the green green grass of home

 If you need pictures, stop reading now. No pictures for this post.

We all know that everyone thinks of Ireland as the emerald isle with it's rolling green hills. We are here to tell you that hills are somewhat jaundiced these days and it's not due to lack of rain. In Australia we call it canola, over here they call it rape. Settle, that's its proper name, I've been feeding rape seed to my birds for years, but I assume the politically correct police decided we couldn't have margarine made from rape. How would those ads go? That'd be a challenge even for Gruen Transfer.

So, canola/rape has a lovely yellow flower and Ireland was ablaze with it, as was France as we flew in today.

It is interesting the little idiosyncrasies that belong to each country. In France there are toilet attendants and it costs 50 Euro cents to use the facilities. Jayne forgot and walked in followed by, execuse moi, excuse moi. She then came back for money. I have all the money. Muhahahahahahaha!

The train trip from the airport to Lille was only an hour. Love these fast trains. And we travelled 1st class because I booked ages ago, but no-one, anywhere, checked to see if we had a ticket. You could see all of Europe for free, 1st class. Thinking about this for later in the trip.

The hotel is OK. Not what we would have chosen, but it is a part of the Western Front tour package. Since we got in so late we thought we eat at the hotel bar. We ordered a bottle of wine, one of two whites on offer. Sorry, out of stock, you can have the other one. We looked at the waiter, well, it's still white - and he shrugged. No, we'll have the champagne, it is our first night in France. Then we ordered dinner. Hmmm. Airline food, microwaved, but we're on the ground. Too tired and too lazy to care. It was edible, mine more so than Jayne's, and it didn't detract from the bubbles. For a nightcap I thought zambucca - sorry, never heard of it. How far away is Italy????

We have tomorrow at our leisure. That means a sleep in and a wander around Lille before hooking up with the Fanatics for our Western Front tour.

Till then ... a bientot

six months in a leaky boat (Kilkenny)

there was much contention over the title of today's blog. The references refer to the famine boat we visited. Jayne wanted, 'hot potato, hot potato', the staple diet of the Irish through the ages, but given this will be our last blog from Ireland I was opting for some unused titles we had tossed around before. 'Raindrops keep falling on my head', 'Who'll stop the rain?' but any rain references were too obvious. My favorite was 'blackbird singing in the dead of night' because at home I hate the little ferals, but here they are natives and they are everywhere. Aside from the weather and Guinness they are a constant. Anyway, I went for the leaky boat connection.

The Dunbrody
During the Irish famine of the 1840s many people left to seek a better life. For some this was voluntary, for the others who were land tenants, their landlord paid for their passage. Apparently cattle were a more profitable venture and they didn't complain.

The ship itself was one of the better ones, however, it wasn't uncommon to have up to 300 passengers in steerage. They paid around 5 pounds for the trip and had to bring their own food. Conditions were cramped, to say the least, and toilet facilities were a bucket. And that couldn't be emptied during bad weather. Get the picture? The reason it couldn't be emptied was that the hold was sealed. Not a lot of fresh air coming in and beneath steerage was where the live animals, chickens and goats lived. Ah the aroma!

They didn't spend six months in a leaky boat, it was more like two months. More than long enough for a boat that was about 33 metres in length crossing from Ireland to Canada or the United States.

The potato blight that caused the famine destroyed the main food source for everyone. A man working as a labourer would eat 4 - 6 kg of potato a day. This would be supplemented by milk. I don't know how they avoided scurvy. I guess you wouldn't need to ask the question, "what's for dinner?" because the answer would always be "hot potato, hot potato".

Kilkenny Castle
We decided to avoid Bunratty and Blarney Castles mainly because they were not quite on our itinerary and we figured most castles  would offer the same fare. King John's Castle was a bit of a disappointment, much like his reign, however Kilkenny Castle was wonderful. The sad thing for me is that they didn't allow any photography inside. I could rail against this for some time, but I won't, so, insert Brad rant here.

Like many Irish castles its origins date back to medieval times and the original castle was probably a timber construction. Down through the years this gave way to the stone castle of today, although the current design has been added to on a number of different occasions. The Butler family owned it from the 1300s through to 1967 when it was sold to the people of Kilkenny for 50 pounds.

