Travel Log – Day Five 5/15

Up this morning to a Full Irish Breakfast. This consists of scones, bacon that looks of regular slabs of ham but tastes of normal bacon, plus sausage (a sweeter variety here, takes some getting used to), toasted bread (yes bread *and* scones…remember “biscuits” are their cookies, and “scones” are their biscuits) and baked beans (strange, but true), warm tomatoes, and over easy eggs with juice and black tea or coffee. Tucked in heavily as have been light-headed the last few days paying attention to diet rules. One cannot go 14 hour days and eat like that. Hardiness is needed so f***-all the diet, from here on out!

Note: Am thinking the whole Irish-potato thing went out with the famine. No one has served any kind of potato in any form but a stew or as fries (they are “fries” here too…not English “chips”)…but what they *do* eat a lot of is tomatoes. I mean with every single meal. They like them warmed and/or fried for breakfast, in salads, sandwiches, relishes…they poach them, stew them, bake them. I have eaten about two full tomatoes a day as a side-note to the food I’ve actually ordered. I like them as much as the next person, but my question is: why?

Today, visited first major Estate House (as-was.) This means it’s the kinda thing you see tours of on TV, inside and out, gardens and fully decore’d rooms, and still in use today with the family living on the third floor. It is called Bantry House, yes located in Bantry off Bantry Bay just a short jaunt from our B & B.

The original house called Blackrock, was purchased in the17th century and added onto in 1820 by the first Early of Bantry. His son, the Viscount Berehaven, who travelled extensively, was responsible for bringing in the varied collections of paintings, tapestries and furniture into the house including 17th and 18th century furnishings, a painting by Rubens taking up an entire wall of the dining room, Tapestries in the Gobelins Drawing Room given by Louise-Phillippe to Marie Antoinette, a set of 12 embellished silk and gold threaded portraits of the Court of Louis XIV in the Rose Drawing Room, and portraits of the family to current owners in the Library.

…The gardens were terraced and extensive. There are seven terraces and surrounding gardens including several trails leading to the stable yard, and up to the outer gardens which are now put to use growing fresh herbs and vegetables for the guests who stay there, but from layout can be seen was once a collection of walled gardens leading to the furthest end orchard, where trees are still in bloom today. It has its own creek stream leading out into the bay, and overlooks it directly from a drop off-terrace front-of-the manor, while behind through the library doors you can see the wisteria garden and three sets of tiers leading to length grass yards allowing entrance to the back of the stables.

The place is gigantic (as you can see), and is the first look at post-medieval wealth in Ireland for us. Amazed at how large the societal gap between this and the average town houses we have passed so far. The wealthy were very wealthy, the poor, were poor, and no in-between…at least in Historic South-Western Ireland.

Next: Moved onto Ballylickey and it’s bay past the Barra Boy Mountains (all rock, no green here), and into Glengarriff and the Ring of Beara.

The Ring of Beara is a small coastal peninsula jetting off into the sea, which returns inland for a bit before moving onto the giant Ring of Kerry. Being well into nearly a day behind where we wanted to be by this date, we opted for Beara instead per suggestion of a friend who had done it as well, bonus points to this being that it is often overlooked on tourist excursion in favor of the larger ring, so we’d have the country basically to ourselves. And they weren’t lying.

Beara’s scenery offers the full range of what we had seen to date of topography and added in amazing rock-cliff coasts besides. (Note: which turned out to be the only way we saw that type of scenery, as later we had to abandon our trip along the Cliffs of Moore for time reasons, yet again.)

…First we passed Garnish and Seal Islands, and Seal Harbor, moved through Trafask, the Caia Mountains and the Strand, Adrigole to Hungry Hill, which has this amazing formation to the rock that looks like an ancient ocean waterbed or volcanic lava, through Rossmackowen and onto Castletownbere and the ancient Stone Circle Derrintaggart West. This stone circle (the only one in the end, we were able to see) was built sometime between 1500 and 500 BC, and then to the Ring Fort Teernahillane (built the same time as the circle), the land on which is now noted as “reclaimed bogland,”…meaning that at one time, this *was* all seabed land: a series of mountains and hills we have driven along for over an hour now.

Note: We are in “Old Country” now, the signs no longer post in English and Gaelic, just the Gaelic. Thank goodness our maps note both.

Next, we move through Cathermore and it’s “Period” old-country sheep, goats and cows, to Allihies, Urhin, Eyeries, Ardgroom, Lauraugh, Tuosist and end the ring at Kenmare where we hit up the Tourist Center for restrooming (there was literally nothing out there but nature for hours and hours), then onto Molls Gap and into the Killarney National Park, which I’ve come to conclude is basically the same thing as the rest of Ireland, but no one owns the land, so you can camp there. Meaning: the scenery is exactly the same, in view of preservation it isn’t really necessary. Ireland ain’t goin’ anywhere, and looks (in the back country) exactly how you imagine it would and always has.

Be that as it may, we could use a sizable walk by that time, so took the opportunity at one of their stop stations, happily leading to another huge and ongoing spiral of stone steps to infinity and the Torc Waterfall. Their forest floors are very Washingtonian with ferns and moss…very rainforest-like and not trek-able outside their cleared areas set aside to do so. This is the first time we’ve seen fir trees, not nearly to the sizes ours get, but their other trees we’ve noticed, tend to grow out more than up. Ancient buggers with thick trunks that branch out and out and out, with the most complicated root systems I’ve ever seen. Case in fact: check out the pics of their rhododendron bushes. They aren’t bushes at all, but forests of trees. Gigantic one-plant systems that are taller than two story houses, with bloom clusters twice the size of my head. Kinda eerie actually, but amazing too.

Continued through Killarney Forest, passed the Black Valley and Upper Lake and into Killarney itself, at last.

All I knew about Killarney before this, was that according to Bing Crosby, Christmas rocks there. It is actually a quite happening touristaville. Still, holding all the old-worldness, but I am not kidding when I say that every second house is a B & B, and the doors in between are pubs. We chose ours off the beaten path a bit: (Woodlawn House), before venturing out to see a bit of what Killarney had to offer.

First up: St. Mary’s Church of Ireland, (not to be confused with St. Mary’s Cathedral just down the street, Catholic.) There is (we now know) at least one St. Mary’s and one Castletown in every county of Ireland, very popular. The first we can gather why, obviously, not so much the second. But there you are.

St. Mary’s Church of Ireland is just a kid: built in 1870 along the English Gothic style, while the Cathedral’s cornerstone was first laid in 1842. A sabbatical of work was held on the Cathedral for five years during the Potato Famine due to shortage of funds, but by 1853 at a total cost of 20,000 pounds, the building was completed along the Lancet arched Gothic style.

Next: St. Brendan’s College, est. 1860, Mercy Convent, and onto Ross Castle on Ross Bay, part of Lough Leane.

Ross Castle, built in the 15th century by the O’Donoghue chieftains, was in 1652 one of the last strongholds in the region to surrender to Cromwell. It overlooks the lake, and 7th century monastery and a 12th century oratory on Innisfallen Island, and is an incredible up-close view of castle history. As the wind started whipping up at dusk, the rowing boats came in, great (and extremely heavy) all-wooden monsters, one of which we were asked to help haul out of the water. It took eight people just to keep the boat bottom from touching land, where we eventually settled it in a boat house where they give tours of the Island and its Monastery during regular hours.

Finally: moved back into town and ate at the pub, “Pot o’ Gold” (I ain’t kidding), had a well earned pint of Guinness, n’ hobbled home exhausted.