Author: Greg Belcher

We touched down in Sydney just after 0615 on Friday 13 May 2016. The sky was blue and cloudless. The air was fresh with that hint of coolness that autumn offers in homage to the coming months of winter in Australia.

Our return flight from Dublin via Dubai on Emirates was uneventful. The infants sitting near us were so well behaved we didn’t even hear them until we were on approach into Sydney. We changed planes in Dubai, exchanging a Boeing 777 for an Airbus A380. The A380 is a wonder of modern aerodynamics. It is a quiet plane which Emirates have provisioned with generously wide seating and more leg room than the 777.

Customs and immigration were a breeze and we were soon on the underground platform waiting to catch the train to Central to connect with one bound for Newcastle. Changing at Hamilton we were met by Sarah and Reyne at East Maitland around 1130. Home at last.

The wrap

I collect data so that I can use it to plan for the future. I’ve done this for many years and our trip to Scotland, England and Ireland did not escape my analytical gaze. I’ve gathered together some data items here that may be of interest to you – but there are many others. 🙂

Metric	Value
Trip duration	46 days
Bed nights	43
Distance walked, total	488 km
Daily walking average	10.6 km
Distance driven in Ireland	2,770 km
Vehicle fuel economy	5.72 L/100 km
Digital photographs taken	2,108

Contrary to our current crop of inept politicians we managed to bring this project in under budget returning with a surplus. Our budget was AUD 22.5K and we underspent it by nearly 10%.

Category	Percentage
Transportation	31%
Accommodation	30%
Food & drink	26%
Entertainment	8%
Everything else	5%

Traveller	Value
Gregory	+2 kg
Christine	undisclosed

Trivia

On our three long international trips we’ve been away for periods spanning more than one full month. The total distance walked for each of these three months away is almost identical…

Month	Where	Distance
Apr 2012	England, France, Belgium & Switzerland	353 km
May 2014	Germany, Austria & Italy	352 km
Apr 2016	Scotland, England & Ireland	352 km

Catchy Irish business names

• Curl up and Dye
• Change of a Dress

Spot the meme

If you’ve been following our posts, you’ll have observed some unusual aspects of those posts. The first e-mail to belcher@internode.on.net with the answer to “What was that meme?” will receive a very nice prize and one worthy of your review of our posts in case you missed it. Go on – have a go!

Charlotte

Charlotte is the name of the Raspberry Pi micro-computer responsible for hosting this blog. It sits on the desk in my study at home and is connected to the internet via the house Wi-Fi system. I’ve shown it alongside some playing cards and Sarah’s iPhone 4 for size comparison. The lime green outline has been added for emphasis – it is not there normally. 🙂

Goodbye, so long and thanks for all the fish.

Greg and Chris Belcher.

Our visit to Parke’s Castle resulted from a decision to make the most of our last day in Ireland and take an indirect path leading to Dublin Airport in the early evening. So we headed for Sligo, a coastal seaport and a mere 20km (approx) from the border with Northern Ireland. With a population of approximately 20,000 in 2014 it is the largest urban centre in the northwest of Ireland.

Rising three storeys tall, on the banks of Lough Gill, Parke’s Castle is a plantation era castle. In 1610 Robert Parke completed his fortified manor house on the site of an earlier fifteenth-century O’Rourke castle. He kept the walls of the original bawn – a spacious pentagonal defensive area – and demolished the O’Rourke tower house in the centre. The stones of O’Rourke’s tower were used to build the three-storey manor on the eastern side, eventually adorned with mullioned windows and diamond-shaped chimneys.

We left Parke’s Castle around 2pm and made our way back to Dublin arriving at the airport around 7pm as planned. Our flight is scheduled to depart at 10:25pm.

So here I am, sitting in the vacant chairs out the front of the closed Burger King franchise in the deserted food court, putting down my final thoughts before closing the laptop and boarding our flight for the long journey home.

It is with mixed feelings we leave Ireland; happy to be going home to our families and our normal lives but sad to leave such a wonderful and beautiful place and the people who live here.

Our trip to Scotland, England and Ireland has been long and at times exhausting, but mostly it has been magical and has given us memories to treasure for a lifetime.

We thank you for the opportunity of sharing our experiences and hope you’ve enjoyed reading our posts as much as we’ve enjoyed putting them together.

