Monday
2nd April – Friday 13th April 2012
Ireland
– a packed itinerary
including a wedding, some Irish food, Guinness, to see relics, to hear live
music and to visit the west coast cliffs.
Swords, near Dublin.
Now for the wedding of our friends from Darwin.
All their friends and relatives from around the
world gathered at the same B & B in Swords.
The contingents were from Germany, Switzerland, Argentina, Ireland,
England and of course Australia. My
friend M and I have now got 5 new “sisters” – Annette’s German cousins,
all sisters and very lovely! We enjoyed four
days of cross cultural languages and common understanding…pre-wedding
frivolity, the wedding, the craic as they call it and lots of Guinness and
Irish Stew!
A highlight was experiencing the sights of
Dublin on an aqua duck, to learn about the first inhabitants there…the
Vikings! We tore around town in our
Viking hats then the aqua duck took us down the ramp (with life jackets on),
into the freezing Liffey River to see the local sights from the water - like
Bono (of U2 fame)’s recording studio, and the offices of Ireland’s Facebook.
The wedding was beautiful and the high spot
during the ceremony was being taken aback when the celebrant asked for the
wedding rings, only to see R2D2 trekking up the aisle babbling away and with
the rings on his cushioned crown – how funny and amazing!
Jimmy entertained us with a few tunes with his
old mates, including Sonny, a famous Irish singer.
We also found time to explore the chilly east
coast and climb over rugged, broken down castles and try to understand (yet
again) what it was about - religion and power - over the centuries leaders lost
sight of people’s rights and got obsessive about their own religious beliefs
and greed.
In search of something old, we headed for Newgrange,
a tomb on a hill with an underground passage where at sunrise on the Winter
Solstice a shaft of light beams into the tomb to shine on the altar and remains
of the departed. The site was found by
some farmer who was trying to plough his paddock about 300 years ago. He hit a few rocks which led to an
underground passage and there you have it!
An ancient passage about 5000 years old.
Then it was on to Kells for more
enlightenment….some Scottish monks fled from the invading Vikings to Kells
where they wrote 4 gospels of the bible in intricate and ornate gold lettering in
Latin on calf skin pages. It became
known as The Book of Kells.
The search for traditional Irish music…..
And so it was one evening that we drove into
Dublin to the hub of it all….The Temple Bar Pub…in Temple Bar – the home of
traditional Irish music. Guinness, reels
and legendary songs, the bodhran, the banjo, guitar and piano accordion…and of
course some Irish jigging - yes we were at the heart of it all!
Galway – the West Coast
Sheep……we were fascinated by the sheep…long
wool, coarse in texture, black faces, white faces. Ewes standing precariously on wind blown
cliffs, hanging over the rocks, standing in the peat bogs or clustering with their
small lambs. Lots of potential aran
jumpers.
Then on to the Cliffs of Moher which were
amazing….the cliffs are rugged like every west coast we’ve been to, wild and
windy, misty and scenic. Our takeaway
fish and chips warmed our bodies as we braced the freezing Atlantic gales.
Kylemore Abbey was deemed by the 4 of us as too
expensive to visit so it was on to Ashford Castle, where some famous actor
called Pierce Brosnan decided to have a shindig wedding…we were happy just
walking around the gardens, past the School of Falconry and around the walled
gardens. A feature to add to the whole
James Bond theme was the Aston Martin parked out front…was it Bond’s???
Then Northwest to County Donegal –
In the Emerald Isle, the words peat or turf are
synonymous with heating. The Irish dig
it up by tonne loads out of the bogs.
The Peat is stacked in piles in the bogs, to dry - fuel for the fire. We
passed countless kms of dug up turf…
What is the environmental impact in digging up
tons of this stuff????
Will the turf ever run out? Is it easily renewable? Is it environmentally friendly to burn this
stuff by the kg load every night?
Fascinating stuff none the less….
Next, on to Slieve League, the highest cliffs
in Europe. The site is far less touristy
than Moher and admission was free! The
wind was blowing again and we were chilled to our thermals, so we decided to
head for the pub in Ardara for some Guinness or Cointreau with oyster
chasers. Well we gave up on the oysters
as they were too dear, but the grog warmed us up ready for the journey back to
our B & B in Donegal.
Heading North East yet again, chasing the sun
and the beaches of cold Atlantic waters.
Marion scooped the pool with her find of our next B & B, in a little
town called Lough Iniure (Lake of the Yew).
Three days of our own food and cooking, trying out the peat briquettes,
and reading and playing the house’s great CD collection.
It was in Crolly, a mere 4 km away that I was
taken aback in “Leo’s Tavern” - the home of the family of a fav Irish band
Clannad, and my favourite female vocalist, Enya! I had no idea they were related! To see their platinum discs on show, to be
served by the brother in the family pub, to drink at the bar where impromptus
like U2, or Christy Moore just turn up for a jam session…we were all in seventh
heaven!
Have you heard of the Giant’s Causeway? Finn the giant once trekked between here and
Scotland over these giant stones.
Perfect basalt tessellations, vertical shafts forced upright zillions of
years ago…an amazing sight. Once back
after our trek around the cliffs and the wind, we agreed to warm up at the
nearby Bush Mills Whisky Distillery to sample the local mix of barley, yeast
and water. Oak casks with whisky aged up
to 21 years.
On our last day up in NW Ireland we visited Glenveagh
Castle and once again were reminded of the cruel regime of 150 odd years ago
when the famine hit 1 million Irish citizens.
This guy called Adair got rid of 240 Irish men women and children off
his land and ousted them into the colds of an Irish April. With nowhere to go and limited food, they
were out on the road wondering what to do.
Half of them ended up in Australia it’s believed, but Adair didn’t
care…he was able to get on with his dream of pulling down their houses and
building himself a grand castle – Glenveagh castle. I guess he thought it would look a little
grander without the stone cottages and impoverished families in his view. The Castle has magnificent gardens and is now
the property of the Govt after a stint as a haven for the IRA. It’s an oasis of floral grandeur amongst the
grassy hills of Ireland.