It is another major for the Irish Department of Works. The restoration work already completed is amazing. No pictures :-(

So long, farewell ...
We shall be off to the pub shortly for dinner and a pint of Kilkenny Cream - I assume it will taste all the better for being had in its native county. Tomorrow, we pack up and fly to Paris and then catch the train the Lille. So, that will be where the next blog is created, the western front. Things will be a little quiet (get it? all quiet on the western front?) for the next couple of days until we are settled in France. We are both really looking forward to ANZAC day.

I am a rock, I am an ireland (Waterford)

that was too easy and funnier than the moher I see you ... com'on, you know it. The Rock of Cashel was today's first destination.

As we get towards two weeks in Ireland, the weather has settled into a nice pattern. It rains in the morning, we get to our destination and the sun comes out, we go inside to see a display or presentation and there are thunder storms. We head back outside and the sun comes out again or the clouds drizzle at us then leave. Sometimes the timing is out slightly, like tonight, leaving the restaurant, sad and wet. Ah well.

The Rock of Cashel
The rock is in Cashel, no surprises there, in the county of Tipperary and it was a long way ... Anyway, I thought I was going to see some special rock formation and was getting all hot, geologically speaking, and then Jayne read me the blurb. It's an abbey, a chapel, a round tower and a 15th century choral hall.

That should give you some idea of the wall and the size of the rock. It was quite spectacular, as was the weather as the thunderstorms rolled in. Given the rain and the crowds, photography was a challenge.

The other challenge was to shoot around the scaffolding. Much of Cormac's Chapel has been damaged by water seeping through through the walls and they are trying to restore frescos that have been covered over before the water removes them forever. Much of the site is covered in scaffolding. You can see it next to the tower.

Waterford
Yes, we went there for the crystal. Jayne actually wanted to go shopping! It was a fair drive from Cashel, but that gave the weather time to sort itself and it rained on us a lot of the way, so that we arrived in Waterford in beautiful sunshine.  Here was our second geological experience for the day since the crystal is made from sand, potash and lead (33% which gives Waterford its extra brilliance and weight), heated in kilns to over 1100 degrees.  They never shut the kilns down because it would take 3 weeks to heat them back up again.

We went on a tour of the Waterford factory, which was amazing. It is such a labour intensive process and jobs I would have thought would be done by computer are still done by hand, like the etching of each piece.  Even so, they still produced 47,000 pieces last year.

The dude in the picture above is hand shaping the molten crystal, and the one below is etching the pattern - from memory, no guidelines.  They are apprenticed for up to 10 years before they are judged to be master craftsmen.

To see some of the one-of pieces was incredible. They had all these beautiful creations worth thousands and thousands of dollars just sitting on benches for tourists like us to take photographs. The Celtic cross was really stunning.

And what girls' bedroom would be complete without her own Waterford crystal Cinderella carriage? No Cait, you can't have one. It's not a great picture, they haven't really bothered to set them up, as I said, they are just sitting on benches.

The staff were very relaxed about us handling most things, although we weren't supposed to touch the finished products at the end. But, on the way through you could talk to craftsmen, ask them questions, pick up pieces they had worked on. It was all very unusual, but quite fascinating.

And yes, the tour finished in the shop, and no, I'm not telling what we bought or for whom we bought it.

We have two nights left in Ireland and while we haven't managed to do everything that we thought, we have done most of it. I'll be happy to get to France because it puts an end to the two nights and move on syndrome.

signs, signs, everywhere there's signs (Dingle)

except in Ireland. They don't signpost their major attractions and they certainly don't sign post bends in the road. On some approaching corners they have written on the road, 'slow', or 'slower', or sometimes, 'very slow', but no suggested speed limit. And these warnings are somewhat adhoc. We were discussing this with one of the B&B owners and said that in Australia all corners that need to be taken below the speed limit were sign posted with a safe speed for cornering. "That's a good idea" he said, "we have a terrible number of deaths on the road." Well, no surprises there.

(For those of you who have tried to comment and failed, I have changed the settings to allow all comments, although I still need to approve prior to uploading. Love to hear from you.)

