(last) Friday in two Irelands again
I have internet again! Of course I should be using it for Job 2, which starts in earnest now, but I need to catch up and to stop feeling like I'm still in the car driving!
ETA - I started this yesterday (Sunday) of course... let's see if I can post it tonight...
ETA II - and now it's Tuesday and Job 2 madness has started. I'm in a hotel in London, waiting for bed and then meetings for the next couple of days. I'll never finish posting this holiday!
Woke up to the castle again - having had no visitations from Sabrina (or the Baron) or anyone else. Or at least not that I knew of. *g* But it was still looking very fab.
Breakfast was rather grand feeling...!
I still love a good staircase - I was in the highest tower room, so I had two sets to get up and down...
And then there was this cupboard under the stairs, which turned out to be hiding...
The Harry-Potter inspired room! How cool is this?! I almost peered into it the night before too, on my way upstairs checking out sources of potential spooky noises (various pipes could be heard hissing in various walls, and the owner had already warned me that there was a flapping sound from the roof when it was windy, which we heard when he showed me the room - it sounded impressively like footsteps on the roof!) But then the manager mentioned the HP room teh next morning, and we had to go and find it - and wow! *g*
She also recommended a stop at Loughcrew Cairns, when I said I was off to the Boyne complex, and so I did. There were more than 30 chambers across three hills, and you could go into one of them and take as many pictures as you liked (unlike at Boyne, which was more restricted).
It was high up mind you - but worth the hike!
Here's the passage looking outwards...
And then inside, apart from being an impressive chamber - such carvings! Neolithic, so they were made thousands of years ago. I was going to say "such art", but of course it might not have been - maybe it's a map, or grafitti for various clans, or... well, it could be anything, and we'll never know now, sadly....
A brief pause, because it was just around the corner and there were loos (*g*) 0 Maggie Heaney's Cottage, an old Irish cottage from early in the previous century. There's a video they play that tells of the current owner remembering the very first tourist to Loughcrew - a gentleman who stopped at the cottage and asked to use the public conveniences. Not only were there no public conveniences, but there were no "conveniences" at all - the locals just went out into the fields! So Maggie found him a bucket, because she felt she had a duty to provide something...!
Next stop - Newgrange/Knowth, the two most famous mounds in the Bru na Boinne complex (and really it's only Newgrange that's famous). Now - I'd a particular reason for wanting to visit, which is that my second ever excavation was at Knowth, and when I worked it out, it was actually thirty years ago (when did that happen?!) and possibly even to the week, because I'm fairly sure it was in June! So I was very curious to see what they'd made of the place since the digging finished.
One thing both has and hasn't changed - see the chap with the mower on top of the small mound? Well, my first job when I got to Knowth was to rake up the mown hay from on top of the small mounds (we were never entirely convinced that we should have been doing it, but the reason given was "fire hazard"). There I was, trowel all ready, and I was raking grass! These days, they apparently hire someone with a mower-on-a-rope!
I remember walking up and down an exposed entrance passage, which had spiral neolithic carvings along it - I couldn't see where that might have been now. It was scattered with early Irish Christian teeth though, so many that they weren't bothering to collect or bag them at the time! Now you can go just inside the mound, to a sort of display room, but they've also left views down a couple of internal tunnels, which I never saw way back when.
I don't remember these curb stones like this either, or being told about them (which could just be my memory, of course) - they go all around the main mound.
Some have very cool carvings...
One of the main differences between Knowth and Newgrange was in the interpretation of their original appearance. Geoge Eogan, who excavated Knowth as his life's work, found the same scattered quartz and granite marbles, but thought they might have been offerings at the mound, and so left them in situ.
The chap who excavated Newgrange, however, thought they might have been used as a fronting wall on the Newgrange mound, and so had them put "back" up on the side of the mound. I went to see Newgrange next... *g*
It does make Newgrange look very impressive - here's the entry. You're sadly not allowed to take photos inside (for practical reasons apparently - the time it takes when they're trying to get such a huge number of tourists through) but again the art was very impressive. They also showed us how the midwinter light was designed to shine through into the chamber, and told us about the lottery for tickets to see the real thing (or not, if it's cloudy!)
The art at Newgrange was rather impressive too...
...I wonder what it all meant!
It's all in the Boyne valley, which is lovely in itself. Blackbirds singing away...
...and there were great shining silver fish leaping out of the Boyne River (okay, not in the photo, but just a moment before I took the picture. I swear, it was this big... *g*)
And finally, south to Dublin for the night, where I had a quick wander down O'Connell Street, and then a bite to eat at the Old Music Shop restaurant (I liked the name, and the food was good!)
