IRELAND POST #4 -- FINAL
One of the prime tourist attractions along the Atlantic coast is the “cliffs of Moher”. Our host at our b&b told us to skip the place where all the tourist busses go and go instead to a farm nearby and pay the farmer a fraction of the cost to go onto his farm and see the cliffs from a better vantage point. Ok, to be honest, we were going to skip the cliffs. But they were quite nice to see. A bit too much hype; frankly the Northern California coast is just as impressive and maybe more so. But glad we saw them. The wind was quite strong up on the top. Several people have been blown off the edge over the years and despite the warnings, we saw young couples taking selfies right on the edge. Tom kept taking videos trying to capture the next “Darwin theory” couple going over the edge! Aedjits” the call them here! Repeat with an Irish accent and you’ll get it.
We went to another walled garden which was absolutely lovely. If you get Netflix, try to search for “Monty Don”. Everyone here knows about him and loves his shows about gardens. It’s amazing how much more interesting these gardens are having seen his shows about style and landscaping.
The town of Dingle along the Dingle peninsula is charming, but crawling with mostly American tourists. The big scene here is the nightly live music in the pubs. Frankly, we’re getting too old for that. The music starts around 9:30 and goes into the wee hours. We’re exhausted by 8 having done sightseeing the whole day and having our nightly whiskey!!
There’s another peninsula south of Dingle. It’s a long drive called “the ring of Kerry”. It was quite a nice drive, albeit a bit of a nail biter due to some one way roads on the edge of the mountain pass. Not too bad if it weren’t for cars and busses trying to go in the opposite direction on the same road!
There’s another peninsula south of Dingle. It’s a long drive called “the ring of Kerry”. It was quite a nice drive, albeit a bit of a nail biter due to some one way roads on the edge of the mountain pass. Not too bad if it weren’t for cars and busses trying to go in the opposite direction on the same road!
We finally left the Atlantic coast and went a bit inland through Limerick and stopped at another castle as well as at an old monastic site. There were tour guides at both. We have found the guided tours quite excellent at all the places we’ve been to. They seem quite knowledgeable and more than happy to answer questions and have discussions with the group, usually around 8-12 people.
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The 2 nights before we drove back to Dublin, we stayed at a farmhouse near Kilkenny, in the south central part of Ireland. The arrangement was to stay in a tree house on the farm for 2 nights. We were amazed at how nice it was. Complete with shower, toilet, large bed, kitchenette, and balcony overlooking a small river full of trout! The owner is a real character, showing us all the work he’s done around the place (he’s a carpenter). He also rescues injured animals. Currently, he has several swans that he found abandoned and are now living quite happily in his pond. There are otters in the river, and he offered to let us fly fish for our breakfast. But we don’t know how to fly fish, so we reluctantly passed on his offer. The tree house is separated from the main guesthouse by about 200 feet, so nestled in the trees, we had complete privacy. A romantic place.
You can't see our tree house nestled in the woods along the path on the left.
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We reluctantly bid goodbye to our farm house hosts and our tree house. Before we left, the host gave us a tour of their home along with details of how he built it. Some other guests had arrived by then, so we had about an hour tour which was a lot of fun! Mark (the host) grabs old scraps of metal, old stone slabs, whatever he can find (pays for them) and re-purposes them to build structures on the property.
His buddy and help mate is really into gardens and is a big fan of Monty Don in the UK. He told us to stop off to see Mount Usher walled garden on our drive back to Dublin. It was voted the best garden in Ireland. It was fantastic! We wandered around for almost 3 hours through various tree forests from around the world (marked by number) amidst a river with fish and with Hydrangeas of various colors we’ve never seen before. What a treat for our last day!
His buddy and help mate is really into gardens and is a big fan of Monty Don in the UK. He told us to stop off to see Mount Usher walled garden on our drive back to Dublin. It was voted the best garden in Ireland. It was fantastic! We wandered around for almost 3 hours through various tree forests from around the world (marked by number) amidst a river with fish and with Hydrangeas of various colors we’ve never seen before. What a treat for our last day!
IMPRESSIONS:
- The country is green because it’s either just rained, about to rain, or raining! We expected that, so it didn’t “dampen” our good time. Hey, they don’t call it “the Emerald Isle” for nothing. But the last few days have been pleasantly sunny.
- We don’t like to generalize, but people here have been quite friendly, and ready to offer help even when not asked. Even at the checkout counter at grocery stores, we’ve been asked if we’ve enjoyed Ireland and where we’re from.
- Food has been quite good. We’ve not gone to gourmet restaurants, but they are here and we heard they’re excellent. Our travel style has us eating a substantial meal around 3, so by the time we check into our next B and B, we’re done for the night.
- The ancient sites are very interesting, although, after seeing a few, they become a variation on a theme: pile of rocks. So a good imagination is needed. Some, however, are better preserved than others and having several excellent tour quides at the site made them more interesting.
- The history is basically a succession of earls, fiefdoms, kings, competing clans, and all of them basically trying to protect themselves from invading Vikings or fighting amongst themselves. Then, of course, they united to fight off the Brits for several centuries, which they ultimately did in the early 1920’s, except Northern Ireland, which is still part of the UK. We had to get pounds instead of euros and all the speed signs suddenly changes to miles instead of kilometers.
- Everyone we’ve spoken to about Brexit is quite worried about the impending deadline of October 31. We haven’t met anyone who likes Trump or Boris Johnson (UK prime minister). We kept our mouths shut around some Americans from Idaho and S. Carolina. They were loud and obnoxious! Enough said.
- Would we recommend traveling to Ireland? Definitely! Would we recommend driving here? Definitely NOT! But, if you want to see the countryside, small towns, some remote ancient sites, then driving is essential. There are plenty of tour services from the usual big groups to smaller van type tours that can take you to many interesting sites.
- What did we miss? Probably the biggest miss was not going to one or two of the islands and spending some time there. Even had we planned to do that, the weather at the time we were nearby was really windy and raining, so the islands would have been a tough experience.