And there is not a lot of sign posting to major attractions either. I'm glad we brought the TomTom. The signs here will get you close and then through some sixth sense you are supposed to divine the way to your destination. Every road trip is interesting. So far we have managed to get to everywhere we wanted, sometimes through persistence only.

Incidentally, our TomTom has a celebrity voice, that of John Cleese. I keep waiting for him to come over all Basil Fawlty.

In other news, we have eaten traditional Irish food over the last couple of days: potato cakes, boxty and black and white pudding. We have also been drinking a lot of tea, it seems the Irish learned how to make coffee from the Americans :-(

And, we hit our highest temperature yesterday, 14 degrees. Break out the boardies and sunscreen.

The Dingle Peninsula
The peninsula is beautiful country.

The problem is that the weather was so wild this morning it washed out some of the photos. The low cloud/rain and gale force winds took the edge of the some of the beauty, particularly from the top of Conor Pass. There were lots of rolling green hills and sheep, as you would expect.

The area is also quite historic, with fortifications dating back to the 8th century. The one we saw at Dunbeg was on a cliff edge, so I'm not really sure as to its purpose. There was no way they would have been attacked from the sea. So maybe it was a retreat when the locals were restless.

It really was a beautiful drive and as the weather cleared the scenery became even more colourful. You never know what to expect in Ireland. Around one corner is a ruin from over  a thousand the years ago and the next is a statue of the crucifixion. No explanation, no plaque, it was just there on the corner of a cliff. Unusually, there was also an area nearby where I could pull over to take a photo.

The last stop before the town of Dingle was the Gallarus Oratory, a structure dating back to around 700CE. There is a great deal of speculation as to its purpose, but like the burial mounds at Newgrange it is an architectural and astronomical marvel. The rock is self supporting, inside it's dry and the window gets direct sunlight during the summer solstice and the front door during the winter solstice. Pretty clever eh?

The Torc Waterfall and Ladies View
After a beautiful drive we arrived back in Killarney in the early afternoon. We decided to give the stately home a miss and headed for the natural attractions nearby. Both were surprisingly free of charge.

The waterfall was quite pretty, mossy rocks and trees, open any calendar from Tasmania and you'll get the idea. It was also only a 5 minute walk from the road.

Standing near the entrance to the car park was on over-sized, unshaven local. He was watching us closely as we prepared to walk up to the falls. He looked like the sort who would slit our throats and leave us in the gutter, or trash the car as soon as we were out of sight. He walked over to Jayne and said, "Would you like a ride in a jaunting car?" For the uninitiated, that is a horse and cart style contraption.

The car was still there on our return and we weren't murdered, so we drove on to Ladies View which is a lookout above the area that looks back down the lakes to Killarney.

From a day that began so poorly weather-wise, we had a great day. When we returned to the B&B we heard that Killarney had been hit by hail a couple of times during the day. We continue to be blessed.

Tomorrow we head for Kilkenny.

the moher I see you, the moher I want you (Moher, Limerick, Killarney)

Sad, isn't it? That's entirely Jayne's work, a pun on Peter Allen and the cliffs of Moher.

The cliffs
We left Galway this morning in sunshine, or was it rain? Perhaps it was both at different times. We drove straight to the Cliffs of Moher. I was really hoping to see a Puffin. Because Ireland's main attractions are so well sign posted, we ended up at some bay on the coast. This allowed us to look at he cliffs from a different angle and for FREE. Nothing is free here. Oh, look, a natural attraction, that will be 6 euro each please. Seriously! Do we charge to look at the Three Sisters or Bondi Beach? No. Well maybe we should, because everyone over here is queuing up to pay. So anyway, the west coast finally lived up to it's wild reputation. I would not have been keen leaving that harbour on a boat.

After challenging the TomTom to find us another location, we drove to the Cliffs of Moher visitor centre where it cost us 9 euro admission each. We walked across the road and up the path to the cliff walk. I took lots of scenic shots, but there was nerry a Puffin to be seen. There were some sight see-ers huffin' and puffin' up the incline and that was the closest I came to a Puffin - if indeed they exist. In fact, I think that H R Puffinstuff is more real than a Puffin. They exist only on the spine of children's books. Sigh.

