The Ring of Kerry

Our hotel in Killarney was on Plunkett Street in the heart of the Town, with cobblestones and overhead pennants and interesting little shops and cafes.  I went outside to do my Tai Chi in the semi-darkness; workmen were unloading produce from a delivery truck, but otherwise there was no activity.  A sudden rain materialized out of nowhere, and I ducked under the cover of a near by roof.

We were also only one street away from the 25,000-acre Killarney National Park, Killarney Golf Course, and Ross Castle.  It was a wonderful recreational amenity for this city, filled with runners and walkers and also home to the rare red deer; the sharp-eyed Martha spotted one flitting away silently through the woods.  The weather had miraculously  cleared and it felt like a fall day.  We were scheduled for another activity, a ride in a traditional horse-drawn "Jaunting Car."  The cars were lined up one block away, and we all boarded several of them and headed west toward the park.

Our driver - called a "jarvey" - was full of local knowledge and that unique brand of Irish wit; he had lived here his entire life.  He told us when we asked that his horse's name was Seldom Fed and he was Seldom Sober (actually, they were Sally and Michael).

We passed what Michael said was an abandoned lime kiln as Sally pulled us slowly down quiet gravel roads and along the shore of the lake.  Picturesque Ross Castle stood out on a little point in the lake, called Lough Leane; the 15th century castle was the fortress of the local Chieftain O'Donoghhe Mor.  In the background stood the McGillicuddy Mountains, the tallest in County Kerry.

Killarney National Golf course was off to the west, and Michael told us that it was the only golf course in Ireland where the players are required to wear two pairs of socks.  "Why is that?" one of the innocent passengers asked.  "It's in case they get a hole in one."  Of course.

We returned to the hotel and boarded the coach for our next adventure of the day, a drive around the Ring of Kerry, an 111-mile long scenic road that winds along the coast of the Iveragh peninsula.  We stopped at a little shop and cafe on the outskirts of Killarney for samples of Irish coffee, and then we were on our way.

We drove through the village of Killorgllin and Steve pointed out a statue of a goat called "King Puck."  Legend has it that when the army of Oliver Cromwell was conquering Ireland in the 17th century, a goat broke away from its herd while the rest of its flock escaped to the mountains; this unusual behavior alerted the inhabitants that Cromwell's "Roundheads" were on the way and they fled and hid away.  Each year, the Puck Fair is held here, and a goat is crowned king.

We stopped at the Red Fox for lunch and heard an impromptu barbershop-quartet song performed by some travelers on another coach who had also stopped; they sounded like Germans and I imagine they would have been swinging foaming pints of beer in their hands in rhythm to this song in their own country.

The rugged landscape was absolutely stunning here, the hills so green that one could understand while Ireland is called The Emerald Isle.

We stopped again and again to take photos of the coast and the steep hills that descended to the North Atlantic Ocean.

In Waterville, the road dropped down to sea level and we took a little break, walking out onto the rocky shore.  Here I picked up another little stone (its size dictated by luggage weight restrictions), worn round by the ocean, joining the one I had gathered in Scotland.

We spotted a statue of a familiar figure along the shore; it turned out that Charlie Chaplin stayed in this area, and there is an annual festival here showing his films.

We continued on, and Steve pointed out the ruins of several stone cottages in this area, abandoned during the Famine and never re-occupied.

The road passed miles of stone walls, many of them topped with distinctive vertical stones along their tops.

We passed several cyclists making the long climb to the top and then enjoying the winding, exhilarating descent; the views were "jaw-dropping," as we like to say, and I am afraid these tiny photos may not capture them.

At one overlook, a very tame deer was calmly munching on the grass; one of our travelers came closer and closer, and was finally able to stroke his neck.

There were other animals here and there, and at one point the coach had to pause while a black-faced sheep tried to decide if it wanted to get off the roadway.

Another herd was swiftly led down a side lane.  I don't think I have ever driven a road in American where herds of sheep are a problem!

Above Killarney, to which we eventually returned toward the end of our long circular journey, we stopped at a place called Ladies View, looking down on the city's three lakes.

A rainbow arced faintly across the valley above the lakes as we descended to the city and our second night at the Killarney Towers.

Galway to Killarney

We have experienced only a little rain on this journey, far less than expected.  But this morning when we awoke the rain was blowing sideways, and I did my Tai Chi under cover.  It continued as we left Galway on our way to The Burren, a region in County Clare characterized by cracked pavements, cliffs, and caves along the rugged coastline, especially the Cliffs of Moher which we had been looking forward to seeing today.

We passed more dry stack stone walls, and also some tower houses or "mini-castles," small fortifications constructed for protection against invaders, perched precariously on the cliffs.

