Day 6
The plan for the next day was to get up and head out toward the Yeats tower and make our way up to Galway. Once again, for the third day in a row, we awoke to bright blue skies. By this point, we were starting to get sunburned and desperately needed to find suntan lotion!
We headed out on the R476 first to Kilnaboy, where we stopped at an old church, and then made a detour to stop at a ruined tower we had passed before that fascinated us. It was basically chopped in half, with much of the stones buried under grasses now. What's left standing is dramatic to say the least, and is even more so because you can walk right up to it. I stepped into the shadow of that tower and looked up and just felt...something. A presence of sort. It was truly breathtaking. These old ruins always fascinate me...just how DOES something made of stone half collapse like that, what were the people like who lived there when it was whole? So many amazing thoughts go through your head in the presence of things like that tower.
Our next stop was the Kilmacduagh monastic site. We had passed it on our way through to the cottage a few days before, but hadn't had a chance to stop. It is made up of several buildings and churches, plus an intact round tower. Apparently it was built in the 7th century by St. Colman (not Michael!). We spent a fair amount of time wandering around and taking pictures. I'm always fascinated by how near these old ruins, just wandering around, are all sorts of livestock (in this case it was cows). David, Brandon, and Emily headed to one of the far churches while I decided to stick around and soak in the nice air. I got a VERY amusing video of David on his way back that I'll have to share at some point. ;-)
We finally made it over to the Yeats tower after this, and wandered the grounds for awhile. It turned out that the tower was not open yet, but we would be able to get into it on Friday as it opened June 1st. No worries! We got a lot of beautiful pictures from the outside and could wait to get into it.
We headed up into Galway city for the afternoon. Our plan was to get in and get to McDonagh's for fish and chips. We actually worked that out well and arrived at McDonagh's around 2pm (shortly after finding sunscreen -- man were we red by this time!). Fish and chips were as wonderful as last year (and apparently they've been voted the best in Ireland). We also managed to get to the used book store (Charlie Byrne's) and get a pint at Murphy's pub. But, sadly, we discovered that Mulligans (Pat's favourite music shop) had closed! We were so disappointed. That place had some AWESOME CDs. We did manage to find some good stuff at Powell's, but it just wasn't quite the same.
After viewing some of the buskers (some that were REALLY good) and hitting Dunnes stores so Emily could get a rain coat (we discovered that rain coats are cheap - €8, while sunscreen is NOT - €16 for a regular size bottle), we headed back south. We stopped briefly at Dunguaire castle near Kinvarra and then spent a bit more time at the Corcomroe Abbey (yes, we did finally make it there, though we had a few wrong turns as it wasn't marked well!). The Abbey itself was amazing -- the carvings were beautiful. Emily and I got fascinated with this little building (which turned out to be an old infirmary) and she climbed over the wall and into the field where it was. She actually decided to crawl INTO the building, which was totally overgrown (and got a bit of a rash on her hands from the nettles -- oops!). I went around the back and took a couple pictures of the inside, but didn't dare go inside. Of course, only after Emily went around into the field and into the building did we discover that the "cows" in the fields were not just cows, but bulls as well...and there was one REALLY BIG ONE. Oops. Luckily they didn't charge or anything!
Once we were finally done there, we got back to the cottage, and frantically put dinner on (Cornish pasties...yum!). Of course, I was running around quickly trying to do anything that I never noticed the computer cord across the ground and what did I do? Yeah that's right...I ran RIGHT INTO IT. And knocked the laptop on the ground. The laptop was just fine. But the power supply? Yeah...I fucked up the soldering job yet again, so we were only able to run it on battery power. D'oh! An easy fix, but we had to figure out what to do about backing up pictures. Luckily, with David's 80GB hard drive, a fully charged battery on the laptop, and Brandon's 60GB I-pod, we did just fine for the remainder of the trip. And it turned out to be a lot of fun getting to see pictures and videos when we got back in the states.
