Author: Greg Belcher

“The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R Tolkien contains a poem with the line;

Today, with due homage to the words of Tolkien and faith in our trusty GPS, we travelled The Ring of Kerry, a circular tourist route in County Kerry, south-western Ireland. Starting from Killarney it follows clockwise the N71 to Kenmare, then the N70 around the Iveragh Peninsula to Killorglin – passing through Sneem, Waterville, Cahersiveen, and Glenbeigh – before returning to Killarney via the N72. The total route is almost 180 km.

The Ring is a popular day trip and numerous bus companies offer circuits during the summer months. As the narrow roads make it difficult for tour coaches to pass, all tour buses run in an anti-clockwise direction, traveling via Killorglin first. There are many travel blogs suggesting that car drivers should travel in the opposite direction, going first to Kenmare to avoid delays caused by tour buses. Others advise traveling anti-clockwise to avoid having to pass the buses. We decided to travel anti-clockwise and didn’t have any difficulty with the three buses we encountered during the day.

We did however, have difficulty with a tractor towing a low-loader carrying a bulldozer. We were going up the incline and he was coming down. The tractor had reversed up a little to let the car in front pass but then decided he didn’t want to let me through and advanced causing me to try to reverse my car into the embankment on the right hand side of the road to create enough room for him to pass. This I did, but as he proceeded to pass me he stopped (thankfully) realizing that he wasn’t going to make it past me without rearranging the paintwork and metallic exterior on the left side of our car. And then we just sort of sat there. He couldn’t go forward and wouldn’t go backwards and I felt I was as close to the embankment as I could be. As the stalemate proceeded, the tractor driver proffered various words of encouragment (with vigour) and so prompted, I buried the car further into the embankment hoping that it was only soil beneath the grassy covering and not rocks. Having provided a further few additional centimetres of width, the tractor with the bulldozer slowly passed by. A hundred metres up the road I was able to pull over to inspect the car – expecting to see a new set of GT stripes down the left hand side to match the new bumps and scratches on the right hand side. I had visions of our insurance waiver flying away, off into the wild blue yonder. But fortune favours the brave and we emerged with no noticable damage to the car. We did, however, have elevated heart rates for the next ten minutes though.

Our transit of the Ring of Kerry otherwise proceeded without issue. We stopped for a cup of tea and a slice of cake at the island of Valentia enjoying some welcome sunshine and a pause from the wind.

Today we moved from Cork to Killarney, travelling along the N71, a road that hugs the coastline as it moves around the south-west corner of Ireland.

Somewhere around a place called Bonane, our trusty TomTom GPS directed me to leave the tarred two lane road and proceed onto a path that looked a little more off the beaten track than the earlier sections of N71 had. As the GPS had not failed me so far, and following a quick check to see how many of the eight or nine normally “visible” GPS satellites were being received, we continued as directed.

The road became narrower as it climbed up into the mist. Visibility was reduced to only a few metres. The road turned into two tracks in the grass with rocky outcrops adjacent on the right while the left hand side was not visible as it was shrouded in cloud – which was probably a good thing as I expect there was a drop off which would have made Christine very uncomfortable. The car never made it out of first gear as the incline was steep and my speed was cautious. On a number of occasions, it looked like we might have reached the peak which was a scary thing as, like being on the front of a roller coaster, you have no view of what’s ahead as you crest the top of the climb. We met one oncoming vehicle and I reversed till I was able to edge off the road among the rocks enough to let the other car go by. Fortunately, we only passed one vehicle along this path. Occasionally, shadowy movements in the mist reminded me that there were likely sheep (or creatures from the Jurassic period) lurking about.

Eventually we reached the peak of this route where the fog was not as thick and discovered a plaque naming this location as Priest’s Leap. The track down the other side was not as exciting as it had been on the way up with the gradual clearing of the mist until we reached the base of the valley.

We eventually rejoined the actual N71 and made it to Killarney without any further interesting deviations.

I expect the GPS had directed me along this goat track because it thought I needed some excitement. I know it’s routing algorithm is currently set to fastest, but I’m not convinced this path would have met that criteria.

This morning we walked from Ballycotton village (about 40 km east of Cork) to Ballyandreen beach along a cliff track where you are flanked by meadows on one side and the ocean on the other. The walk extends over eight km on a foot worn track along the cliff face with stunning views and passes Ballytrasna beach. There are many stiles to cross on the route most of which were designed for very thin aliens from another planet.

Having reached Ballyandreen we looked for a cafe so that we might make use of the bathroom only to discover that the nearest cafe was back in Ballycotton.