I am planning on publishing one more when I land back in Australia containing some statistics of our journey. So, until then, we love you all and look forward to seeing you soon.

Greg and Chris Belcher

 

Today’s adventure took us westward to Clifden hugging the coastline in a clockwise direction. Not quite a Ring of Kerry but the landscape was very different from other areas we’d seen in Ireland with the land seemingly to comprise of large rocks and weather worn boulders with small patches of soil in between.

We visited Costelloe, Lettermullan, Carna before stopping at an arts and crafts village at Roundstone for some refreshments and souvenirs.

I’ve included the pictures of peat above and below as this is still used as a source of fuel in Ireland. When we were in Waterford, I had rememebred a number of houses near our accomodation continually blowing a dark and foul smelling smoke from their chimney stacks. I hadn’t considered they might have been anything other than pet crematoriums at the time but yesterday during our visit the Kylemore Abbey, peat was being burnt in the head gardener’s cottage and it was blowing black smoke and it smelt. Mystery solved!

From Roundstone we contined onto Clifden via Ballyconneely. The views of the Atlantic Ocean from the headland high above Clifden were impressive but don’t present very well on a scrunchy blog post!

We returned to Galway for our last night in Ireland having seen another aspect of Ireland’s rugged yet beautiful west coast.

Today was magical in a way that was quite unexpected. We decided to visit a small village called Cong, about 40km NNW of Galway, on the basis of a suggestion from Jan Healy (Michael Healy’s wife; both Michael and Jan are retired school teachers and active in St. Joseph’s Parish community in East Maitland). Jan and Michael’s daughter was married in Cong and Jan had reported that it was a beautiful village and worth a look.

We did and it is! Cong is situated on an island formed by a number of streams that surround it on all sides. A ruined medieval abbey, Cong Abbey, where Rory O’Connor, the last High King of Ireland, spent his last years is located a stone’s throw from the main street. It also is the origin of a piece of Celtic art in the form of a metal cross shrine called the Cross of Cong. The ‘Cross of Cong’ is now held in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin.

Cong is also the home of Ashford Castle, a luxury hotel, which was converted from a Victorian faux lakeside castle, built by the Guinness family. Ashford Castle is a tourist attraction in its own right but this was as far as we could get without being paid guests!

Cong was the filming location for John Ford’s 1952 Oscar-winning film, The Quiet Man, featuring John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara and Barry Fitzgerald. Much of the movie was filmed on the grounds of Ashford Castle. The town and castle area remain little changed since 1952, and Cong’s connection with the movie make it a tourist attraction. Across the street from the tourist information centre is a life-size bronze statue of John Wayne carrying Maureen O’Hara in a bride like fashion – very romantic.

Apparently Cong was also the home of Sir William Wilde, historian and father to prominent playwright, novelist, poet, short story writer and butt of numerous Monty Python comedy sketches, Oscar Wilde. 🙂

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From Cong we continued west towards the Connemara National Park in search of Kylemore Abbey.

Kylemore Castle was built as a private home for the family of Mitchell Henry, a wealthy doctor from London whose family was involved in textile manufacturing in Manchester, England. He moved to Ireland when he and his wife Margaret purchased the land around the Abbey. Construction began in 1867 and took one hundred men four years to complete. The castle covered approximately 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2) and comprised 33 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, 4 sitting rooms, a ballroom, billiard room, library, study, school room, smoking room, gun room and various offices and domestic staff residences for the butler, cook, housekeeper and other servants. Other buildings include a Gothic cathedral and family mausoleum containing the bodies of Margaret Henry, Mitchell Henry and a great grand-nephew.

The Abbey remained in Henry’s estate after he returned to England. The castle was sold to the Duke and Duchess of Manchester in 1909, who resided there for several years before being forced to sell the house and grounds because of gambling debts (the deeds to the estate being wagered in a round of cards!).

In 1920, Irish Benedictine Nuns purchased the Abbey castle and lands after they were forced to flee Ypres, Belgium during World War I. The nuns, who had been based in Ypres for several hundred years, had been bombed out of their Abbey. The nuns continued to offer education to Catholic girls, opening an international boarding school and establishing a day school for girls from the locality. The school acted as the main educator for most girls from Renvyle, Letterfrack and further afield for almost a century but it was forced to close in June 2010.