Day 7
When we woke up the next morning, it was FINALLY looking a bit more like Ireland. A little bit rainy, very dismal. It looked like the end of our streak of nice weather was over. This day promised to be a REALLY long day as we were heading all the way into the north of Mayo -- what should be a 2 1/2 hour trip at the very least (the way we drove, it took more like 4). We got on the road and shot straight up to a little town on the bay called Killala. By the time we got there, we had driven out of the rain and were back under blue skies and puffy white clouds. What luck! In Killala, we found a round tower, which we spent some time exploring, and then wandered over to the beach (which, like so many other times on this trip, was in low tide).
We had lunch in Killala -- more lovely fish and chips (though the cottage pie David had looked REALLY good). And then we were off to Ballycastle.
Ballycastle was our main goal for the day. Mike, one of my coworkers, has done SO much for David and I with fixing our computers, so we felt like it was something we had to do this time. His father came over to America from Ballycastle in 1929 (NOT a good year to come over obviously!) and Mike has never been back. We promised to go and take pictures of the town for him. And take them we did! David and I tromped all over town and took a TON of pictures (no doubt the locals were wondering why people were taking pictures of a town of less than 200!). We even managed to find a grave of someone who was probably a relative. It was interesting seeing the town and it was great knowing we would return with plenty of pictures to share. Overall, it was not exactly a remarkable town, but it was situated in a lovely little valley and so the area was quite picturesque.
Our next stop was the Ceidhe fields just up the road. This is an area of the country where, some time ago, it was discovered there was a whole network of stone walls and enclosures buried under the peat bog. Some of it has been excavated, but much of it has been simply marked off and let be (something we really appreciated). It was interesting seeing those areas they excavated and hearing the history of how it was discovered and what it is believed to be. This network of walls and evidence of people living there extends over several miles of bog. Someday I'm sure more will be discovered if people start to harvest the peat. But for now it's going to be left buried in time.
By the time we were done with the Ceidhe fields, it was starting to rain a bit and was about 5pm, so we decided to sadly forgo Westport and headed back to Kilfenora. After all, we couldn't miss the session we were dying to get to! The one session we really knew we wanted to join in on was at Bofey Quinn's in Corofin. It's well-known for being very friendly and welcoming. And was it ever! We were immediately welcomed in. They made a space for David and once I got my bodhran out, another man gave up his seat for me (wow!). That was really nice as I was sitting on the outskirts and dealing with some obnoxious tourist who kept leaning over me to take pictures and bumping into me while I played. I had a lovely time talking to the flute/guitar player next to me, a man named John. And an older gentleman behind me was a total sweetheart...he asked me if he could have some of my hair because "you see, I have none left." So cute! We just had a grand old time. And it got even better (um...funnier?) when the drunken French farmer showed up on the scene. He was first outside the circle of musicians with a drink in each hand (and he got Brandon and Emily to drink some of his drinks). That was pretty amusing (especially as we found out later he asked for Brandon's name, he told him, and his response was "Fuck the war in Iraq" -- um ok?). But then the piper decided to leave, which left his seat (right in the middle of the group) empty. Drunk French dude moved right in and started dancing. He took the seat and started turning around on it, imitating each musician as he came to them. And then he started joining in on songs! His rendition of the "yippey yippey yi" chorus to "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain" was HILARIOUS. As was his really off-key version of La Marseilles. Really, this is just something you HAVE to see on video. I'm thinking about possibily uploading it to youtube or something so others can share in the experience.
After the session petered off (probably mostly due to drunk French dude), we got to chat with this lovely whistler (who was reading from music -- yay!). She really enjoyed my bodhran playing and wanted me to tell the other bodhran players to play quieter. Most amusing. It was nice being the good bodhran player!
Once again, we braved the roads home late at night and immediately crawled into bed, totally exhausted.
