Filed under: Sligo
After a few very strenuous days of hiking and serious illness we finally found the walk we needed. No hills. No getting lost. No rain.
We took a nice lake-forest walk in the Hazelwood Demense on Lough Gill. (The Lake Isle of Innisfree is located in Lough Gill. Patrick, the girls and the Australians took a boat cruise around the lake. Kate was sick so she and I stayed home – but we had been on the cruise last time we were here so that was OK.)
Anyways, the walk was nice. Every 100 yards or so there was a marker with info on a different tree. We saw a few cool sculptures. We saw swans, which is always fun in a Yeatsy place.
Filed under: Sligo
Carrowmore is the largest cemetery of megalithic tombs in Ireland. The tombs are 5000 years old. Can you imagine that?
The tombs would remind you of New Grange. OK I know that not everyone reading this will have been to New Grane – but it is better known.
Some of the tombs were dolmens – which is a fair simply structure similar to a slanty table.
There are 4-5 legs and a large, flat stone lain across them. It’s amazing to think of how they could get such large stone to form any kind of structure back then. Pretty much you’d want to be start your tomb as soon as you could walk!
Some tombs or structures were more just rocks placed into a position such as a circle – like a giant clock with a diameter of 15-20 feet.
One tomb, which may have been recreated was a lot more like New Grange. It looked like a huge mound of rocks from one side – but from the other you could see (and walk) into the tomb to see a huge dolmen.
So the tombs and structures were pretty cool up close. An added cool aspect was how the structures lined up with the surrounding mountains. Many of the mountain (such as Knocknarea) also have tombs on them and the tombs seemed to line up in all directions.
One of the guides noted that tombs may have been used (in a later day) as marketplace centers. Because especially when the entire countryside was covered with forests, the tombs were easily seen from a distance.
The girls were moderately impressed though I must admit visiting Carrowmore wasn’t the first thing we had done that day. What they did enjoy was the bull that seemed to protect the final dolmen. We started into a field to take a look at the dolmen that was “just a little further” and what we had written off as a cow kind of sauntered up into full height and horns and just looked at us in a “make my day” kind of way – saving the girls a walk there and back.
Filed under: Sligo
Knocknarea [Nok-na-ray] is up. No matter where you start from, it’s up. We started pretty far down. It was another walk out of the same book that brought us the O’Donnell Rock. We felt better about this one because it was listed as an easy walk.
It would have been easy – if we were Billy goats! There are a number of mountains around Sligo – Ben Bulben and Knocknarea are most notable. Both look more like cliffs or giant plateaus. And really they can be seen from everywhere.
According to Wikipedia, Knocknarea is 327 meters high. On the top of Knocknarea is a huge pile of rocks – 20 meters high and 55 meters across, which you can also see from everywhere.
The pile of rocks is known as Queen Maeve’s Tomb. Here’s the mythology, according to Patrick:
Maeve was arguing with her husband Ailill about who was richer. They each listed their wealth. Then he said – I have the great, white bull of Connacht. Maeve realized she didn’t have that. But there was a great brown bull in Ulster, which she decided to try to steal. Cuchulainn protected the brown bull. After many battles. Maeve got the brown bull to Connacht but when the brown and white bulls met, they fought and the brown bull was killed. Shortly after Maeve died and now Maeve is reputedly entombed in the Knocknarea cairn in an erect position, in full battle regalia, facing northward toward her Ulster enemies.
Anyways back to the walk. It was about an hour up and 20 minutes down. The view was amazing. It was fun for the rest of the week to look up at Knocknarea (from the town, from the beach, on the drive back to Dromahair) and see how far we’d walked. I’ll try to add a picture that shows how high it is.
Along the walk we saw cows and sheep. Julie was so helpful getting Aine up the mountain. Lily was super helpful about helping Aine down the mountain. We saw one guy run up and down mountain. We expect to see him on a professional soccer team soon!
Filed under: Dromahair
In Dromahair there’s a great old abbey. It’s kind of obscured from the main street. You have to walk through a hotel parking lot to get there – but once you cross the river behind the hotel it feels as if you’re in fairy tale.