And so we headed back to Ballycotton . . .

As luck would have it, we were able to locate suitable toilet facilites along the way and so arrived at Ballycotton village refreshed and ready for a hearty lunch. 🙂

During our first, self directed, international trip in 2009 we traversed the Cinque Terre along the west coast of Italy. The five small towns nestled along the edge of the Ligurian Sea with its translucent blue water were spectacular but the path between them could take a few lessons from the Irish. Today we walked a well worn path, free of charge and without impediments, maintained with steps where necessary, and fences to keep the cattle and sheep away from the tourists (or maybe it’s the other way around). In Italy one of the paths was closed and the others were little more than goat tracks AND you had to pay for the privilege of not being able to traverse the whole path. The leprechaun folk get my vote.

We experienced all four seasons in Cork today – with only minutes between bursts of sunshine, rain falling as sleet, grey overcast clouds and bright blue skies.

We walked the centre of Cork visiting the Gaol, St. Anne’s and St. Mary’s Churches on the north side of the River Lee.

We climbed the bell tower of St. Anne’s Church to capture views across Cork to the hills beyond in all directions. Along the way to the top we were able make “music” by pulling on the bell ringer cords following number sequences printed on laminated sheets.

After lunch we crossed onto the south side of the river to visit Red Abbey, Elizabeth Fort, St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral and finishing at the University College Cork.

A fire destroyed much of Red Abbey’s structure in 1799. All that remains today of the structure is the bell tower of the abbey’s church.

The original Elizabeth Fort was built in 1601 of timber and earth but within a few years was pulled down by the citizens of Cork fearing that the fort would be used against them by James I during the Tudor conquest of Ireland. It was rebuilt in its current stone and star configuration from 1624 to 1626.

 

St. Fin Barre is Cork’s Anglican Cathedral situated in the centre of the city. Consecrated in 1870, the Cathedral lies on a site where Christian worship has been offered since the seventh century. You can see St. Fin Barre in the image taken from St. Anne’s Church bell tower (above).

We finished our walking tour of Cork strolling through the grounds of University College Cork. There was a pleasant mix of old and new with prefect lawn quadrangles, colourful flower beds and vine covered buildings.

Today we visited Blarney Castle and the coastal village of Kinsale. Blarney Castle is contained within the larger Blarney Estate along with Blarney House and many acres of maintained gardens. We climbed to the top of Blarney Castle but did not kiss the Blarney Stone. Many others did but as I’m currently carrying the “bad cold germs” it seemed like the right thing to do was not to deposit my germs on top of several million other layers of germs provided by previous kissers.

The walk around the grounds was very relaxing – as not many people bother to enjoy the grounds. They appear to be bussed in, herded to the top of the Castle to have their kiss captured by a camera and whisked back to the bus with just enough time to buy the aformentioned picture from the gift shop on the way out.

We enjoyed a fresh sandwhich overlooking Blarney’s village green before driving out to Kinsale, a lively coastal village with a busy harbour.

To finish our day we enjoyed a meal with Owen and Heather Sillett at a very nice restaurant in the centre of Cork. Owen works for Honeywell and spent about four years working for Honeywell Australia in Brisbane before relocating back to Ireland at the end of 2014. I’d worked with Owen on a number of projects in Australia and it was great to catch up over a meal. Owen and Heather both work from their home in Cobh with their three young children. Heather is a customer service representative for Apple. I was amazed at the effort she had to endure in order to complete her job application and interview for the position. Apple appears to be fastidious with their employee selection process.

Tomorrow we will be doing a walking tour of the centre of Cork and hoping the weather will be as good as it was today.

Our transit from Waterford to Cork along the coast was very pleasant with lots of sun. Along the way we visited pretty coastal villages and viewed green fingers of headland dipping gently into the ocean.

We stopped for lunch at the delightful coastal village of Cobh where St. Colman’s Cathedral contains the only church carillon in Ireland, which with 49 bells, is one of the largest carillons in the British Isles. Every 15 minutes you get to hear a few of them in action. You’d never be able to tell your Mum you forgot what time it was when you returned home late from playing at your friend’s house.