Day 8
We awoke the next day to somewhat cloudly skies. But again, the trip was rather charmed when it came to weather. We decided to head south into Kerry this day. Our first goal was to get to Killimer, Co. Clare, so we could take the car ferry across into Kerry. We made good time to there and hopped on the ferry (we were very glad to find out this one only cost €25 roundtrip for the whole car). That was such an interesting experience. I've never been on a car ferry before, but it worked rather well. We got off of that only about a half hour later and were on our way into Kerry. By the time we got into Kerry, the clouds had cleared off and it was getting brighter again.
Our first stop was Tralee. I'm not entirely sure why David wanted to stop there, but it did work out rather well. We had a very nice lunch at a pub there, stopped at the bank, and moved on to the Dingle peninsula. Wow was I ever glad we went that way! I wasn't sure about it originally, since it was a good distance, but the drive was amazingly gorgeous. The famed Kerry mountains are just breathtakingly beautiful. We stopped a few times on the road to take pictures of the mountains and finally made it to Dingle. Dingle is a really cute picturesque town. We didn't get to do much more than get gas there and drive out past it to take a few more pictures. What we saw really just whetted our appetite for more exploring in Kerry. That very well may be the goal of our next trip.
We headed back in the hopes of making the ferry, though none of us were sure when the last one headed out. Of course, when you're feeling rushed, everything has to slow you down...like the tour bus that drove only about 50k on a 100k road. We made it back to the ferry just about 7pm and found out the ferry would leave at 7:30 -- talk about luck! We hung around there for a bit, enjoyed the nice breeze, and finally got on the ferry.
Our goal for the evening was to go into Kilfenora and see the Ceili dancing at Vaughan's. Unfortunately, the music wasn't provided by the Kilfenora ceili band, but rather by another great group called the Four Courts Ceili Band. Wow did they play fast! Pat (of the Kilfenora Ceili band) says he couldn't play that fast for that long! We were really into watching the dancers as they were fabulous. Brandon especially seemed to be totally into what they were doing. It was a nice relaxing evening of just kicking back, having something to drink, and watching dancing and listening to music. We left there around midnight and went back to the cottage to crash.
Day 9
Friday was yet another beautiful day. By this time we were really thinking the whole trip was just charmed. How else to explain so many days of nice weather? It seemed like the bad weather was heading where ever we were NOT. It went south the day we went north and north the day we went south. Just...odd. But we weren't complaining! ;-)
We decided to have another day on the Burren this day. But first we had to go check out the Kilfenora churches and the famed high cross. It would be very wrong to NOT go see that! We were lucky in that we totally missed the tourists. We got a chance to wander around in complete peace and quiet, get into the churches and see the crosses, without the tourists that showed up just as we were leaving. Brilliant timing! Charmed, I tell you. Charmed!
After Kilfenora, it was off to Yeats tower yet again (our third stop there -- once to see the tower, once to hit the restroom - something that would become a joke - and now to go into the tower). We headed straight in and had to deal with a couple other people, but they were mostly quiet and unassuming (in fact, we saw one of them at the airport the next day -- ironically, she was getting on the same flight). We did a quick wandering through the tower. Since I've been there before, I was glad no one really lingered TOO terribly long at it. It's interesting, but not totally fascinating. And today we had maps and were planning on checking out some harder to find sites on the Burren!
Our map had TONS of sites, but for some reason David and I latched onto two particular ones (Cahercommaun stone fort and the Temple Cronin). In a further ironic twist, they were rather close to each other. We were first searching for the Temple Cronin and having little luck. I had the sense it was further up the road than we had gone, but we kept driving around looking for it anyway. And lo and behold, we found the Cahercommaun stone fort. The walk to it was a 1k walk up some difficult terrain, but everyone was up for it. And it was well worth the climb to get to it. We wandered across more dangerous Burren terrain and made our way to a walkway that had been created to get around the side of the fort. There were some spectacular views up there, though we couldn't get inside the fort to look over the cliff it is situated on. To truly appreciate this fort, check out this arial view. The path takes you all the way around the outer ring (heading to the lower right side of the picture) and up above the inner ring. Just gorgeous!