It’s about a 5 minute walk down the river and next to a sheep field. Due to an actual thunderstorm the night before the river was rushing the morning we all went to the abbey. It is a Franciscan Friary that was founded in 1508.
There are 2 fun things about it. First, it’s just there. It’ really been used as a cemetery for the last 100 years or more – but it’s there and you can climb all over it if you want. Well and if you can take the heights.
The second thing is that there are 3 Franciscan Friars hidden in the abbey – in the stonework. We found all three. I’ve taken picture of 2 – the third wasn’t as good. The abbey is huge though and you should be impressed with our feat. It took 2 visits.
Filed under: Dromahair
We have been staying this week in Dromahair. It’s in County Leitrim about half an hour away from Sligo city. Patrick has a friends here who has kindly invited us to stay at their place while they are in Italy. We stayed here with them last year. It’s a great house in a great town.
I thought we’d give a tour this time around. According to Wikipedia, the population of Dromahair is 509. Apparently WB Yeats used to visit here often to see the parish priest. Yeats refers to Dromahair in “The man who dreamed of Faeryland”:
He stood among a crowd at Dromahair
His heart hung all upon a silken dress
And he had known at last some tenderness
Before earth took him to her stony care…
We arrived on the night of the big summer festival, which was fun. There were bands playing and beer in the streets. Who could ask for anything more?
We’ve been checking out the town. They have clearly had a ton of building here in the last few years. There are loads of new homes – 3, 4, and 5 bedroom homes – but many of them are empty. It’s kind of a sign of the times.
The town is very nice. There are 3 pubs, a couple of hotels, a Catholic church, a Church of Ireland church, 2 grocery stores and a drug store, which we visited nearly every day with the kids being sick. And there’s that amazing restaurant we went to on Sunday. Also there’s the super cool Creevelea Abbey – which I’ll write about separately.
Filed under: Sligo
We brought the car into be fixed in Sligo today. First I can’t say enough good things about Pit Stop Express in Sligo. If you ever wreck a car in this part of the world – push your car here. Actually we didn’t wreck the car at all. He was able to pound out and repair the dmage and it was surprisingly cheap!
But while we was working we went walking. Mostly we walked in circles but that was OK. It was a beautiful day. We went to the Yeats Building where Patrick wanted to see a video on Yeats. The big thrill was that his advisor was in the video – Tony Roche.
The girls and I walked around a bit during part of the video. So we got some nice pictures of the river and the town in general. You can see a statue of Yeats and I think we got the Sligo Cathedral.
We had a nice lunch at a pub. And off we went to the beach – but without suits so mostly to scope the scene for tomorrow. We went to Rosses Point – as you can see it’s beautiful!
Filed under: Dromahair
On Sunday we decided to go for a way. We wanted to walk up to O’Donnell’s Rock. We had a map and while the walk was long (9 km, which I think it 4miles or so), it was also pegged as moderate – not hard. So 9 of us set out to Manorhamilton, the next town over from where we are staying in Dromahair.
We parked and we started off. Our first hint should have been when within 10 minutes we had second guessed the map twice and were walking down a super narrow road to get to the trail. You know the kind of road you imagine in Ireland with just enough room for 2 cars.
Patrick found the trail. Julie and I would have missed it because for some reason this was the only sign that was a part of this journey that was in Irish.
So we started off straight up hill for about an hour. The view was beautiful! The kids were relatively spunky. Kate unfortunately has really been sick the 2 weeks she has been here – so it was tough on her but she was OK. So after an hour or so we got to the first marker. The markers (we thought) we great we followed them then through most of the walk.
We climbed over a fence to see the megalithic tombs, which it turns out look a lot like any other ruins you have seen. But they are thousands of years old – and aside from the view this was our first sighting of anything – so they were cool. So we walk for another hour – uphill but at least on the grass this time so the kids especially were much happier. Also we were in a sheep field – with the sheep so that was kind of exciting too.
Aine lost her shoes. So she went barefoot and/or got a lift on Patrick’s shoulders – as time wore on there was less bare feet walking and more shoulder time. Also she cried about the darn flip flops as if they cost more than $2 at Target.
