another world-famous
alleged visitor . I'll buy you a drink if you can guess who. (
Answer at end of post: a hint, it ties in with something mentioned above.)
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| Stranger also puzzled by what-the-heck this is. |
So much to see, so little time. I knew the west coast of the Connemara Peninsula around to Clifden were worth a look, and I was also tempted to head north to Cong and other places where "The Quiet Man" was filmed, but wanted to be sure I had enough time to spend at the massive prehistoric burial mounds in the east, so east it was. The drive through the midlands and the Shannon River valley was green and pastoral, as expected. Birr is a charming Georgian village worth a stop, The present town of Birr owes its current form to Earl
Laurence Parson and descendants, who were granted he land and castle in 1620,
and who still live there.
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| View of Birr Castle Demesne across the moat |
He instituted certain rules of cleanliness and
industry. The gardens surrounding the castle boast many exotics, and include
“the World’s Tallest Box hedges” according to Guinness. My attention was drawn
to the giant outdoor telescope dubbed the
“Leviathan of Parsontown”. Built in the 1840’s and
was the world’s largest telescope for over 70 years. The third Earl of Parson is
credited with discovering the Whirlpool Nebula, but the telescope was difficult
to use, and the weather made it less than ideal.
Birr was only a stop on our way to
Clonmacnoise, called by
The Lonely Planet Guide “the best monastic ruins in Ireland, bar none”. Founded
about 548 AD by
Saint Ciarán, they have a favored setting at the crossroads of
the north-south river Shannon and a natural east-west passage across the bogs
formed by a ridge of ancient glacier debris.
It was a major religious and trading
center for centuries, until multiple Viking, Anglo-Norman, Irish, and finally
English raids reduced it to rubble in 1522. There is not much left now, and
compared to other large monastic sites like Antigua, Guatemala or Meteora,
Greece, frankly not overwhelming. There are large vague gaps in Irish history,
as if the destruction of Cromell and others erased everything before about
1700. What is left is quite haunting; the round towers, ruined churches, and
particularly the Irish crosses.
There crosses are uniquely Irish, as they
combine a Christian cross with a round halo said to incorporate pagan worship
of the sun. They are intricately carved, and like gothic churches, can tell
Biblical and other tales to an illiterate population.
The shaft of the north
cross remains, and has a figure seated Buddha-like, thought to represent the
Celtic god Cernunnos.
After a delightful stay at Kajon’s B&B nearby, we were
off to County Meath and
Brú na Bóinne (“the palace of the river Boyne”) and the
mysterious prehistoric “passage tombs”. The site is in a bend of the river
Boyne, about one hour north of Dublin.
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| Newgrange |
If there is one thing Ireland is
not as renown for as it should be, it is the existence of so
many Stone Age archeological sites. Again, there is much speculation and little
fact, but they clearly pre-date the pyramids and Stonehenge, perhaps going back
to 3200 BC! The basic structure is of large man-made mounds with central
passages where some human remains were entombed. They are encircled my mammoth
carved boulders, some from many miles away, called kerbstones which are decorated
with cryptic lines and figures. The best known is at
Newgrange, and has 97
kerbstones in a ring, and is 80 meters (260') in diameter and 13 meters (14') high.
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| A kerbstone |
The
tunnel passages leads to a central cruciform chamber with large stone basins
that once held cremated human remains. Here, precisely at sunrise on the winter
solstice, sun shines in from a window over the entryway lighting up the 19
meter (62') passageway, suggesting some purpose as a calendar. When you visit, you
are encouraged to enter a lottery for the rare offer to be in the tomb for the
solstice, so we may have to return in December.
There are 40 or more mounds in the area, such as Knowth with
its 127 kerbstones, more intact and with more elaborately carved figures.
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| Knowth |
One suggests it may have been a sun dial, with a central
hole and radial markings.
The most sacred and fabled and historic hill in Ireland is a
few miles away, Tara. Over the centuries it has been considered a portal to the
underworld, the lair of powerful Celtic goddess Maeve (written Meabh in Irish),
the seat of kings of Ireland, and more recently a pulpit for St. Patrick in
433, and in 1843 750,000 are claimed to have gathered to hear Daniel O’Connell
the Liberator speak. Despite gale-force
winds and driving rain, I had to stop by, and although I could not get a decent
photo, I did appreciate the commanding position it has over a large corner of
the country and sensed the spirit of the place.
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| Aerial view of the Hill of Tara |
Off then to a dry and warm room in Dublin for our last two
days in Ireland.
Answer to Quiz: Christopher Columbus. The Irish maintain he visited here and got inspiration for his voyage from stories of St. Brendan.
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