Greetings from the town of Blarney in County Cork Ireland,
After starting out his morning we stopped to see two different
castles before leaving the town of Enniskillen. Most of the castles
in Ireland appear to be less of a fort and more of a country manor
house. As we drove to the border of the 2 Irelands we saw the Northern
Ireland police station (fort?). It was a walled compound with barbed
wire around the top and metal crash gates on the openings.
The only indication that we had that we had crossed an international
boundary was that on the Republic side, the road signs are in both
Gaelic and English. It is interesting that the distance signs are
in kilometers but the speed limit signs are in miles/hr. The roads
in the Republic are a mess. They are very narrow and very bumpy.
There is an awful lot of road construction going on.
We took the route south through Sligo, Galway, Limerick and ended
up in Blarney, several miles north of Cork. In the Sligo area we
went off the route to see a high waterfall. It was at quite a distance
from the road and everything was very muddy so we contented ourselves
with a picture from afar. We then went looking for another castle
but never found it. After getting back to the road we continued
south.
Along the way we saw flocks of swans. In one field we saw two
groups that must have included over 100. We saw pairs and smaller
groups everywhere. We also had what is considered good luck in Ireland,
we saw a rainbow. Why seeing a rainbow is considered good luck is
beyond me, it rains off and on all of the time. It is muddy and
wet everywhere and we have to run the windshield wipers to keep
the road spray off the windshield. It is easy to see why everything
is green, it’s always wet! The crocus and snowdrops are in bloom
and the catkins are very pronounced on some of the trees.
In Galway we stopped to look around and do some shopping.
Just before Limerick, we stopped to investigate Bunraddy Castle,
right on the banks of the Shannon River. The castle was built in
the mid 1400’s and was the seat of the kings O’Brien and after the
English took over the Earl of the same family. Unlike the other
castles, this one was more fortified with battlements. The castle
is filled with furniture and artwork dating from the 1600’s. We
took a self-guided tour as it was getting late. The stairways between
the floors were circular, steep, and very narrow. It is hard to
imagine how anyone could carry anything, or carry weapons on the
stairs. Around the castle are assembled cottages that have been
moved from other parts of the local area. The cottages were each
furnished and were meant to represent the types of homes that various
peoples lived in, in the 1800’s. They were set up as homes of rich
farmers to those of the very poor. No wonder so many Irishmen left
Ireland. The living conditions alone were bad, not to mention the
lack of food due to the potato famine.
As I mentioned above, we are now in Blarney. We will see the castle
tomorrow before starting for Dublin and our crossing back to Wales/England.
Marty
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