The Estate includes a large walled area dedicated to formal Victorian gardens which had fallen into ruin after the acquisition of the estate by the Duke and Duchess of Manchester in 1909. The Benedictine community commenced restoration of the gardens during the 1950’s but they weren’t opened to the public until 2000.

While the school has now closed, the Abbey remains an active Benedictine community with the nuns living and working in the upper floors of the Abbey. Some of the ground floor rooms have been made available for visitor access and restored to the state they were during the time of the Duke and Duchess of Manchester’s ownership.

We awoke this morning to much improved weather. Our accommodation in Galway was located in Salthill, a suburb directly fronting the North Atlantic Ocean via Galway Bay.

A generous esplanade stretching as far as you can see in either direction provides ample opportunity for dog walking, cycling, strolling and jogging.

We walked to the west along the promenade reaching the local ocean baths, or at least, a concrete structure with steps allowing you to climb to one of several levels where you could then plunge into the waters below. The large tidal influence along the Irish Atlantic coastline would limit this activity to high tide else you’d be buried in the sand – so feet first would be my suggestion.

We had arranged to meet another ex-Honeyweller from Australia during our visit to Galway. Ted (Stephen) Edwards worked for Honeywell (out of the Sydney office) for about four years before returning with his family to Ireland in 2014. Ted eventually purchased a house in Buncrana, County Donegal and now works as the global manager of control systems for a large private company making specialty chemical and fibre products (lycra for example).

With Aaron (his eldest son), Ted drove from Buncrana down to Galway on the Saturday, staying overnight in order to meet with us for lunch on Sunday, before driving back to Buncrana on Sunday afternoon. Google Maps reckons that’s about a nine hour round trip without traffic or rest breaks.

After lunch at a very nice seafood restaurant overlooking Galway Bay, Ted drove us out to a nearby arts and crafts village where Chris was able to purchase some hand made souvenirs. Along the way he described some of the towns where, not so long ago, all written and oral communication was in Gaelic with all other languages forbidden. Ted didn’t study Gaelic at school, choosing computer studies instead. I think he made the wiser choice.

During the months prior to our trip, I had attempted to negotiate with Ted about where and how we might meet once I found out where he lived and how far it was from any of our nearest stops along our tour of Irleand.

I’d like to think it was my sparkling personality and charming wit that might have been a factor in Ted and Aaron spending their whole weekend and several hundred Euros to visit with Chris and me and to have lunch and a few pints of Guinness. But in reality, Ted exemplifies the Irish characteristics of generosity and hospitality. It would be anathema for Ted to consider any other plan than the one he carried out. I had to wrestle his credit card out of the hands of the lady at the seafood restaurant in order to make sure I was able to at least make some small contribution to the cost of this exercise.

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After Ted and Aaron departed for the return trip, we walked into town and strolled about the narrow streets arriving at Eyre Square (Kennedy Park) before a sudden downpour trapped us for about half an hour in a shopping centre. We started for home and were within 200m of safety as the rain came tumbling down again.

A bust of US President John F. Kennedy stands in Eyre Square park on the spot from where he addressed the people of Galway on a visit in 1963. Galwegians consider this visit to be one of the most important events in the history of the city, because of the very strong connections with the United States and the fact that Kennedy was proud to proclaim his Irish ancestry. Following his visit, Galway Corporation updated and modernised the park and renamed it John F Kennedy Park, although it remains widely known as Eyre Square.

The good weather we had enjoyed in Limerick did not persist as we began our transit to Galway. The rain was driven by hard winds as we made our way up the west coast through County Clare to visit the Cliffs of Moher.

The Cliffs of Moher are Ireland’s most visited natural attraction. They stretch for 8km along the Atlantic coast of County Clare and reach 214m at their highest point at Knockardakin just north of O’Briens Tower.

O’Brien’s Tower was built in 1835 by Cornelius O’Brien, the then landowner and a man ahead of his time, believing that the development of tourism would benefit the local economy and bring the people out of poverty.

At the southern end of the cliffs stands Hags Head, a natural rocky promontory that resembles a seated woman when viewed from the north. In the ancient Gaelic language, the word Mothar means “ruined fort” and a 1st century BC fort stood where Moher tower now stands.

The top right hand corner of this image is partly obscured by the palm of my hand trying to keep the rain off the camera lens – doh!

