Episode 6

We passed through the town of Tipperary fairly early on a Saturday morning. There didn't appear to be a soul about. Neither of L’s guide books even mentioned the town so we didn’t stop to see any sights. Like most of the towns and cities we have visited there appears to be a great many empty shops and closed businesses. We have heard that things are beginning to pick up but it seems as if they have still a long way to go.

Around the Lough Gur area there is supposedly a great number of archaeological sites however, when it comes to visiting them very few are open to the public. Even those that it is possible to see often involve a walk through a muddy field past grazing cattle or sheep. We did see the bases of some early bronze age houses, but all we could see really were some rocks covered in lichen set out in circles or squares, not even anything to photograph really. L enjoys looking at these things but even she admitted there wasn’t much to see.

At the Grange stone circle we found a very large area enclosed by stones, and many tree trunks that had grown in amongst the stones. The farmer on whose land it sits had recently cut the grass and he could well bale it there was so much. At least when I fell of the stone after having my photo taken I had a soft landing then got into trouble because I was covered in grass clippings. The circle had a diameter of at least 50m.

Limerick was very busy when we arrived, it is one of the largest cities in Ireland outside Dublin. We spent several hours here walking around to see the sights. We didn’t go into King John’s castle, it is another Norman castle from the same era as the last two my humans have visited in as many days and they felt as if they’d seen enough of them for a few days at least. However, we did visit St Mary’s church where I got to sit on the organists stool. It is another lovely old church with at least a part of it from the 12th century. It also has 22 misericords, the only ones in Ireland. These are specially designed chairs with a ledge under the seat so that when the seat is folded up there is a ledge on which to rest one’s weary body against and arm rests where one can rests one’s elbows. They were designed to give the appearance that one was standing in the days when everyone was expected to stand during a service. Translated the name means 'mercy chair’ apparently.

We were quite amused to see that the Bishops Palace and Freemasons lodge were right next door to each other. They are both lovely stone buildings. The fast flowing Shannon River passes through the city centre. On it we saw many white swans but no cygnets.

Travelling up river we came to the town of Killaloe. The Heritage centre here was mostly devoted to the story of Brian Boru the King of the people of Munster who in the 10th century AD united all the Irish people and became their King. It was he who in 1014 repelled the Vikings at the Rock of Cashel and who only a short time later again fought the Vikings at Clontarf (now a suburb of Dublin) where it is said he won the battle (age 73) and then was killed by a Viking who was trying to escape. After that all the unity he had worked hard to bring about fell apart. There were celebration on 23rd April to commemorate 1000th anniversary of this victory and his death. My humans are just not quite sure what is being celebrated:

Upstream of Killaloe is Lough Derg. Just a few k’s north of the town we came to a little ‘beach’. People were our picnicking on the grass, there was a tiny sandy beach of dubious quality and a few people were in swimming. Hardy souls they would have been, the water was pretty chilly. There was also a life guard on duty. L noticed that quite a number of the people who had been sunbaking, and it wasn’t especially warm, were quite red with sun burn.

A thing L and I want to know, D isn’t particularly interested, is what is the difference between an Abbey, a Priory, and a Friary. L will look it up sometime if she gets the opportunity and remembers all in one go. She’s not real good on the latter.

We travelled on to the northern end of the lake to Portumna, the name means the ‘landing of the tree’; You work it out, we can’t: We saw yet another Friary, I’ve lost count of how many that is. They seem more numerous than castles and the Normans built over 1200 of those in 100 years or so. The friaries, abbeys etc, all seem to be several centuries older.

Also at Protumna we saw Portumna Castle. It’s not really a castle but a fortified mansion, Jacobean in style apparently, built around 1610 and almost completely destroyed by fire in the 19th cent. It has only partially been restored at this point and it is only being restored because it’s the only one of its kind in Ireland.

While in the area we saw a bloody great holiday cruise boats, huge great things, and just that little lake to cruise around on. My humans doubt that they would be very stable even on this lake if bad weather struck, they think a kayak would probably be more ‘seaworthy’.

Our run of a few fine days seems to have come to an end with heavy skies and slight drizzle now and again. We headed west to Ennis in County Clare to start another of the ‘back roads of Ireland’ drives. Along the way we saw the ruins of more friaries, priories, etc and several churches and a couple of sacred wells. We also passed though many sleepy little villages and saw a few farmers making silage. We have seen signs advertising a vintage silage making competition coming up soon. Not quite sure how that would proceed; perhaps cutting the pasture with scythes: They still do it that way in Russia:

In Ennis there was yet another friary to visit. This one too, is undergoing much restoration work especially of the McMahon tomb which has some beautiful carvings in an alabaster style. The tomb has disintegrated over the centuries but the carvings seem to have survived and preservation work has been done to ensure they survive a while longer. There is another very interesting stone carving in this friary too, it’s of the crucifixion, but quirky too:

Ennis was bustling with people, quite a surprise after everywhere else we’ve been on this Sunday. The narrow streets of this medieval town were jammed with traffic. The guide book mentioned the painted shop fronts but we didn’t see any, only one mural on the side of a building and it wasn’t much.

