What did we think of it?

Ireland is a beautiful and interesting country to visit. They have 10 million visitors a year and make it easy to be a tourist. The Irish are very obliging, they drive on the same side of the road as us, and they sort of speak the same language. Except deep in the southwest where they also speak Irish Gaelic. The green countryside seems like home and the culture, slang and humour are all familiar. I guess because our own culture has so many influences from Ireland.

I had vaguely thought I would like to go to Ireland and see where my ancestors came from but it wasn’t really near the top of my ‘must do’ list. It was a brief visit there in 2015 by Barbara that focused our attention on the Emerald Isle.

Our intention was never to “do” Ireland in four days in a rental car, or ten days on a coach. Our plan was to spend a week in Dublin and five weeks walking a small part of the southwest where three peninsulas jut out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Our accommodation was mainly in B & Bs and a few times in small hotels. Accommodation was generally excellent. We could nitpick about minor things, but in reality these were trivial. Hospitality was great, everyone was very obliging and helpful. On request they made us packed lunches, drove us to the trail etc.

The food suited us very well. Much better than in Spain last year – although no vino tinto included in evening meals. We weren’t looking forward to ‘Full Irish Breakfast’ but in reality everywhere had other options. Every grocery and supermarket had a deli where they would make you fresh sandwiches, rolls etc with a large variety of fillings. Fresh fruit, drinks and all the usual stuff available in every village. Irish pubs have great meals, often breakfast and then meals from about noon until 9.00pm (then the live music starts). Unlike Spain where they have the afternoon siesta and don’t start evening meals until about 9.00pm. Soup and starters €5, mains €14, desserts €6, and you don’t have to drink. Unlike Spain there are no drinking fountains along the way and often no villages all day so you have to prepare and take food and drink with you for the day.

We thought we were reasonably fit when we left NZ but found some of the walking quite difficult. We hadn’t done enough training on the hills. A lot of the walking was on steep rugged hillsides with no trail, just following sheep tracks from sign post to sign post. We also hadn’t practiced tip toeing through rivers of cow muck or climbing over dozens of stiles each day. However we were accident, injury and illness free, except we each had a minor stomach upset early on. After 2 or 3 days we were up to speed and felt fit and strong. 20km days we did comfortably, 25kms you knew you had been for a hard walk, and the 36km day was way too much.

Overall we loved the walking and each morning couldn’t wait to get going. There were always many unexpected and interesting things we came across and a great variety of landscape from open fields, mountain passes, sandy beaches, rocky headlands, oak forests, tarmac minor roads to hedge lined farm roads. Ireland has thousands of ancient archeological sites so we often came across stone forts, standing stones, wedge tombs, stone circles, etc.

The weather was kinder to us than we thought it might have been. Just one day when it rained heavily for about four hours and a few others with occasional light showers. A few too many days with thick mist that obliterated any views and a few days when it was very humid – 98%. Mostly mild, cloudy days with little wind. Only one walking day of 25°C when we thought this is just getting too hot.

So where to next?

When you are walking quietly for hours on end you spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing where you would like to go next.

Of course a lot of the time you think, when today finishes I’m never walking another fricking inch in my life!!! Coach tours and cruises sound really, really good.

But in the cool of the morning when you are fresh and full of enthusiasm you do run through the list of walks you have heard about.

Trish and Al, the two Australians we met on the Dingle Way, walked the England Coast to Coast last year. This is 300 km from St Bee on the west coast to Robin Hood Bay on the east coast. They enjoyed it but said, and we already knew, it is a bit difficult and some navigation skills are needed as there is no sign posting. They walked the Camino Frances in 2015 and on the Dingle Way we were about the same ability as them. So that is one walk we are seriously considering.

We are still keen to go back to the Camino and one option is to cut out about 300 km in the middle over the Meseta (by getting the bus), and redoing the more interesting bits at the beginning and end. We would also do it in Autumn rather than spring to see some different colours.

There is the Great Ocean Walk in Victoria Australia. We have cycled this from Port Fairy to Anglesea (275km) and want to go back and walk it from Apollo Bay to the Twelve Apostles (100km in the reverse direction).

The Mont Blanc Circuit, Cinque Terre, The Amalfi Coast, etc. The list goes on and on but our legs probably only have two or three more years of long distance walking in them.

Some would say we saved the best till last. Some would say we have now ‘done’ Ireland. This is because on our last day here we went to the Guinness Storehouse.

This is a massive celebration of all things Guinness. A very good, high tech, interactive attraction which everyone seemed to love, even if you have no real interest in stout, beer or Guinness.

It is a story of the history, the ingredients, the process, cooperage, the transportation, the promoting and advertising of one product – Guinness. Which we now know has the colour ruby red, not black or brown.

Arthur Guinness started brewing on the present site of the factory in 1759 – he signed a 9,000 year lease. The brewery buildings used today date from only 1904 but have grown to be the largest brewery in Europe.

How Guinness is made (simplified version).

The four main ingredients are barley, hops, yeast and water.

Irish barley is prepared in three ways – malted, flaked and roasted. These are ground together to form a grist.

