PapaMarshall

Day 7 – 9/1 – Kerry/Kinsale

First an interesting bit.

When we arrived in our room the other day we were greeted with a most unusual treat:

Yes, that’s a real apple. I assume, though we haven’t tried it, that if we were to eat the apple a new one would magically appear in its place. We’ll have to try that.

Now the good stuff:

Today is a HUGE picture day.

Following a hearty and nutritious breakfast

We boarded the bus and headed for our first stop: Killarney.  There we took a few minutes to raid the shops and coffee stands (or in my case sleep) before we were joined by Diedre (our guide for the day) and we headed off for the Ring of Kerry. There are other ring roads on other peninsulas in southwest Ireland but this is the one our tour takes, so there you have it.

Along the way we saw spectacular scenery

Misty islands

Ancient structures

Standing stones aligned east to west
Ancient ring fort – used to protect cattle during Viking raids
Stone walls dividing fields (see yesterday’s post about British efforts to make life difficult for the Irish.)

Tasty wild flora

These aren’t ripe. We ate the ripe ones.

Traffic jams

Misty mountains

High mountain lakes

Interesting people

If you look closely (or blow this up to the point that you can’t see clearly) this is a guy out in a bog cutting peat.

 

We were one of maybe 8 tour groups on the ring today.  This is big business.  At every viewpoint where we stopped to take pictures people were set up to help separate you from your money.

This is a pile of peat. Apparently you thank the digger by tossing a coin in the bucket.
What could be cuter than a dog sleeping on a burro?
Guess what the grandsons are getting for Christmas.

Along the way we stopped at Waterville for lunch.  Waterville is noteworthy because Charlie Chaplain loved the place.

Charlie’s the one on the left.

It also has a great beach

Guess what the grandsons are getting for Christmas.

Following lunch we continued on – more photo stops, more interesting sites, perhaps a short nap; arriving, eventually, at the Kinsale sheep farm.  Here we got to watch a sheep dog work a bunch of sheep.

There’s great video of this. I hope to figure out how to get it posted.

We also had a demonstration of sheep shearing.

Again there’s video to come.

Thus entertained and informed we re boarded the bus, dropped Diedre back at Killarney and headed down the road to our roadside pub for dinner.  Dinner was hearty and plentiful.  I leave you with this sample of dessert.

Tomorrow we tour Cork and then head off to Blarney castle.  No, I have no intention of kissing the stone.  I already have enough of the gift of gab.

Till then, Cheers.

6 Comments

  1. Che – several things I’ve noticed – the Irish accent replaces the th sound with a “tu” or “dh” sound so “thirty three euros” becomes “turdhy tree euros” – if you look closely at the breakfast picture you can see that the sugar comes in actual lumps (as in “one lump or two?”) rather than in cubes. – “bacon” is what we would call ham slices! – Having everyone driving on the left (which matches Northern Ireland which matches England) subtly influences other things. Such as, passing on the street and the placement of toilet flushing handles! – I hadn’t realized there was so much emigration BEFORE the famous potatoe famine but the English were actually practicing Irish genocide (under English law you couldn’t let just one son or daughter inherit the farm, you had to parcel it out between ALL your children, which meant the plots to grow enough food to feed a family got smaller and smaller so people wound up stealing and hunting in the Lord’s hunting preserves which meant transportation as a slave out to Barbados or the Virginia colonies). Last time we took a Road Scholar trip to the Canadian Maritimes so we got to see where the sailors of Halifax had “rescued” many of the bodies from the sinking of the Titanic – yesterday at Cobh (Irish has no “v” sound so it’s pronounced cove but written as cobh) we saw the last port of call for the people boarding the Titanic. – Our tour guide (Alan) has a lilting accent and a wonderful way of telling stories (but is also very understanding about letting us sleep for hours on the bus – I was surprised the trip out, around the Ring of Kerry, and back to Cork took 12 hours as I didn’t think things were all that far apart in Ireland (the whole county is a big as the state of Indiana), however we did stop along the way several times for bathrooms, beautiful vistas (where locals set up craft displays or have “jaunty carts” (horse carriage rides), and meals.

  2. Che – We’re on the fourth floor of the Cork hotel, yet just before bed last night we were startled to hear loud grubbing noises from the tu and water coming back UP the pipe into the tub. The desk clerk came up, took a look, and said it was just the tide coming in which goes back up their pipes!

  5. Che: – The sheep all forage over the hills (grazing held in common) so everyone paints their specific farm’s color on the back of their sheep when they shear them. – Irish sheep farmers are having a very hard year: used to be they could get $8 for a pelt, now only 20 cents. Also last winter was very cold and snowy so they had to buy hay to feed the sheep and now this past summer has been so hot a lot of the crops died so they’ll have to buy hay again. This is a major reason the sheep farmers welcome tourists to come to their farms for sheep dog and shearing exhibits-they also have home made sheep products for sale (lots of stuffed toy sheep, hand lotions, soap, candles, Xmas tree ornaments, etc).

  6. BTW – the Ring of Kerry (actually ALL the inlets) had little coves that the people used to smuggle black market items into the country.

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