 

We also passed the Aillwee Cave, a cave system high in the Burren.  It was still raining when we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher, and the wind was blowing it sideways.  We were soaked walking the short distance from the coach to the cafe and shop.

The Cliffs of Moher are known as Ireland's most famous landmark.  And what a beautiful place!

Unfortunately, we saw these cliffs only in large posters arranged around the wall of the gift shop and exhibit.  One or two of us bundled up in Gore-tex or wildly-whipping plastic, but the rest of us realized that, even had we walked the quarter-mile down to the cliffs, we would not see anything.  I did manage to see these hardy cattle grazing contentedly in the fog.

 

We continued on from the Cliffs of Moher and passed through Limerick; it had stopped raining by then.  I had been "giving it a little think" for a day or two, and had managed to write a limerick for Steve, and I wrote it down and tore it out of my notebook and gave it to him.  Alas, I cannot seem to find a copy, so it is lost to posterity.

We passed a memorial to victims of the Famine.  There will be more on this subject in a few days time, but Steve told us about this event that affected so many in Ireland and caused perhaps a million to emigrate, some to America - perhaps even my Mother's ancestors.

Along the road, Steve pointed out what locals call a "Fairy Tree," a Hawthorn; it is believed to be extremely bad luck to cut one of these trees down, and sure enough, the highway actually made a wide curve around the tree to forestall such misfortune.  In what turned out to be a warm and sunny afternoon, we arrived in Adare, once called the Prettiest Village in Ireland, which featured many thatched-roof cottages.

Also in Adare was the Trinitarian Monastery, founded in 1230 and the only Trinitarian order known in Ireland.

It happened that on this Friday afternoon, a couple was being married in the Monastery, a gorgeous place for a wedding.

At the end of another long day, we arrived in the heart of Killarney at the Killarney Towers Hotel.

Donegal to Galway

Yesterday's rain disappeared and it was another sunny day as we left Donegal.  The countryside here was low and boggy, and we could see evidence of peat harvesting - long, straight cuts in the bogs, and in one place a small pile where it has been stacked to dry.  Peat is still used for heating in this part of Ireland, and in fact we know an American woman whose daughter lived in Ireland and that is how she heated her cottage.

Everywhere in Britain and Ireland, there seem to be ruined stone churches, cottages, towers, and especially in this part of the country, literally around every corner.  History lasts for centuries when it is immortalized in stone.

We stopped for lunch in Cong in County Mayo, a pretty little village on the River Cong.  We spent some time looking at more ruins:  the 12th century Cong Abbey, built on the site of a 7th century monastery.

Somehow these photos don't capture the feeling of awe as one steps through ruined arches still standing after so many centuries, or tiptoes reverently around big flat tombstones in the churchyard where the bones of anonymous holy men are interred.

Then we rounded a corner and incongruously came across this statue of a familiar American movie star of the last century, John Wayne, manfully cradling a slim Maureen O'Hara in his arms.

The statue is dedicated those involved in the production of the 1952 movie The Quiet Man, which was filmed in this area.  I take it that the statue is the climactic and happy ending to the movie, which I have not seen.  I found a trailer for the it on You Tube and watched it, but honestly, it seemed too dated and corny to warrant watching the entire movie merely to view the splendid scenery.

From here we passed through countryside fenced with miles and miles of stone walls, continuing education for an amateur stonemason like me. Rivers cascaded down from the mountains to the east.

This part of Ireland is called the Connemara Region, and it is known for its fine marble which has been used in buildings around the world. It is supposed to have forty shades of green, and also many other colors, ranging from red to white to black.  We stopped at the quarry and watched a short presentation on how the marble is quarried and worked.

Some of the marble is so hard that it is used in semi-precious jewelry, and the shop had some beautiful (and expensive) samples on display.  The green looks very much like jade.

Across the street was a Visitors Center, and as we entered we could smell the sweet and distinctive fragrance of burning peat.  It is an interesting fuel, unlike any kind of wood or coal that I have used over many decades coaxing heat from wood-burning fireplaces and stoves.  Despite being harvested in a bog, it has a high carbon content and burns surprisingly well.  Steve told us that, in a way, it was a fuel halfway to becoming coal.

We arrived in Galway late in the afternoon and had time to explore another interesting, bustling city, with cobbled pedestrian-friendly streets.

Galway was founded by fourteen merchant families; they were the families of Athy, Blake, Bodkin, Browne, D'Arcy, Deane, Font, Ffrench, Joyce, Kirwan, Lynch, Martin, Morris and Skerritt.  The family flags hang around the central square where our coach parked.

There was Joyce, whose family originated in this area.  And there was also Morris, my Mother's maiden name.  My mother worked on her genealogy for years but did not go back this far; she only knew that she was Scotch-Irish.  So I have roots in this part of Ireland, too.