Back to the YHA, to sleep the sleep of the fairly-tired - beds in Ireland are on the hard side, I find!
ETA - I started this yesterday (Sunday) of course... let's see if I can post it tonight...
ETA II - and now it's Tuesday and Job 2 madness has started. I'm in a hotel in London, waiting for bed and then meetings for the next couple of days. I'll never finish posting this holiday!
Woke up to the castle again - having had no visitations from Sabrina (or the Baron) or anyone else. Or at least not that I knew of. *g* But it was still looking very fab.
Breakfast was rather grand feeling...!
I still love a good staircase - I was in the highest tower room, so I had two sets to get up and down...
And then there was this cupboard under the stairs, which turned out to be hiding...
The Harry-Potter inspired room! How cool is this?! I almost peered into it the night before too, on my way upstairs checking out sources of potential spooky noises (various pipes could be heard hissing in various walls, and the owner had already warned me that there was a flapping sound from the roof when it was windy, which we heard when he showed me the room - it sounded impressively like footsteps on the roof!) But then the manager mentioned the HP room teh next morning, and we had to go and find it - and wow! *g*
She also recommended a stop at Loughcrew Cairns, when I said I was off to the Boyne complex, and so I did. There were more than 30 chambers across three hills, and you could go into one of them and take as many pictures as you liked (unlike at Boyne, which was more restricted).
It was high up mind you - but worth the hike!
Here's the passage looking outwards...
And then inside, apart from being an impressive chamber - such carvings! Neolithic, so they were made thousands of years ago. I was going to say "such art", but of course it might not have been - maybe it's a map, or grafitti for various clans, or... well, it could be anything, and we'll never know now, sadly....
A brief pause, because it was just around the corner and there were loos (*g*) 0 Maggie Heaney's Cottage, an old Irish cottage from early in the previous century. There's a video they play that tells of the current owner remembering the very first tourist to Loughcrew - a gentleman who stopped at the cottage and asked to use the public conveniences. Not only were there no public conveniences, but there were no "conveniences" at all - the locals just went out into the fields! So Maggie found him a bucket, because she felt she had a duty to provide something...!
Next stop - Newgrange/Knowth, the two most famous mounds in the Bru na Boinne complex (and really it's only Newgrange that's famous). Now - I'd a particular reason for wanting to visit, which is that my second ever excavation was at Knowth, and when I worked it out, it was actually thirty years ago (when did that happen?!) and possibly even to the week, because I'm fairly sure it was in June! So I was very curious to see what they'd made of the place since the digging finished.
One thing both has and hasn't changed - see the chap with the mower on top of the small mound? Well, my first job when I got to Knowth was to rake up the mown hay from on top of the small mounds (we were never entirely convinced that we should have been doing it, but the reason given was "fire hazard"). There I was, trowel all ready, and I was raking grass! These days, they apparently hire someone with a mower-on-a-rope!
I remember walking up and down an exposed entrance passage, which had spiral neolithic carvings along it - I couldn't see where that might have been now. It was scattered with early Irish Christian teeth though, so many that they weren't bothering to collect or bag them at the time! Now you can go just inside the mound, to a sort of display room, but they've also left views down a couple of internal tunnels, which I never saw way back when.
I don't remember these curb stones like this either, or being told about them (which could just be my memory, of course) - they go all around the main mound.
Some have very cool carvings...
One of the main differences between Knowth and Newgrange was in the interpretation of their original appearance. Geoge Eogan, who excavated Knowth as his life's work, found the same scattered quartz and granite marbles, but thought they might have been offerings at the mound, and so left them in situ.
The chap who excavated Newgrange, however, thought they might have been used as a fronting wall on the Newgrange mound, and so had them put "back" up on the side of the mound. I went to see Newgrange next... *g*
It does make Newgrange look very impressive - here's the entry. You're sadly not allowed to take photos inside (for practical reasons apparently - the time it takes when they're trying to get such a huge number of tourists through) but again the art was very impressive. They also showed us how the midwinter light was designed to shine through into the chamber, and told us about the lottery for tickets to see the real thing (or not, if it's cloudy!)
The art at Newgrange was rather impressive too...
...I wonder what it all meant!
It's all in the Boyne valley, which is lovely in itself. Blackbirds singing away...
...and there were great shining silver fish leaping out of the Boyne River (okay, not in the photo, but just a moment before I took the picture. I swear, it was this big... *g*)
And finally, south to Dublin for the night, where I had a quick wander down O'Connell Street, and then a bite to eat at the Old Music Shop restaurant (I liked the name, and the food was good!)
Back to the YHA, to sleep the sleep of the fairly-tired - beds in Ireland are on the hard side, I find!