Along the Atlantic coast we stopped to view the ‘cliffs of Moher, some 7 to 8k’s of cliffs up to 300m high with a number of sea stacks just off the cliffs. Well, actually I got left in the car so that I wouldn’t fall over the cliffs never to be seen again. My humans saw thousands of nesting sea birds too, though just which ones L’s not sure. They may have been Razorbills. They didn’t see any puffins. They didn’t walk the whole length of the cliffs but they did walk quite a good way along the paths. The views were stunning. If it had been clearer they may have seen the Aran Islands.

Some way further north when we stopped to have a good look at this ‘karst’ landscape that is called the Burren, we could also see the Aran Islands through the haze. I got put down a couple of fissures called grikes, the huge flagstones are called clints. The limestone is quite difficult to walk on so L says, it is very uneven caused by the rain dissolving the limestone faster in some places than in others. The grikes are formed where the water has found a slight depression and gouged it out over time. Some of those grikes are several feet deep. There are some very pretty wildflowers that grow in the lime rich soil.

From Black point there is a great view over Galway Bay, but nothing that would really look much in a photo.

Aillwee Cave is advertised as a ‘showcase’ cave and my humans decided it could be worth a visit because after all this is a limestone plateau and the best caves are usually formed in such areas. So off they went and paid their €9 ea. They were pretty disappointed when they came back. There was very little to see and what there was wasn’t well lit. There was just one or two flow stones, one area with some curtain formations, a few straw stalactites, and a few stalagmites. The group was fairly large and they had difficulty hearing the guide as well as seeing whatever he was shinning his torch on and talking about. L says that she will definitely be telling people not to waste their money visiting these caves, they simply aren’t worth it.

There are quite a few megalithic tombs about the Burren and a few stone forts. We had a fairly close look at one of the tombs where archaeologists discovered 33 bodies, they had been placed there over hundreds of year, the most recent one was a baby 1000 years after the oldest one. This one dates from 2500BC approx. Would have takes a hell of an effort to get that slab on top.

It seems that sometime in the past this area that is now quite barren was covered in pine forest and even had bears living in it. The bears used to hibernate in the Aillwee cave, proof of that has been found; it’s when it was cleared there seems to be conflicting information about. The people at the cave say the Normans cleared it in the 12th and 13th centuries because they made charcoal from the wood, but then another information board says that prehistoric peoples cleared the landscape. Whoever did it certainly altered it forever, there isn’t a tree to be seen and some sort of scrub seems to be invading the valleys and wider grikes.

The house where the TV series ‘Father Ted’ was partly filmed was on our route. It is described in the guide book as a large grey house with bay windows, however the only place that anything like fitted the bill didn’t have bay windows, and according to my humans wasn’t worth a photo so one didn’t get taken. On the other hand some hill called Mullaghmore, that could be seen from the same place is a lovely piece of natural art and L took a short video of the whole hill. Just think, that limestone that forms the rock strata on the hill was formed on an ocean floor 350 million years ago in a tropical region. L reads all the info boards:

We made our way round the head of Galway Bay and to the city of Galway. Don’t know the population but it is supposedly the fastest growing city in Europe, must be all those Irish catholic families. Still, it did seem quite a pleasant place though I was once more left in the car while my humans went off to explore. L found the tourist info office, it was locked up tight so the chances of it opening this summer now seem remote, it being June. A mini map in the guide book is all she had:

The city centre is a pedestrian mall so that made things a little less dangerous for L who seems to like to stand in the middle of the road to take a photo, often with me in her coat. I can do without such thrills as nearly being run over.

L heaved a sigh of relief to find that Lynch’s castle is now a bank. She really wasn’t in the mood to visit yet another castle. However, this castle isn’t a Norman one, it’s from a much later period, the 1600’s, and is just a big solid house. D took some photos of the Lynch crest and other decoration on the outside of the castle. In a jewellery shop they saw a small display of the old traditional Claddagh wedding rings.

As they walked upstream along the Corrib river they saw several fisherman trying their luck. In a few weeks the spawning salmon will be heading up stream into the lough, it’s just a bit early yet for them. On the opposite side they saw the Cathedral of St Nickolas, it is relatively modern and built of limestone and Connemara marble. They also saw the Lynch window. This is reputedly the place where James Lynch, nobleman and mayor, hanged his own son, Nickolas Lynch, for murdering a Spanish guest in a fit of jealousy. Lovely family!

Not far out of the city as we travelled north along Lough Corrib we called at the Connemara Marble visitors centre. A sign proclaims this marble to be 500 million years old, that means it’s much older than that juvenile limestone of the Burren. It is very mottled with green, pink and various shades of gray. This was just a showroom so we didn’t get to see anyone working with the marble.

© Lynette Regan June 3rd 2014