Lavishness in Killarney

We're in the Loch Lein country home now -- our window looking out to a beautiful glacial lake. We have white robes, slippers and towel warmers in the bathroom. You get the picture. It's not like the tea houses in Nepal with their two foot wide 1" thick foam mattresses on the bed. I'll send photos of the stunning grounds tomorrow.

After six days on the road, Bob has got the hang of left hand drive. For some reason almost all those used to left handed driving edge off the road on the left either into hedgerows or other lanes of same direction traffic. So you see a lot of car left hand side scratches, dings and dents. You enter or go through most cities through a series of clockwise round abouts. They take fortitude. Fuel is $2.00 CAD/litre and you see "Traffic Calming" signs warning of construction ahead.

              En route to Killarney.

                A typical pub.

House that has seen better times.

And they left the curtains behind.

Today we toured the 65 room Muckross Mansion in Killarney. It's a little like Downton Abbey withsenior servants   upstairs and junior down. In the basement their is system of at least 40 bells, each with a separate tone signifying the room that needed attention. Imagine having to wait for someone to fetch you a cup of tea or serve you a biscuit. And imagine being a servant and having to know all those different rings. 

The mansion is a stunning peek into the way the wealthy lived in the mid 19th century. This was the Victorian era and women weren't educated beyond age fifteen. They spent their time doing needlework and organizing afternoon teas. 

Smallpox was rampant, leaving pock marks. To cover these, women mixed their makeup with beeswax. But when they warmed themselves in front of fireplaces, they had to place a stand with a protecting rectangle of fabric in front of their faces so the beswax wouldn't melt. Hence the expression, "Mind your beeswax."

In 1861 Queen Victoria visted the home. This was such a big deal that the home went through a six year period  of renovations  with new furniture, drapes and so forth for the two night visit. The queen had her own suite of six rooms. Usually visits such as this resulted in large rewards for the family estate from the queen. 

Unluckily for the Herberts, though, Prince Albert died two years later. The family received nothing. So they suffered  financial difficulties and had to sell the estate. It eventually wound up in the hands of Californians who gave the estate to their daughter and her husband as a wedding present. Finally in 1932 the 11,000 acre estate was given to the Irish nation. 

We're lucky to live now with our comfortable furniture and clothes, modern appliances and food when we want it.

Tomorrow we'll drive six hours around The Ring of Derry, a mountainous, lake splattered region with the highest peak in Ireland.

Kinsale, County Cork

Kinsale is an historic port and because of its protected habour was hard to capture. 

While the Wild West Atlantic is stormy and dramatic, the people who lived here even thousands of years ago paddled in and and out in dugout boats using the tides' ebb and flow to trade their wares. But they had only a window of four hours to get out and back.

The Spanish armada tried four times to gain a foothold here unsuccessfully. It's a casual touristic town with friendly people and the more we travel the more I realize that we are mostly good, hardworking  people who read and are frightened by too much bad news.

All was wetness and damp until the afternoon.

                    From this --

                        To this.

          Glimmering in the mist.

              Everthing glistening.

Even cactus wearing rubber boots.

      And hundreds of spiderwebs.

   Irish green and too wet to sit.

   Today 15 classic sports cars rolled into the hotel parking lot. The owners are members of the Europe Classic 2016 group.What a sight it was and there was Bob tossed back in time and yearning for his yellow TR3.

  Most roads are lined by hedgerows that hide rock under the bushes.

   This fellow is gathering Perwinkle Snails.

 Irish women's fashion is unusual and seems a bit dated. Men in vogue wear tight buttoned shirts, tight stove pipe pants ending at above the back of pointed toe leather shoes.

    

    Bob's birthday dinner at Fishy Fishy.

Tomorrow we leave for Killarney and then the spectacular Ring of Kerry. I hope things have cooled down in Ontario. Be well!

Rock of Cashel

We're in Kinsale, County Cork now, right at nearly the southernmost part of Ireland and I believe the place from where my maternal grandparents sailed to Quebec in the mid 1850s. I've always envied people who can trace their ancestry back generations, who have roots and know where they are from. 

Not only don't I have much information on where I'm from on either side, but after the Second World War my Dad worked for GM, establishing new dealerships across Quebec and Ontario. By the time I was twelve I'd moved twelve times. So I don't have a great sense of place.

From our room we look out to a harbour of fishing boats in the  Celtic Sea, around the corner and east of the Atlantic Ocean. 

             Kinsale harbour through the mist.

More about the strategic town of Kinsale later.

