Bath and Cornwall

This morning we left Cardiff and crossed the Bristol Channel and River Severn back into England.  The funnel-shaped channel and estuary combine to create what is called a tidal bore - the Severn Bore - forcing water upstream as far as Gloucester.  Steve told us that there was a 40-foot difference between low and high tide, and he had heard that surfers can actually surf upriver.

We arrived in Bath, one of the few places we had visited before in England on our trip 15 years ago.  It is a popular destination, and deservedly so, with its perfectly preserved 18th Century Georgian architecture and buildings constructed of honey-colored limestone.

The narrow stone-paved streets are everywhere, pedestrian-friendly and inviting exploration.  It was an overcast day and we enjoyed exploring an area still familiar in our memory.  It reminded me of Prospero asking Miranda in The Tempest (which I have been re-reading),

But now is it

That this lives in my mind?  What seest thou else

In the dark backward and abysm of time?

The hot springs feeding the Baths were “discovered” in AD 60-70 by the Romans, but it was believed that Celts worshiped here earlier; the water is a soothing 46 °C (114.8 °F).

The site was re-designed in the 18^th century, which was the date of all of the Georgian buildings now standing on the site.

The water is no longer used for bathing, and visitors were cautioned not to touch it; a dangerous type of amoeba was discovered here several years ago.  We needed no caution - the water did not look inviting.  The same hot water can be enjoyed in other places nearby.  

There was a beautiful bust of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom (and also, parenthetically, strategic warfare).

And there were other lovely statues dating from the 18th century as well.  

The especially fine Bath Abbey stood diagonally across the street from the baths, a Church of England parish that had the long history of so many of these places of worship - founded in the 7th century, reorganised in the 10th century, and rebuilt in the 12th and 16th centuries.

From somewhere in "the dark backward and abysm of time," we remembered eating a pub lunch in Bath 15 years ago at a place called The Crystal Palace, and after all of this time it was still there.  The young lady who brought us our lunch enjoyed that story, although she would have been a toddler at the time.

From Bath we journeyed to Plymouth to the southwest, through flat land along the Bristol Channel at first where hay was being harvested, hay bales in other fields waiting to be gathered in.

And then we were climbing through hilly country, the lower extent of the Cotswolds.  As we approached Plymouth, Steve gave us a highly-detailed description of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.  English ships sailed from Plymouth to decimate the fleet of 130 Spanish ships, but not before the famous game of "bowls" or lawn bowling by Sir Francis Drake could be completed.  The game, dating to the 13th century, was hugely popular in 1588, and legend has it that when the Armada was sighted in the channel, Drake coolly insisted on finishing his game (which incidentally, he lost) before taking on and defeating the mighty fleet.  Some scholars think it had more to do with waiting for the tide, but I like to think the legend is true.

We passed the ruins of Charles Church in Plymouth, which was bombed during World War II; it has been left in ruins as a memorial to those killed during air raids on the city, and perhaps as a sober warning of the terrible destruction wrought by warfare everywhere.

After arriving in Plymouth, we crossed the River Tamar to Cornwall by means of something I had never encountered before, a chain ferry.  The Torpoint Ferry has been in service since 1791; three separate ferries, side by side, operate by pulling themselves on heavy chains across the river - taut chains in front, slack chains behind which sink to the bottom to allow shipping movement in the river.  

Cornwall had some of the prettiest countryside we had driven through, rolling hills between green fields where cattle were grazing.

As we approached the Cornish coastline, the road narrowed, looking down precipitous slopes to the water below.  On the far horizon we could see a tiny shape, a ferry crossing the English Channel to France 80 miles away.

At one point, we came around a curve and unexpectedly encountered a coach traveling in the opposite direction.  After an amicable pause while the drivers seemed to communicate in some unknown way, our driver Karl slowly began creeping in reverse along the road; a mistake of a foot on the right would have meant tumbling a long way into cold waters.  We breathed a sigh of relief as the other coach passed and Karl received a round of applause for some of the best driving we had seen on this trip.

Some of the little towns tucked in the coves below us resembled the fictional Portwenn in the BBC program Doc Martin (the series is actually filmed in Port Isaac some 50 miles away).

I could almost picture the irritable Doc marching down the steep street on his way to an emergency, surgical bag in hand, while shooing away a friendly dog.

At last we arrived at sea level, and it turned out we were in Cremyll, just across the River Tamar from Plymouth; we had taken a long, circuitous, and very scenic route to The Edgcumbe Arms, a historic pub in one of the prettiest settings in England.

After a hearty dinner, we all stood outside soaking up the tranquility.  Stalwart Karl had returned to Plymouth by the same route he had taken to get here, while we waited for a ferry – not a chain ferry this time, but a small vessel approaching in the gathering dusk - to take us back across the river to our hotel for the night.

Cardiff Castle

We set the alarm for 4:30 a.m. this morning and left the Fitzwilton Hotel at 7:00 a.m., early morning sunshine just starting to brighten the Waterford riverfront.  It was an hour drive to Rosslare Harbour, where we were scheduled to catch the early ferry back across the St. George's Channel to Cardiff, Wales.  On our drive to the ferry, Steve played us a CD of Irish music by a young man named Dan O'Sullivan.  We thought that, with its fiddle and a surprising banjo, it sounded a lot like Bluegrass music.

Hay bales were stacked in the fields, waiting for harvest.  We have watched summer turn into fall on this trip.

The ferry was smaller than the Ulysses that had taken us here over a week ago, and it was a rougher passage.  I opted for the smoked salmon wrap for lunch . . . instead of the James Joyce burger.

