Tales of Ireland, Part I

At last, here is our story of our last European adventure, at least for a little while...

A friend of mine at work had graciously offered up her family home for us to stay in, and so we headed out to Schull on April 15th. Schull is nicely remote, located west of Ballydehob and Skibbereen, and the place was wonderful. There's a lighthouse about seven or eight miles out, which you can see from the house on clearer days, and the house looks out south across a few islands. There's a picture of the view in the slideshow below.

Our intent was to take things a little easier than our other European trips, and to just kick back and relax a bit, rather than having a full agenda for each day. It worked reasonably well - we still did a lot, but at the same time, it was a much less hectic pace than our other trips. It was for me, at least, a rediscovery of Ireland - having been to Dublin several times now, I had grown disenchanted with the isle, and I enjoyed the freedom to wander in smaller towns and villages and avoid the general tourism trails, although we did a few of those as well. And it was time well spent - we enjoyed seeing a different side of things than you would in Dublin, and the southwest coast is definitely beautiful, with a blend of rugged terrain and sea.

We poked our way out to Mizen Head, the most southwesterly point of Ireland, our first full day there, and meandered through the signalling post there. Mich and I had been to Mizen Head when we first went to Ireland, but we honestly didn't remember it looking quite like it does now. We're trying to find our old photos to make sure we were in the same place. We ended up spending a few hours there, and ate lunch at the little cafe. Dalton and Maggie fed a seagull that the cafe workers have named "Samson", who comes up and pecks at the back door for his food every day. I think, although I'm not certain, that this is also where Mich took her "No Line on the Horizon" picture. On the way back, we stopped off at Sandycove Beach, which is a genuine sandy beach there in southwest Ireland, and the kids played in the sand for a bit. It was a bit cool, though, and as I hadn't brought a jacket, we had to leave after only a little while.



One of the things that Mich and I did the first time around was to go around the Ring of Kerry. The Ring is supposed to be one of Ireland's most picturesque routes, and goes around the Kerry peninsula (and thus, the highly creative name). However, back in '99, the day that we had allotted to see the Ring was overcast and drizzly all day, and so we saw mostly the side of the mountain, and about 30' in front of the car for most of the day. We wanted to go around again in better weather, and given that the next day (for those of you keeping track, 17 April) started off brilliantly, we headed out to do it again, for fear that the notoriously fickle Irish weather would not allow us another chance. I'm glad we did - the weather stayed beautiful all day long, and we had a wonderful day. We made our first stop in Sneem, where we had stopped some ten years before and took a picture on the rock outside Dan Murphy's Bar, much as we had before. We grabbed some ice creams, and clambered on the rocks under the bridge before getting back in the car and making our way further around the circle. The roads have generally improved since the last time we were there, but again, the views were brilliant. We managed to make it all the way around the Ring and then stopped to make a brief hike around the Torc Waterfall, and a few glimpses of the Lakes of Killarney. We stopped off in Ballydehob for fish and chips before heading home, and found out there was a music festival in Ballydehob that weekend, and so our plans were laid for the following day...

Given all the driving we had done the previous day, I greatly desired for Saturday to be much more relaxed - and it was. We sat around the house, just enjoying the relative peace - it only gets so peaceful when you have two children - before Dalton and I went out to explore the area around the house. We hiked down the path towards the sea, and discovered the Colla pier, which was probably only about 3/4ths of a mile away. After our walk, we came back and all of us drove in search of Three Castle Head - which we found, but the road ends about two miles or so from the castle, and we decided to save the hike for another day. You can see the sign at the end of the road in the slideshow. It looks like there was once a pier or something there, but it is no longer used, although there were several interesting pools in the rocks. We then drove in to Ballydehob, and we sat in Levis Bar where several locals played tunes, and I indulged in a couple of pints. Levis (pronounced leh-vees) is one of the "old school" pubs, where half of the place is a pub, and half a grocery store. It was truly unique, and even Dalton didn't want to leave.

I'm continuing on in a second post, just to keep this one from running too long.