Episode 7

We travelled around through Connemara. This is an area with a great many lakes there is nearly always one or more are in view. Lots of bogs all around and sometimes we see a heap of cut peat drying or ready for use. It is easy to see where the peat has been cut in many of the bogs. The midges seem to have emerged too, one evening we got invaded by them, little tiny beggars they are with furious appetites.

On the edge of a bog we saw a few lumps of concrete and some links of old chain, it is all that remains of the first trans Atlantic radio station that was built in Guglielmo Marconi in 1907, it employed 150 people. Just a few metres away is a big white concrete beacon, it is a marker for where Alcock and Brown crash landed their Vickers Vimy bomber biplane after the first trans Atlantic flight on 15th June 1919. L's friend Hazel, Denise’s mother, had her 2nd birthday on that day. Shortly she will be 97. Happy birthday Hazel: After over 16 hours of flying and finally reaching the Irish coast they crash landed on the edge of a bog. Ten minutes earlier and they would never have been seen again.

In the south west of this peninsula there are many small white sandy beaches with turquoise water, they look ever so pretty, just a bit less of that nasty cold wind and a bit more sunshine then L says a swim would be the thing. There is still plenty of seaweed all around too:

On an absolutely glorious day we took the ferry to Inishmore Island in the Aran Islands. The sky had very little cloud, the sea very calm, and the ferry packed like a sardine tin. It’s only a 40 minute trip across to Inishmore, the biggest of the islands, but it took 15 minutes to board and another 15 to disembark. Once there we took a mini bus tour that turned out to be quite disappointing. The driver didn’t really tell us anything and then when he did say something L couldn’t understand him. Jaunting cars, a pony and trap, are another popular way of taking tourists around but it’s not a cheap option.

L did hear that there are around 700 people living on Inishmore, the largest of the islands and around 140 on each of the two smaller islands. There are two primary schools and one secondary school on the big Island. Most of the houses are built of stone, goodness knows there is plenty of it, and thatch roofs are popular though L expects it has to be brought in. We saw some cows and some sheep but not a great deal of the land is suitable for animals or pasture. It would be a real battle just to try and grow a few vegetables.

First we visited the ruins of the 7th century church. Of course it was packed with other tourists as all the mini busses arrive here at about the same time. In such a small place there is no avoiding this unfortunately. Then we went to see the stone fort; This is either Iron or bronze age: It sits at about the highest point on the cliff edge. Originally it was probably round but much of it has fallen into the sea over the centuries so that now only about half remains. It has a diameter of around 70m. There are 4 concentric walls though the outer two are not round but had at least one right angle corner. The view on such a glorious day was lovely.

When we got back to the harbour we had a little over an hour to wait for our ferry back so we sat in the sunshine and enjoyed an ice-cream. The ferry back was equally packed but we’d got on the smaller of the two ferries and it had an open top deck with plenty of seating so we had a good seat in the sunshine. We even saw a dolphin along the way.

L has decided that fine days in Ireland are similar to wet days in Bundaberg, freaks of nature, when they get to be four or more the results can be devastating, probably more so with the wet in Bundaberg, but still four days without rain here in Ireland is nearly a drought.

More abbeys, more castles, even one castle that became an abbey and a statue of John Wayne and Maureen O’hare thrown in for good measure, all in the tipping rain; It bucketed down all day: the statue was in a place called Cong (sounds more Vietnamese that Irish), it’s where they filmed "The Quiet Man". The Ballintubber Abbey, though partially in ruins, claims to be the only one in Ireland where Mass has been celebrated regularly for nearly 800 years. L thinks she read the same thing somewhere else too.

Kylemore Abbey was built by Mitchell Henry in 1867, he was a Manchester cotton merchant of Irish descent. He sold it before his death to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester, the duke later lost it through gambling debts and whoever took it over gave or sold it to the Benedictine Nuns who moved here from Ypres in Belgium after their Convent there was destroyed during the War. The Nuns run a boarding school here until 2010. As far as L can work out the Nuns are still here, but the place is operated through some trust.

With a long walk to the Abbey and the rain tipping down I again got left in the car while my humans went off to explore. There are only five large public rooms open to visitors, along with the gothic chapel and the mausoleum. Only two of those five rooms are decorated and furnished as they would have been in Mitchell Henry’s time. With the strong wind blowing there was more of a surf on the lake that on most beaches we’ve seen in Ireland.

With the sun shining at least sometimes, everything seems to sparkle. The place is just so green, but there are so many shades of green. There is the intense green of the trees, a lighter green for the fields where the sheep and cattle graze, then the grass and mosses that grow in the bogs is another shade with a brownish tinge. The really damp areas, not bogs, where the rhododendrons are often taking over and there is thick shrubbery is a darker green. The semi barren limestone area of the burren seem to give everything a greyish hue.