We walked down along the River Corrib to view the Roman Catholic Galway Cathedral (formally The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St Nicholas) and I was surprised to learn that it was constructed not in 965 but in 1965.

Our lodging for the night was the Connact Hotel, in the heart of everything in Galway - cobbled streets, restaurants, and shops meandering busily down to the River in an area called the Latin Quarter.  So many of these cities in Ireland are very cosmopolitan, Thai and Italian and Chinese restaurants rubbing elbows companionably.

We have been enjoying getting to know our fellow travelers even more, and have been trying to sit with different ones at dinner and breakfast.  Today I chatted with Gary, a retired engineer from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.  I found out that he had designed and built an innovative underground house, and also had built a log cabin vacation home out in the country and done most of the work himself.  We traded stone-masonry tales!

I was delighted to see this sign (in Gaelic and English) painted on the wall in the lobby of the Connact Hotel, which applies to so many of us on this tour. 

I hope readers of this blog are enjoying these tales!

Belfast to Londonderry to Donegal

After several remarkably sunny days, we encountered some light rain and mist as we left Belfast.  This kind of weather more closely resembled what we had expected.  We were on our way to the Giant's Causeway, which we had read about before embarking on this voyage.  The Giant's Causeway is an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic fissure eruption.  We arrived at "just gone half past nine," as Steve put it, parked the coach, and walked down to the Ocean.  The wind was blowing so hard that I tightened my hat a notch to prevent it from flying away to England.

Heather cascaded over the old stone wall along the path,and the wind was sharp with the pungent fragrance of the ocean.

Exhilarated by the brisk sea breeze, we climbed back up the road from the Causeway, had a cup of tea in the cafe, and continued on our way to our next stop, Londonderry (called simply "Derry" by the Irish).  We had lunch at the River Inn, Londonderry's oldest bar, established in 1684.  There we sampled some seafood chowder famous in this part of Ireland.

The Guild Hall was the center of the city, with a magnificent organ which had 50 stops and 3132 pipes.  I was able to hear most of a lunch-time concert of J. S. Bach chorales.

Our local specialist in Londonderry was a young man named Ronan.  He said his mother was Chinese and his father was Irish, and he was Buddhist.  He said he was often asked, "Are you Catholic Buddhist or Protestant Buddhist?"  He took us on a tour of the famous Londonderry walls.  The city was untouched by the Nazi bombing in WWII, he said, because it was too far to fly on a tank of fuel.

Nearby, Cecil Frances Alexander was buried, author of Once in Royal David's City, and All Things Bright and Beautiful, one of my favorite hymns.

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.

Ronan was a philosophical local specialist - he hoped for peace in a kind of Buddhist way.  It began to rain a little, and we all sheltered under a big oak tree near the city walls; in a little while, the sun came out again.

We continued driving south and were soon back in the Republic of Ireland again, stopping to see the 15th century Donegal Castle.  Showers continued off and on.

We climbed into the Dartry mountains, beautiful countryside, as we approached the ocean again; rain spattered on the windows of the coach.

And then we arrived at Duncliff Churchyard, where the grave of W. B. Yeats is located.  In light rain, we filed off the coach and payed our respects to the great poet.  Yeats famously wrote his own epitaph in the closing lines of his poem, Under Ben Bulben.

Under bare Ben Bulben's head

In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid,   

An ancestor was rector there

Long years ago; a church stands near,

By the road an ancient Cross.

No marble, no conventional phrase,   

On limestone quarried near the spot   

By his command these words are cut:

Cast a cold eye   

On life, on death.   

Horseman, pass by!

At the end of a long day, we arrived at perhaps our most interesting accommodation for the night, the Ocean Sands hotel in Inniscrone.  The North Atlantic Ocean was spread out before us, and the sunset was absolutely amazing.

One of our travelers told us the next morning that he had been placed in the Presidential Suite and had thoroughly enjoyed it.  Our room was out back, with several others, in a separate building.  Upstairs there was a huge living room/dining room/kitchen, and downstairs two bedrooms.  The Master Bedroom had an adjoining bathroom with a bathtub but no shower curtain, but there was another bathroom down the hall, so tiny that the shower could be compared (as I did the next morning to some of our fellow-travelers at breakfast) to the phone booth in which Clark Kent had changed into Superman.  I had to step out into the hall to dry myself with a towel.  Martha, showered before I did, spent a good deal of time trying to turn on the hot water, until finally she realized it was operated by an electrical switch on a wall in the hallway outside.  Travel is always so interesting!

We stepped outside into a brisk wind to look at the hotel before sleeping the sound sleep of weary travelers.  Beautiful!  Despite the unusual plumbing.