For the last few days travelling in the car, we’ve been listening to podcast episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage. Today’s podcasts were extremely interesting; “Maths of Love and Sex” and “What is Reality”. From the latter episode I learnt some new information about how the brain works;

1. Auditory processing consumes more ‘brainpower’ than visual processing.
2. Visual processing is suspended when you move your eyes or blink. This means that your eyes are only feeding data into the visual cortex for about 85% of the time.
3. Visual inputs are processed as updates to a model of the world your brain is continually creating. Your eyes are glancing about grabbing ‘images’ which are being added to this model continually.
4. Input data from the various sensory subsystems are processed at differing speeds and consequently the brain has to mash these inputs together to produce a synchronised version of reality; think lip-synching. The processing delay of converging these inputs is estimated to be about 500 ms. This means that our ‘conscious’ world is continually half a second behind the ‘real’ world.

This is not the place to describe what was discussed in the “Maths of Love and Sex” episode but suffice to say it was just as illuminating as “What is Reality”. 🙂

The sun was shining brilliantly as we drove to the nearby coastal village of Tramore. The water along the coast near Waterford is the Celtic Sea which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. It was very placid and crystal clear.

We found a number of hidden coves where bathing platforms had been fashioned using cement allowing safe access for summertime water frollicking. Blocks with mounting holes where diving boards would be fixed providing opportunity for extra fun. Later on in the day, a local tour guide assured me that the best day in summer can get to 25 degrees C. What a hardy bunch these Irish folk are!

After a walking tour of the Waterford town centre we toured the Waterford Crystal factory. I had expected a lot of the processing steps from molten glass to finished product would have been automated, but this is not the case. Every step is manual, performed by master craftsman working by hand and eye. (There actually were two automated cutting machines in use but these were for specific items that are really too large, and heavy, to be processed manually with safety.) The tour wound through the actual factory working area where you can see work proceeding in various areas – blowing, cutting, finishing, engraving, polishing, etc. The programme to be a master craftsman is upwards of eight years of on the job training. There were a couple of younger fellows but most of the workers were 20-30 year veterans.

We finished the afternoon with a visit to Reginald’s Tower which has stood proudly in various forms for a little over a 1,000 years. Waterford is the oldest city in Ireland, founded in 914 by marauding Vikings.

Today we explored the three towns of Clonmel, Cashel and Tipperary. Alas, Waterford doesn’t have an ANZAC dawn service or a cenotaph so we had to commemorate ANZAC day in our own way.

The Rock of Cashel, also known as Cashel of the Kings and St. Patrick’s rock is located at Cashel, County Tipperary. The “rock” consists of a spectacular group of medieval buildings set on an outcrop of limestone including a 12th century round tower, High Cross and Romanesque Chapel, 13th century Gothic cathedral, 15th century Castle and a restored Hall of the Vicars Choral. During our visit, scaffolding was in place to support ongoing restoration of the Cormac Chapel.

On our way back to Waterford we visited Tipperary – because you have to if you’ve come all this way. 🙂

We visited Mount Congreve Gardens during our transit from Kilkenny to Waterford. The gardens would only be open for this one day while we were nearby in Waterford so it would be today or never. The gardens consist of around seventy acres of intensively planted woodland and a four acre walled garden. The entire collection consists of over three thousand different trees and shrubs, more than two thousand Rhododendrons, six hundred Camellias, three hundred Acer cultivars, six hundred conifers, two hundred and fifty climbers and fifteen hundred herbaceous plants.

Unfortunatley I was succumbing to my usual round of mid-trip sickness and was not feeling particularly like walking among the spring blossoms.

When we arrived in Waterford I rested on the bed while Chris explored the town and went in search of a chemist. She returned several hours later with happy snaps of the water front and some medicine for me.

Kilkenny Castle dominates the High Town of Kilkenny city. It has existed in various forms for eight centuries.

It was presented to the people of Kilkenny in 1967 by Arthur, 6th Marquess of Ormonde (1893-1971) for a consideration of 50 pounds.

The Office of Public Works began significant restoration of the building in 1979 and it is mostly complete with many of the original features, fabrics and carpets having been recreated based upon designs found on record or samples found hidden beneath wall fittings. The picture gallery is the second longest hall in Ireland. (Second only to the library hall at Trinity College in Dublin where the Book of Kells is housed.)

In the afternoon we drove to Carlow and parked in a gated, secure car park. Upon our return to the car after visiting the town, I discovered I had lost the parking ticket. A passing local expressed a morbid feeling of impending wrath that I should have lost the ticket and that it would likely lead to a prison term. At least I got no response from the “press here for help” button on the ticket machine.

We retraced our steps through the town and luckily found the ticket on the floor (trampled) in the shop where we had stopped to satiate Chris’ desire for salt and vinegar chips. With some smoothing applied and sufficient Euro coins we zipped out of Carlow before the pious local returned with his posse ready to take us into custody. (Note to self – in future give Chris all important tickets for safe keeping.)