The visitor interpretative centre has been cleverly camouflaged into the side of the hill. Photographs inside showed that the hillside was excavated for construction then back-filled to bury the structure. It looks completely as one with the environment and you almost expect to see hobbits beating rugs from windows that just appear like portholes in the grassy slope.

We continued onto Galway arriving in the late afternoon with a red hot windscreen wiper motor.

The fine weather continued on our last full day in Limerick. We set out to visit King John’s Castle, The Frank McCourt Museum and to circumnavigate the town centre via the bridges spanning the River Shannon.

King John’s Castle is a 13th-century castle located on King’s Island next to the River Shannon. Although the site dates back to 922 when vikings settled on the island, the castle itself was built on the orders of King John in 1200. It is one of the best preserved Norman castles in Europe with walls, towers and fortifications remaining.

The interpretative centre you pass through before entering the castle was very interesting with a number of interactive exhibits in addition to the usual printed material and audio-visual presentations. The assistant who sold me the tickets suggested we should be able to whizz through in about one and a half hours… and three hours later we emerged having had lengthy interactive discussions with the stonemason, the silversmith from the royal mint, and one of the guards and the sheriff who were involved in a siege that occured in 1642.

The walls of the castle were severely damaged during the 1642 siege, the first of five sieges of the city in the 17th century. The castle was occupied by Protestants fleeing the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and was besieged by an Irish Confederate force under Garret Barry. Barry had no siege artillery so he undermined the walls by digging away their foundations. Those inside surrendered just before Barry collapsed the walls. However, such was the damage done to the wall’s foundations that a section of them had to be pulled down afterward.

The castle towers provide expansive views of Limerick and the River Shannon.

As we walked the river’s edge, Chris noted that Limerick hosted the largest collection of swans she had seen on our trip. Constrained by the vigorous flow of the river, they drifted in eddies and side channels.

I was both sadddened and uplifted by our visit to the Frank McCourt Museum in the afternoon. The museum is based in Frank’s former school (Leamy House) in the Georgian Quarter of Limerick. Two upstairs rooms have been recreated in the style of living conditions described in “Angela’s Ashes” while the downstairs school room remains as it was with desks, writing slates and walls adorned with maps of the period.

Memorabilia from Frank’s childhood and adult life have been added in addition to awards and photographs. The poverty and squalid conditions were evident in the photographs of the school children, many in ragged clothes and without shoes but most all with faces that looked much older than they reasonably should have been.

This morning we caught up on our washing and this afternoon went on a walking tour hosted by Declan, a local tour guide who also works at the Hunt Museum. We walked Limerick’s streets and listened to the history of the famous and infamous, viewed the Georgian architecture and visited a number of historic sites.

We stopped briefly at Frank McCourt’s Museum but didn’t go in as it was late and we wanted to visit the Hunt Museum before it closed. Frank McCourt was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his autobiographical memoir “Angela’s Ashes” which is based on his childhood and teenage experiences growing up in Limerick.

The Shannon River is subject to tidal influence and the water flow over a man-made weir and a rock shelf is very impressive. Declan said that at a particular time during the tidal movement, a standing wave appears on the river large enough for people to surf on.

We continued onto the Hunt Museum and St. Mary’s Cathedral after our tour concluded. The Hunt Museum holds about 2,500 different artifacts, both from Ireland and abroad. The oldest pieces are from stone-age Ireland and ancient Egypt. As antique dealers and advisors to collectors, John and Gertrude Hunt acquired pieces that reflected their own interests and curiosity rather than for commercial purposes. They gifted their collection to the people of Ireland in the 1970s.

The Cathedral of Saint Mary Blessed Virgin has had a long and eventful history. It was founded in 1168 on the site of a palace donated by Donal Mor O’Brien, King of Munster. The Cathedral is used daily and is the oldest and most historic building in Limerick, pre-dating the nearby King John’s Castle.

As the focal point of Killarney National Park and the Ring of Kerry, Killarney is a pretty, but tourist orientated town. It proved to be a noisy and busy place aggrevated by the timing of our visit over a long weekend and the influx of additional tourists in need of copious amounts of liquid refreshement to lubricate their singing voices.

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And so today we moved from Killarney to Limerick via a detour around the Dingle peninsula. We started by visiting Ross Castle located only a few kilometres from the centre of Killarney.