The grist is mixed with hot water and mashed and left to stand for an hour. Starches are turned into sugars, producing a dark, sweet wort.

Hops are added to the wort and the ingredients are boiled to very high temperatures.

The hopped wort is cooled and yeast is added. Some of the sugars are turned into alcohol. The mixture is left to ferment for 48 hours and the yeast is removed by centrifuge.

The liquid has now become a stout and is matured for 10 days before being sold to the world.

Two of the highlights were the tasting room and learning to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. It takes 119.5 seconds to pour the perfect pint. In the tasting room you got to smell the aroma of barley, hops and yeast and are then taught how to taste Guinness on the front, side and back of the tongue – from a 2 oz glass. Learning to pour was all good fun and I don’t think anyone has failed yet. You get to keep and drink the pint you have poured. So now I have a certificate to say that I have crafted the perfect pint of Guinness.

You enter the building at ground floor and move up through about six floors to the Gravity Bar at the top, which has a 360 degree view of Dublin. There are two or three cafes and bars scattered on different levels and the food is excellent. It’s in an old warehouse building but the inside has been gutted and the large circular atrium is in the shape of a giant pint of Guinness. We were there nearly four hours and were entertained for every minute.

Altogether a great place to go, even if you never touch the stuff.

We are sitting in the hotel lounge and shortly will go out to the airport. On the way home I will think about a post that summarises our adventure in Ireland and suggest where we might go next.

A day of culture in one of Europe’s most cultural cities.

First up the Book of Kells at the Old Library, Trinity College. The Book of Kells is probably Ireland’s greatest cultural treasure and is the most famous medieval manuscript in the world. It is a lavishly decorated manuscript, written in Latin, of the four Gospels of the New Testament together with some other tables and texts. It was probably created in about 800AD by monks on the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland. After attacks by Vikings on Iona the Book of Kells was moved to a monastery at Kells, county Meath, Ireland. It was sent to Dublin about 1653 to keep it safe during the Cromwellian period. In 1661 it was presented to Trinity College. There are other manuscripts of the same period at Trinity, The Book of Durrow and The Book of Armagh but these are not as lavish as The Book of Kells. The manuscript today contains 340 folios and is bound in four volumes. Two volumes are normally displayed at Trinity, one opened at a major decorated page and one at a text page with minor illustrations.

The Book of Kells is displayed on the ground floor of the Old Library, Trinity College. There is quite a large interpretive area where the history is explained and there are large brightly covered examples of pages from the manuscript along with explanation of the meaning in the illustrations. These are back lit and about 3 metres high by 1.5 metres wide and look rather like stained glass windows. There is an audio visual showing the making of a book from calf skin (vellum) and the pigments and techniques used in the text and illustrations. This is all very good. From there you move into a partly darkened room and in the middle is a glass topped steel cabinet. In the cabinet are the displayed manuscripts. Compared to the large copies seen previously the originals look small, dull and faded, probably due to the low level of artificial light. There is a scrum of people pressing around the cabinet and it is difficult to get a decent look. So it is a little bit of a let down. There is no photography allowed in any part of the Book of Kells display.

From there you go directly up to the next floor to view the Long Room of the Old Library of Trinity College. This is a wonderful space. 65 metres long, two stories high with a barrel vault ceiling. It has alcoves on two levels containing about 200,000 of Trinity College’s 6,000,000 books. Books are arranged by name of author in alphabetical order. At each alcove there is a marble bust of a writer, philosopher, statesman or religious leader. In the middle of the room is a harp, the oldest to survive in Ireland. Legend attributes it to Brain Boru, high king of Ireland (died 1014), but in fact it was made in the fifteenth century. The Long Room is still a working library with a reading room at each end and tall angled ladders to reach the highest volumes. I thought this room was an absolute joy. From there we walked around the grounds of Trinity College and that was the morning done.

In Harry Street, near Trinity College, we found the statue of one of Dublin’s favourite musical sons, Phil Lynett, of Thin Lizy. Remember ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ and ‘Whiskey in the Jar’.

We wanted to get away from the crowds and noise of Dublin so in the afternoon we did a bus tour to Malahide Castle and Gardens. Parts of the castle date back to 1175 and it is one of the oldest Norman castles in Ireland. It was the home of the Talbot family for nearly 800 years (1185 to 1975) with only a brief interlude between 1649 and 1660 when the castle and land were seized by Cromwell’s forces. The castle and grounds were eventually inherited by the seventh Baron Talbot and when he died in 1973 it passed to his sister Rose. In 1975 Rose sold the castle and grounds to the Irish State to offset crippling Inheritance Taxes. The bus tour had us at the castle for a guided tour of the castle that took 45 minutes of the allotted one hour. The tour was very good but we would rather have spent much more time in the 260 acres of gardens. The castle is full of an eclectic collection of furniture and paintings with most of it relating to many generations of the Talbot family.

We then had a sort of Groundhog Day experience. The tour took us to Howth for a 40 minute stop. This is the same village we stopped at yesterday for morning tea on the Newgrange Tour. Today was a beautiful sunny day so the village seemed a bit more attractive than yesterday. We spent the time sitting on the wharf, eating gelato and watching seals in the bay.