Usually all the fields are divided by stone fences, or the occasional hedge, and most fields are quite small, 5 acres being a reasonable size. Where pasture is grown there are some fields around 20 acres, some perhaps larger but no great number of them. L doesn’t know how big the farms are but the Irish farmers love to drive along the roads on their massive tractors, the size you see used in broad acre farming, not really necessary for dinky little fields in Ireland. L wonders if it’s a status symbol. They certainly manage to tie up traffic on the narrow roads where the tractor is almost wider than the road. Often they are towing a very large trailer or silage making equipment. Farmers must have a thing too about living on one side of the village and having their fields on the other because it’s a favourite thing to drive through the town on your tractor. Two tractors side by side, facing opposite directions while the drivers have a chat is a common sight.

L says you never want to be in a hurry at the supermarket either. Doesn’t matter how long the queue is, the cashier and somebody will be having a lovely chat about the hair dresser’s new boy friend or the ex’s new girlfriend or whatever while the queue gets longer, and not a sole gets even mildly impatient, except of course the Aussie tourist who considers that standing in the till queue for 15 mins just for a 85c litre of milk is a little excessive. Must be an Irish thing.

Croagh Patrick, named after St. Patrick because he sat up there fasting and praying for 40 days so legend has it in the 5th century dominates the view for quite a way. L did think about doing the climb to the top, two hours the books says, but then took one look at the number of cars in the car park and decided it would be like Piccadilly circus on New Years Eve, and gave it a miss.

We did see a 15th century tower house, Carrigahowley Castle, that is in really good condition. It sited right on the shore and at one time was occupied by a Grace O’Malley who was known as the Pirate Queen. She is said to have tied her boat to her bed post overnight.

I did some relaxing on the beach at Keem Bay, that’s right out on the end of Achill Island. It’s a lovely sandy beach and in summer, which I though it already was, there is a life guard on duty here for swimmers. No life guard, so I didn’t take a dip, L would not have been pleased: what we did see were lots of brownish jelly fish with short tentacles; wonder if they give a nasty sting:

We also visited the Ballycroy National Park. As it wasn’t raining we actually got to do a walk around here. This park is all about the 'blanket bog’; that’s the bog areas of Ireland. It’s called blanket bog because it covers the landscape like a thick blanket with brownish green grasses and mosses. It is also the source of peat that is used for cooking and heating still in Ireland. This NP has 1400 hectares of protected bog but not all in one big block, there are a few different areas separated by privately owned farm land. The thickness of the bog is about 5m deep and it grows at 1mm per year. According to what D read it was all once forest but ancient people cleared the forest and it became bog. As it is about 5m deep, the clearing must have happened 5000 years ago. Must have had good axes back then:

Ciede Fields is an area on the north coast of County Mayo. Around here is quite a vast area of blanket bog that goes right to the cliff edge. Below on the tiny ledges of the cliff face fulmars, kittiwakes, and numerous other seabirds nest. It is also the area where ancient people once lived and farmed before the bog invaded their lands.

Miles of stone fences and the low stone walls of houses and possibly stock pens have been found. Small areas of what has been excavated has been left uncovered to show what has been found, much has been recovered to keep it preserved, however the vast amount of it has only been located using a hand held metal probe. This metal probe is pushed into the peat bog until it meets resistance. If that resistance is a stone it can be felt and usually heard, if it just meets more solid earth then it’s not so hard. Bamboo stakes are used to matk the depth at which the resistance was met and by this method every 100cm the archaeologists can work out the fence lines, and the outlines of buildings . To find logs in the bog, this is done in winter when there is frost on the ground. If there is a log under the bog the frost on top melts sooner that elsewhere, then the probe method is used to check the size of the log and it’s also possible to check the condition of the log using sonar or ultrasound or something, before a decision is made as to whether it should be excavated. By condition L means whether or not it is too decayed to be worth excavating.

We learnt all this when we called at the visitor centre at Ciede Fields where there is a good display detailing how all of this was discovered and how the bog probably came into being. These discoveries are under the bog meaning they were there before the bog. It seems that the removal of forest was the catalyst, slowly the plants that produce the bog took hold in conditions that were too wet for other plants and because of their denseness no oxygen can penetrate so it forms a perfect environment for preserving many things, including charcoal found in fireplaces in the ancient stone houses.

All the plants that live in the bog are specialists. Some such as the sundew and butterwort live off insects they trap, L says they need trillions more of them to eat the midges. The sphagnum moss soaks up water like a sponge, and bog cotton has a love silky white cotton head. There are some lovely little orchids too.

In this region too, there are many megalithic tombs. We visited a ‘court tomb’. It consisted of a circular section in front of three stone chambers, these would have been roofed with stone slabs. It is believed that bodies were cremated before being placed in here. Only tiny fragments of human remains have been found and that is why it’s believed that the bodies were cremated as human bone after cremation, would decompose under the bog.

While here we also learnt that last summer was a lovely fine warm one, it has been about 17 years since there had been one that nice, so we figure we’d better make the most of this trip, we’ll all die of old age before the next fine summer is due. My secretary is writing this as it tips down yet again.

© Lynette Regan June 9th 2014