Ross Castle sits on the edge of Killarney’s lower lake and was built by O’Donoghue Mór in the 15th century. The Castle came into the hands of the Brownes who became the Earls of Kenmare and owned an extensive portion of the lands that are now part of Killarney National Park. Ross Castle was the last stronghold in Munster to hold out against Cromwell. It was eventually taken in 1652.

As our drive around the Dingle peninsula continued, the weather closed in with gale force winds and bursts of heavy rain. We stopped at Inch Beach when we found a group of swimmers in the water apparently learning to surf. The following picture shows me leaning backwards and being supported by the onshore blowing wind.

The surfers turned out to be a group of teenagers wearing wet suits and fluorescent buoyancy vests. They emerged from the water with a glazed look that I can attribute to the effects of mild hypothermia.

We enjoyed a warm drink and shared a slice of Rocky Road at Inch Beach before continuing our drive around the Dingle peninsula. Dingle itself is a quaint fishing village and we stopped for a few photos down near the wharf but the weather was foul enough to prevent any further inquisitive activities.

A lookout near Dingle would have presented stunning views over the township and harbour but alas, the evil fog monster had breathed a mighty mist such that visibility was limited to only a few metres making for interesting driving conditions as we continued along.

We stopped for a photo at Castle Gregory – expecting to see a castle but instead finding a flat and rather uninviting beach instead. A dark storm was approaching as Chris wielded the camera and we managed to get back to the car just as the rain tumbled down again.

We arrived in Limerick late in the afternoon and having parked the car found our way to the Savoy Hotel. Chris thought she must have made a mistake with the booking as the Savoy Hotel is a five star facility in the heart of downtown Limerick and very upmarket from our previous digs. Our suite on the eighth floor overlooks the quay and waterside of the River Shannon and our bed is turned down at 5:30 pm each day with a small mint chocolate left to remind us of the grandure of the establishment.

Today we visited Muckross Estate comprising Muckross House and its associated gardens located a few kilometres from the centre of Killarney and fully contained within the larger Killarney National Park.

Muckross House is a nineteenth century Victorian mansion set against the stunning beauty of Killarney National Park. The house stands close to the shores of Muckross Lake, one of Killarney’s three lakes.

Muckross House was built for Henry Arthur Herbert and his wife, the water-colourist Mary Balfour Herbert. This was actually the fourth house that successive generations of the Herbert family had occupied at Muckross over a period of almost two hundred years. Building commenced in 1839 and was completed in 1843.

During the 1850s, the Herberts undertook extensive garden works and building renovations in preparation for a visit by Queen Victoria in August of 1861. Our tour guide said that this work took six years to plan and implement – and Queen Victoria stayed a total of two nights on the estate. Apparently, this investment was a significant contributing factor to the subsequent financial failure of the family leading to them having to sell the estate under circumstnces of ignominous bankruptcy. The anticipated royal largesse for this investment (a title) never eventuated for within a few months after Queen Victoria’s visit, her beloved consort, Prince Albert, died (on 14 December 1861) and Queen Victoria entered a long period of mourning and withdrew from many of the affairs of state – like conferring titles.

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Our accomodation in Killarney was one of a number of rooms above a pub right in the centre of Killarney town. We arrived on Sunday of the May Day long weekend. Apparently Killarney has a car rally over this long weekend every year and while we had booked far enough in advance to secure accomodation – parking was another issue. And then there were the groups of young men driving their cars through the narrow streets revving their engines and leaning out of the windows with bottles of beer seeking to attract the attention of the numerous groups of young ladies who appeared to respond with encouraging comments whenever the engine revs went over 3,000 RPM and the exhaust systems backfired. Fortunately the young men were communicating in a language completely unintelligible to us and so we smiled back and waved.

When we checked into our room we found a couple of plastic packets in the bathroom containing ear plugs. At about 3 am I was tempted to find the packets and put the ear plugs to use as the alley adjacent to our hotel had filled with loud and very drunk people all speaking their particular version of their unintelligible dialect, at the top of their voices.

And Monday night was not much better, as there was a nightclub on the other side of the alley who were having a live band. The drums started tuning at half past ten and I had buried my head in the pillow when they began in earnest an hour later. I believe double glazing has superior audio attenuation properties over single panes of glass. I’m sure it has – but it didn’t seem to make our night pass any quieter.