It took over four hours to reach Wales, and the rest of the afternoon in Cardiff we spent touring Cardiff Castle, a medieval castle and Victorian Gothic revival mansion located in the city center.  The original castle was built in the late 11th century by Norman invaders on top of a 3rd-century Roman Fort.  But in the 18th century, the 3rd Marquess of Bute transformed the castle, using his vast wealth to back an extensive program of renovations under the supervision of architect Willliam Burges.  Burges remodeled the castle in a Gothic revival style, lavishing plenty of money and attention on the place.  The interior is considered, according to Wikipedia, to be "among the most magnificent that the Gothic revival ever achieved."

Our tour referred to it as "Bizarre Cardiff Castle," and it was a good description.  From the outside it was not unlike other castles that we had seen, like Blarney Castle the previous day. 

 

But the inside was filled with fantastic paintings, carvings, tapestries, Islamic art, and gold gilt everywhere.  Hand-painted scenes from Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales and Aesop's Fables adorned the nursery and other rooms.

I don't think we have anything comparable in this country except perhaps the Hearst Mansion or the Biltmore House.  It is hard to imagine this vast amount of money going toward such architectural and artistic beauty these days.

We climbed up the keep, or tower, at the other end of the fortification, and took in the view of Cardiff, spread out all around us.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the castle were these walls, buried for centuries and unearthed in 1922, adjacent to the gift shop.

On the way to our lodging for the night, the Park Inn in City Centre, we passed this shop selling Brains - that is, brews from Cardiff's regional brewery founded in 1882 by Samuel Arthur Brain.  

Blarney Castle

I have to confess that I was not feeling very well this morning.  Whether it was something I had eaten on the hotel buffet last night or something else, I do not know - I will spare readers the details.  But by morning I was feeling better as we left Killarney and drove to Blarney Castle in Cork, through undulating hills and more beautiful countryside.  We passed more abandoned stone buildings, which in our part of the the South would succumb to kudzu and disappear completely in a few years, but in Ireland stand in stone and slate forever.

Blarney Castle and its beautifully landscaped grounds were a welcome stop.  I spent some time walking through its gardens, many of which featured subtropical plants (see previous post about the effects of the Gulf Stream).

I was still not feeling up to par, so I was glad to find a place to sit and have a cup of tea in a sunny courtyard with umbrella-covered outdoor tables, while Martha explored the castle itself.  I heard later that most of our group did not attempt to negotiate the narrow stairs with low ceilings, which would have proven difficult for a man of my height to negotiate.

The castle is remarkable photogenic, and I took dozens of photos from dozens of angles.  Built on earlier fortifications, as is often the case over here, the current "keep" or tower dates from 1446.  These early dates continue to amaze me! - that would be, after all,  half a century prior to Columbus "sailing the ocean blue."

The opportunity to kiss the famous Blarney Stone, a block of limestone built into the battlements of the castle, attracts visitors world-wide.  Wikipedia describes it this way:

 The ritual of kissing the Blarney Stone, according to the castle's proprietors, has been performed by "millions of people", including "world statesmen, literary giants, and legends of the silver screen.  The kiss, however, is not casually achieved.  To touch the stone with one's lips, the participant must ascend to the castle's peak, then lean over backwards on the parapet's edge.  This is traditionally achieved with the help of an assistant.  Although the parapet is now fitted with wrought-iron guide rails and protective crossbars, the ritual can still trigger attacks of acrophobia.

Brave Martha made her way up to the 127 narrow steps to the Blarney Stone and accomplished what was "not casually achieved," touching it, she said (cautious about the unsanitary idea of kissing a stone which had been kissed by the lips of  "millions of people) with her nose - an Eskimo Kiss!  And then she quickly applied hand sanitizer.

According to legend, she has now been endowed with the "gift of the gab."  As we climbed into the coach after the visit, I asked Steve how many times he had kissed the Stone.  His eloquence knows no bounds.

Our next stop was a sobering reminder of the Potato Famine of 1845, which Steve had already told us about.  Also known as the Great Hunger, it was caused by a fungus-like organism which spread rapidly throughout all of Ireland, ruining up to one-half of the potato crop that year, and about three-quarters of the crop over the next seven years. The potato was the main source of food for the ordinary tenant farmer.   The number of dead from starvation reached such calamitous numbers that local cemeteries filled up and mass Famine Graves were opened up, where large populations were buried; records are sparse, and it is not known how many thousands were buried in a hundred different graveyards throughout Ireland.    

We filed reverently from the coach to the gated entrance of the Famine Graveyard in Dungarven, on a hill in an open field; we could hear the busy traffic below us on the N25.

This poignant statue said it all, standing on the edge of the field, reflecting the desperation of starvation.

It was only a short distance from Dungarven to Waterford, home of Waterford Crystal, known throughout the world and dating back to 1783.

Although much Waterford Crystal is made outside of Ireland today, the House of Waterford Crystal is worth seeing, and Martha decided to take a local tour.  Master craftsmen were at work and she told me later that she could feel the heat of the furnaces used in creating these world class crystal pieces.   She also saw a miniature of the huge Time Square Crystal Ball created by Waterford Crystal, as well as a replica of a 911 creation presented to America in remembrance.  Then she went on a walking tour of Waterford, founded over 1100 years ago by Viking Warlords.  She saw the longest wood sculpture in the world, "Dragon Slayer," with intricate carvings that tell the story of the Vikings.  Waterford is also home for Reginald's Tower, the oldest civic building, dating back to 947 AD.

I decided not to go on the tour, instead walking along the River Suir through Waterford's pleasant streets to our hotel, the Fitzwilton.

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.