We walked through a bog, which was pretty cool. Then we walked through a pretty murky bog, which was OK. We got to a place where we thought maybe we were looking at O’Donnell’s rocks. Everyone had a piece of well deserved fruit.
We trudged on. We walked through a forest, which was also pretty cool. It turns out that forest are very, very dark even during the middle of the day. We weren’t in darkness but we could see the darkness of the forest on either side of us.
The Julie looked at the map again. Hmmm. Seems following our beloved markers was not such a good idea. The markers led us through the Leitrim Way – but that’s not the walk we were taking and it’s not the map we had. And we didn’t know at all where that might lead.
So we turned around. If anyone had read “We Going on a Bear Hunt”, you’ll know what we did – expect no bear was chasing us. We booked it back past the forest, past the rocks, past the murky bog, past the bog, into the sheep field where we found Aine’s shoes and she cried again because this meant she had to walk, then past the megalith tombs, and down the hill.
All is all the walk took about 4 hours. It was hot. We made into back to Manorhamiton just in time – the Centra shop closed 2 minutes after we got our treats and it started to really rain about 4 minutes later.
The good news is that we really earned the beautiful meal that we had that night at the River Bank between Dromahair and Manorhamilton. If you ever find yourself near this area you will have to stop in. I had tiger prawns, salmon, sticky toffee pudding and wine. It was my belated birthday dinner from Patrick’s mom.
Filed under: Dromahair
Patrick was doing well until…
Pretty much we’re just glad that no one got injured in the changing of the tire!
Filed under: Dublin
On Friday the big girls were to school and then to Ailbhe’s house. In fact they ended up spending the night there. Ailbhe’s family are just about the nicest people in the world. When he dropped them home today, Ailbhe’s dad mentioned that they hadn’t stayed up too late – maybe 1 am. I liked other parents who think nothing of late hours.
Anyways that left me, Aine and Patrick to hang with the Australians. We went to the Irish Museum of Modern Art at the old Kilmainhim Hospital. I love modern art! I had 3 faves:
Filament by Ann Hamilton. Really this was just a muslin-type drape hung up like a gauzy tent from the ceiling. It spun around periodically in different directions. So visitors were invited to stand in the middle of the tent while it swooped around. There was enough room for two people; Aine and I loved it. It felt like a breezy summer day.
There was a giant head carve out of wood. It was a little like a giant Pinocchio head – maybe a little creepier but I liked it.
The Mysterious Exhibition from the Children’s Hospital from Ilya & Emilia Kabakov. It was a scene set up with a hospital bed in a hospital room circa 1930. There was a diorama set up with a little scene. It creeped out Aine but I liked it. Apparently they used to use dioramas like that to cheer up kids in the hospital.
For the interested minority you can see a picture of Filament and Mysterious Exhibition here: http://www.imma.ie/en/page_197017.htm
Aine, Kilian and Aidan also enjoyed the response room – where there are art supplies for folks to make their own art.
We also liked the back gardens. It is beautiful there. We played a little hide and seek in the mazes. We took some pictures as you can see. We walked down to the cemetery on the edge of the grounds. It’s called Bully’s Acre. It was open to dignitaries and poor folk alike – but it was also know for body snatchers. So I guess you get what you pay for.
I called home at night and Grandma told Aine to remind Patrick that it was my birthday. So readers who are used to seeing me at the Saints game and are wondering what I did here to celebrate in Dublin – the answer would be a big goose egg. Plans are being made for a big party in August!!
Filed under: Dublin
The big girls went to school today. So the rest of us went with the Australian cousins into town. Patrick and the Australians went to the Georgian House. It’s nice – but I have been there twice so Aine and I decided to hang out in the neighboring park, Merrion Square.
We found a playground, a statue for the Defense Forces that seemed to include an internal flame and of course the famous statue of Oscar Wilde. The park is very lush so Aine found it a little scary but we had fun. Then we trekked over to the National Gallery. They have a great kids pack that you can pick up and use anytime. It include a scavenger hunt type thing and some crayons and paper. We found exactly one painting on the list – the Little Green Fields by Gerard Dillon. Aine drew a picture of the Earth as her scavenger task.
Eventually we met up with the others for a quick lunch.
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