After climbing back down, we again went in search of the Temple Cronin. Again...no luck. We did find a wedge tomb (marked Leaba Wedge tomb -- apparently also known as the Creevagh wedge tomb) and decided to hop out and explore (how could you pass up a wedge tomb?). We got out to it, again a grueling walk along some of the Burren, and were well rewarded by a lovely wedge tomb just out in the middle of a field. Brandon never joined us and when we got back out to him, we discovered he knew exactly where we were and how to get to the temple. Yay for his compass! So off we went and then we finally found the sign for the temple. Phew. I was happy to have found what David was looking for as well.
Of course, getting to the temple was an interesting experience. We first discovered we were doing nothing more than following the path made by a farmer's tractor. Brandon didn't think the path curved around to the left like that one did, so we ended up getting confused because the only way to go, the way it SHOULD be, was blocked off by an electric fence. But then Brandon realized there was a handle on it to remove a section of the fence so people could get through. I can't imagine many go that way! But go that way we did and we were rewarded with finding a lovely little ancient church complete with burial places of saints that people had pilgrammaged to for years. They were these sort of slab shrines that were set up in a triangular pattern. We found the one easily, but the other one was found again due to Brandon's compass and ability to tromp all over things to find it. It was just outside the stone wall, practically buried in weeds.
When we left, we left with sad hearts, realizing this was our last site for our trip. It was hard to leave that little church. Those last couple sites were lovely simply because they were SO untouched by people. They were overgrown and left to the elements. Those are my favourites sorts of things.
That evening we spent a little time cleaning up the cottage. David and I headed up to settle up with Mary and Pat and found ourselves invited in for a cup of coffee and cakes (plus I got to play with their lovely new Golden retriever, Lily). We talked a lot about music and that was great fun. There's nothing better than hanging with a member of the famed Kilfenora ceili band. He even had a first edition copy of O'Neill's book of tunes. What a neat thing to see! Both Pat and Mary were really wonderful people. Pat offered to pick us up stuff at Custy's if we needed it and ship it to us in the States. We hated to leave them, but we finally did around 9pm and then we headed to Bofey Quinn's for one last meal. By the time we got there, they were just serving pizza, but it was lovely pizza and a great least meal in Ireland. We went back to the cottage and crashed for our last night in Ireland.
Day 10
The next morning was finally looking like typical Irish weather: very rainy, very overcast. We got on the road at a decent hour and headed to Ennis, where we stopped at Custy's for the requisite CDs and books. Brandon bought some stepdancing videos -- he was REALLY into the ceili dancing. Brandon, Emily, and I bought David a Custy's t-shirt as a thank you for driving us all over Ireland. And then we headed to the airport.
For the most part, the airport was fine. The USA people added an extra layer of security which sucked. I made it just fine through the first one, but at the second (which no one was told about), some bastard Yank took my saline solution because it wasn't in the 1 quart bag. I pointed out that it says to specifically separate anything over 3oz and to NOT put it in the bag (which was verified on the website AND by two TSA agents) but he got really nasty and wouldn't let me show him the print out from the website. I'm guessing he just didn't want to look like an idiot. Um hello? TSA? LEARN YOUR OWN FUCKING RULES. I followed them and got burned by some fucking Yank bastard. Welcome back to America, eh? I hate police states.
At any rate, the flight back was uneventful. David and I were lucky enough to have an empty seat next to us, so we had more room to shove our bags underneath the seats and therefore more room to move around. Very nice! We watched a cute movie (Music & Lyrics, with Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant) and just relaxed for the longish flight. His parents picked us up and we had a nice relaxing evening in Vermont before heading home the next day (poor David drove again!).
And so...here we are...back in the states...and ready to get our one-way tickets to Ireland!
View pictures from Days 6-9 here.
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