Not looking forward to tomorrow when we start our trek home at 10.30pm.

An early start today. Much, much earlier than we wanted. We were both awake at 4.30am. Not because it was light and bright outside and all bedrooms in Ireland have the most flimsy transparent curtains but because outside there were dozens of screeching and squawking sea gulls. When we were at the Charles Stewart 5 weeks ago we didn’t notice the birds but then we were on the main street side of the hotel. This time we face a back alley and I think the sea gulls are scrounging for food down there.

Today was a busy but most interesting day. Before leaving NZ we had booked a one day bus tour to Howth, Newgrange and The Hills of Tara. 41 of us (15 nationalities) and Eoin the driver and guide.

Howth is a seaside village and outer suburb of Dublin at the north end of Dublin Bay. It was a morning tea stop with just enough time to look at the fishing boats in the harbor but not enough time to get to an abbey ruin, a Martello Tower, an interesting church etc. For us it wasn’t of great interest as we had seen some much prettier and more interesting villages in SW Ireland. The most entertaining event was as we were about to leave in the bus, a large truck with a catch of fish parked alongside us. It was immediately swarmed over by hundreds of large gulls. The guys kept on unloading the truck but the gulls were everywhere, getting into the truck, into the crates, flying off with mouthfuls of fish. It was all a bit scary, reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie The Birds.

Next stop was Newgrange and this is probably the most awesome and most interesting place I have seen in Ireland. It is a 5,200 year old passage tomb located on a hill in the Boyne Valley. The experience is very well organized. The bus and car park are located a little way from an excellent visitor centre/café/souvenir shop. The walk is through a pergola under some trees. At one point, if you are looking, there is a glimpse through the trees of the hillside with the mound containing the tomb.  The visitor centre itself is half buried in the ground and is a series of circles with grass roofs, so it also looks like a mound. Here you buy tickets (ours were part of the tour deal) and you are organized into time slots of 15 minutes. Then there is a walk through more trees and over a bridge on the Boyne River to waiting mini buses. The buses then take you, in your time slots, about 2km up to the tomb site. There each group (about 20 people) is met by a guide and you get a talk for about 10 minutes on what Newgrange is all about – as far as they know. The guide then takes the group inside, up a 19m long, low, narrow rising passage to the central chamber. More explanation from the guide and then the lights are turned out and starting from total blackout there is a simulation of the winter solstice sun (Dec 21) entering the passage and the chamber. This very dramatic. Each group gets 10 minutes in the tomb before you file out. Unfortunately no photography allowed inside the tomb.

Newgrange was built by Stone Age (Neolithic) farmers and is called a passage tomb but is also thought to be a place of religious, ceremonial, astrological and spiritual importance. It is a mound 85 metres in diameter and 13.5 metres high. The base around the perimeter is retained by 97 large kerbstones some of which are decorated with megalithic art. Part of the perimeter is faced with white quartz stones which makes it look quite dramatic with the green of the grass over the top of the mound. A stone lined and roofed passage leads to a chamber with three alcoves. The chamber has a 6 metres high corbelled roof of diminishing diameter. In each of the alcoves is a large bowl shaped granite stone. The exterior front wall has been reconstructed from existing fallen material and there is some controversy about this.

In the wall above the entrance is an opening called a roof box. Its purpose is to allow sunlight to penetrate the chamber on the shortest days of the year, around December 21st, the winter solstice. At dawn, from December 19th to 23rd, a narrow beam of light penetrates the roof-box and reaches the floor of the chamber, gradually extending to the rear of the chamber. As the sun rises higher, the beam widens within the chamber so that the whole room becomes dramatically illuminated. This event lasts for 17 minutes, beginning around 9am. This is quite remarkable as Newgrange was built 500 years before the Great Pyramids and 1,000 years before Stone Henge.

After this we went to The Hills of Tara. This is Ireland’s most revered ancient landscape of huge symbolic importance. It looks very underwhelming being a hill with a series of grassed humps and trenches with a small standing stone, a very small passage tomb (which you can’t go into), a Celtic cross, a statue of St Patrick and a chapel converted to a visitor’s centre. Tara started as the chief pagan sanctuary and communal burial place of early Ireland, about 4,000BC. The five principal roads of Ancient Ireland converged on this place. Generation after generation added to its sacred significance. Eventually it was revered so much that the kings of Ireland’s medieval kingdoms were crowned here. Each royal kingdom is thought to have its own site here. To be crowned King of Tara was considered to be crowned king of all Ireland.

Our driver/guide gave us a long tour/history of the site but I think our minds were still at Newgrange and it was now a bit windy and cold. Archeology fatigue was starting to set in. We did learn about fairy trees. These are actually hawthorn trees and you often see them standing alone in fields. Farmers will not cut them down as that would let the fairies and their spells out. The trees are often circled with stones to further keep the spells in. People will also write wishes onto pieces of ribbon and tie them to Hawthorn trees in the hope of their wishes coming true.

A great day and for anyone visiting Ireland, in my opinion, Newgarnge is a must.