Yesterday at the Rock of Cashel

       The Round Tower

The Irish priests hid bullion and themselves in this 11th century tower (it's the real deal and the oldest standing structure in the church, castle and residence). They hid from Oliver Cromwell's generals who were systematically annihilating the Irish at every turn. 

To get inside, they climbed a rope ladder on the outside and dragged the ladder in after them. Inside there was a system of wooden ladders to access the various floors. In order to kill the priests, the generals coated the tower walls with pitch and set the tower alight. Inside, the ladders burned and the priests succumbed to smoke inhalation. How the tower survived all that is a mystery.

This opening was used to push beams through during construction.

Elaborate stone work was restored over the ages. The inside was heated only by the odd fireplace and there were no conveniences, not even a hole on the floor for use when nature called. The windows were slits covered by a membrane from a cow's bladder to keep out the elements. The priests cooked mutton in the open fireplaces. Apparently cooking mutton smells foul. 

A priest's life was better than the rest in medieval times. Life was nasty, brutish and short back then and if you were lucky or not you lived to age thirty-six with very few teeth left in your mouth. So much for any romanticised view of the Middle Ages.

Hore Abbey

As you drive into Cashel, the ruins of Hore Abbey, a Cistercian monastery, rise from a field. 

            Pastoral view from the church.

             Stones with Celtic cross.

Ireland is rich with a complicated history of struggle, fielding attacks from the English.

Kilkenny Castle

The original castle built in 1195 controlling a fording-point of the River Nore, was a symbol of Norman occupation and back in the 12th century defended the city. It's a massive spectacular building eventually owned by a wealthy, politically astute family for several hundred years. Now it is maintained by the State.

 Last evening just before dusk we looked down from a bridge over the River Nore all bundled in our warm clothing in the pouring rain. Two paddlers in a canoe whooshed under the bridge wearing shorts and tee shirts. These Irish are a hardy lot. You can see the castle in the background.

 

 A cosy bench in the castle.

After dinner, while men smoked cigars and drank brandy, women retired to the Withdrawing Room to avoid the foul air.

   Leaded glass in the castle.

Across the street from the castle is the Kilkenny Design Centre housed in the castle's former stables.

              Kilkenny Design Centre

    There are many beautiful Irish handloomed wool blankets, throws and other unique items for sale here.

  Pottery objet d'art.

An upstairs window from the inside. You can see the thickness of the walls.

       Window from the outside.

    Guinness beer kegs.

   Talbot's tower, the original medieval drum tower at the entance to the old, heavily fortified city. 

   This stone marks the place and date of the wall around the city.

Tomorrow we drive Kinsale through Cork, stopping em route at the Rock of Cashel.

See you soon.

In Kilkenny

Odd to post a photo of a car off the top for sure. But the lush green countryside, the friendly people and tidy towns and villages have been a backdrop to the struggle to master righthand drive, manual transmission and backcountry roads where Smartcars would be perfect.

We picked up our car at 6:00 am in Dublin after an all night flight, heading north for the Stone Age monuments on the Boyne River ( Brú na Bóinne in Gaelic, Ireland's second language.) The car was steamy with Bob's curses as the car stalled or my pointers that we were in the wrong lane. It's terrifying when you lose focus for a minute and come to onto what you think is the wrong side of the road. After two six hour days on narrow roads bordered by hedgerows and rock, we're in a groove.

      Newgrange

        The Passage Tomb of Newgrange

Newgrange, a UNESCO World Heritage was built 5,200 years ago (around 3,200 B.C.). So it's older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza. It's a large circular mound 85 meters in diameter and 13.5 meters high with a 19 meter stone passageway and chambers inside. The enormous boulders inside and outside are engraved with magalithic symbols that experts think were carved by people in a trancelike state.

   Hard to see the concentric circles on the large lower boulders.

Although Newgrange is called a passage tomb, Archaeologists now see the monument as an ancient temple, a place of astrological, spiritual, religious and ceremonial significance, much like our cathedrals today, a place of worship and burial for dignitaries.

It took us two hours to find our B and B the first night, not just because we'd been up 40 hours by then but because the roads aren't signed and housed not numbered. Can you imagine? A fruit market vendor said, "Why would we need names? We know where we are and who is where." Well, I thought what about the poor sods without a clue?

First night at Coolakay B and B near Enniskerry. No street number.

An Irish postbox.

        A spanking newly thatched roof.

     

       Many, many stone buildings here.

                    and vines

                   and vistas.

Now we're setting out for the Kilkenny castle built in 1195 by the Normans. More later. it's very chilly here -- so different from the steamy air at home. Be well.