Jayne decided that she needed to get her money's worth and climbed the fence at the end of the path to walk along the cliff's edge outside the fenceline. Civil disobedience from such a pillar of society. I followed only to ensure she didn't fall. It's too early in the holiday to be worrying about funerals.

King John's Castle, Limerick
There once was a lady from Nantuckett,
Sorry, that is the only beginning line to a Limerick that I could remember. Can't remember how it finishes up ... something about a bucket I think.

The drive from the cliffs to Limerick was as usual. It poured, it was sunshine, there was a tractor driving slowly, there were trucks and locals driving way too fast, it rained, it was sunshine. And the sunshine held as we drove into Limerick. We found St John's Castle, eventually, and went inside. There were two audio visual presentations, one for 5 minutes and the other for 20 and while they both had a great story to tell, the production was very amateurish. Once again, Vindolanda set the benchmark for us back in 2003.

The Castle itself was interesting and King John was the bastard I always knew him to be - even if Robin Hood didn't really exist as we believed.

In looking at what the English have done to Ireland down through the years, and then you think of other countries as well (like Australia), it really makes you consider their role in world history. I think the victors have been authoring the history text books for far too long.

Killarney
We arrived late this afternoon. No rain. The B&B is fantastic - it even has a shower where you can move around without hitting your elbows! We've been to town for dinner at The Laurels, a delightful little pub. OMG  Irish serves are big. I've been restricting myself to breakfast and dinner, and even that is too much. I need to walk more and I miss my bike rides.

am I heading in the right direction?

an addendum to yesterday's Galway report.

As we were wandering down the street (in the rain) to buy a USB to store the photos on, in case of computer malfunction, a local stopped us and asked us for directions to the Council building. And Jayne was able to give him the right directions. How is that?!

And on our shopping expedition, I finally caved in and bought a beanie. I know, fashion icon that I am, it doesn't quite fit with the leather jacket and levis, but hey, if you'd been stuck out in the gale force wind and torrential rain, you'd have succumbed too. A pint of Guinness can go only so far in keeping up your spirits.

OK, so I'm no good at taking shots on iPhoto, but you didn't think I'd publish a photo like this anyway, did you?

Anyway the sun is shining this morning and we are off to hunt puffins.

a winter's day, in a deep and dark ... (Galway)

No, not December, but April, and no it's not winter, but spring. The rain continues, in squalls, then out comes the sun, then the rain comes back. If you don't like Ireland's weather, wait 5 minutes, it'll be different then. Although, as one young shop assistant said today, "it's the west coast, we're the problem."

Clonmacnoise
We were woken by blistering sunlight, and while discussing plans for the day the weather changed and the rain blew in. By the time we had breakfast that scenario had repeated itself a couple of times. We set off for Clonmacnoise, about 80 km from Galway. The weather was consistent in its inconsistency. The traffic was as mad as Irish traffic is, trucks going way too fast on tiny roads, people parked wherever they feel the need. It was just another day in Ireland.

In between the squalls of rain, we managed to share our time between the indoors displays and the outdoors. The 'movie' display was interesting, but in comparison to computer generated images we had seen at Vindolanda in England in 2003, it was a little amateurish. But, it still provided a perspective for the ruins we were yet to see outside.

It was quite an amazing history and I won't try to repeat it here, but it makes you put the 'white' habitation of Australia into perspective. It's a pity we don't have more respect for our indigenous brothers and their history, it spans far beyond what we have seen here.

Galway
No need for the heading really. We came back to town, went shopping for a few things, went to a pub and had a Guinness - purely to shelter from the rain. The dinner menu, was, um, yeah, so we went looking for a restaurant. The rain and cold wind continued, so we walked into the first restaurant we saw. Italian. All good. Nice dinner. The rain eased, so we walked home.

Jayne is planning tomorrow's drive to Killarney as I finish writing this. It is a fair drive, but we can afford to avoid the coast because we've seen a few cliffs, and head straight down the motorway of we sleep in. No chance, it'll be the scenic route - we have to go to the Cliffs of Mohr and see the puffins...