Ireland: Home of sheep and rocks but no potatoes

I decided to come to Ireland mostly because my friends Lizz and Kelly moved here to go to school a year ago. 

Lizz and Kelly at the beach by Sligo

I’d been to Ireland once before, when I was 18 and had a bizarre 80s hair cut.  I stayed after my college study abroad experience to travel around England, Scotland, Ireland and Whales on my own. I don’t really remember much about Ireland from that trip, except being struck by the political division of Belfast, enjoying seeing the Book of Kells in person, and wandering around somewhere in the South, probably the Ring of Kerry since that is a popular tourist destination.

Given my lack of exposure to anything Irish, my Irish geography is fairly limited.  I know it’s an island.  I know the North is politically still part of the rapidly fragmenting (or disintermediating) United Kingdom.  I know the South is an independent country, now part of the EU. However, I hadn’t really thought much about where Cork was until I purchased a ticket and got on a plane to go there.

That is where Lizz and Kelly live.  In Cork where they have dove into Irish life by attending the University and acquiring MA degrees in Irish Studies and/or Information Technology in Architecture, Engineering and Construction, respectively.  Of course my visit has significantly hindered their progress towards these degrees, for which I am sort of sorry.

Anyway, Lizz and Kelly are the type of people who, when you find out that there was an actual battle over a copied book where over 3,000 people died and it is called the first copyright battle ever and it happened on the slopes of someplace called Benbulben, which is in the county of Sligo, they are like, “cool!”  Let’s go there! 

Being unclear of Irish geography, I had no idea at the time that this would require a six hour drive from Cork, but Lizz and Kelly are not the type of people to be deterred by a little thing like a six hour drive. 

In fact, while the trip to Sligo was in part motivated by the intent to find the place where the copyright battle happened, even though this is not a thing that it turns out was memorialized at all. It also turns out that Yeats was born in Sligo and it was going to be his birthday while we were there. Why wouldn’t you want to drive 6 hours to also attend the Yeats birthday festival (Ireland really likes festivals) and celebrate his 150^th birthday?

Needless to say, while I am sort of starting at the end of the trip, I do so to demonstrate that Lizz and Kelly share my sense of serendipitous adventure and are thus very fun travel partners. 

However, back to the beginning.  

I arrived in Cork very late at night after some ungodly number of hours flying on a plane and sitting in the Amsterdam airport.  Needless to say, I didn’t make it out of bed super early the next morning.

This was fine because both Lizz and Kelly have final thesis (thesi?) to write.  They needed to work.

My first day in Cork, involved walking around Cork so I could see the sights and the University. Our stops included becoming reacquainted with cider on tap at several of the numerous warm, comfy, pubs that exemplify Irish pubs.  At this point I learned that while pretty much the only beer anyone outside of Ireland knows and associates with Ireland is Guinness – in fact, Guinness is a regional beer and if you want to blend in to Cork, you drink Murphy’s not Guinness. The same goes for tea -- there are regional teas.

 

Strangely, I got no pictures of Cork at all. 

Our plan, such as we were able to devise one while touring the pubs in Cork, included the idea of driving up towards Killarney where we would go to a place called the Gap of Dunlow where there was climbing. 

We are climbers so naturally climbing would be involved in our trip.

The next day we got on the road and headed towards Killarney which involved going at high speeds down incredibly narrow and windy country roads on the “wrong” side. 

Irish road with sheep

It turns out that the highway system isn’t really a priority here and unless you are going to Dublin, chances are you will not be traveling on a road wider than your car. 

One of the more puzzling road signs....

Even though the roads are small, the speed limit is set at 100 km (about 62 mph) and so while you actually can’t go that fast most of the time, and Lizz and Kelly’s little car could only barely go that fast anyway, the potential was there to feel as if you were flying down these roads.  There are no shoulders, lots of hedges and farm equipment, and sometimes the roads were actually only a single lane.

Not sure what this is a warning for.... not running in front of cars?

 We emerged into Killarney to find that, unbeknownst to us, there was a beer festival going on.  

Beer and religion all in one place....

It turns out that Ireland is the land of sheep, cows, pastoral views, Neolithic artifacts, and more festivals than there are days in the year. 

Now there was a dilemma. 

We had planned to go climbing upon reaching the Gap of Dunlow (which was on the other side of Killarney). 

However, now there was a beer festival. 

Also, according to the beer festival staff, if we entered then, we wouldn’t have to pay an entrance fee which other people coming later would have to pay. 

However, climbing AFTER drinking beer isn’t as easy as climbing BEFORE drinking beer. 

We decided that the beer festival took priority. After all, while it stays light until 11:00 here, the beer festival would be long over before we could get back from climbing.

So we got our free wristbands, purchased our plastic beer tasting mugs, got tokens, and entered the fray.

I was immediately compelled to taste/drink the Crean Beer because it turned out that Tom Crean was a polar explorer and was Irish.  At this point it didn't really matter what it tasted like.  

Crean was on the Scott expeditions to the South Pole, though because he was one of the sledge haulers and a working sailor, he didn’t keep a diary and so there isn’t much known about him from his own personal records.  I am now reading his biography.  Still, going to the South Pole and being from Ireland was enough to have a beer named after him. 

Lizz has not got any beer yet....

I am a sucker for marketing.

Also, I am a total fan of tales of polar exploration from the 19^th century – those guys were hard core!

My book and the guy the beer is named after.

Lizz, who is a beer lover, was immediately in her element.  She never had to actually use her tokens for beer because everyone gave her free samples.  This worked in our favor because we ended up using most of her tokens to try fried Monkfish instead. 

Kelly and I used our tokens for beer. 

Well, I used one of mine for cider – they let one cider company in even though it was a beer festival.

We spent the sunny, but cold, Sunday afternoon listening to a most excellent cover band that is really to difficult to explain and drinking beer. 

Then we decided to move towards our final destination, find our camping spot and then check out where we would be climbing.

Prior to leaving Cork, Lizz and Kelly had got information on camping and climbing from the local climbing gym.  We knew there was camping close by and found it on the way to the climbing.

The campground, where we were the only campers, was on an old golf course, now sheep range.  There were sheep everywhere making a lot of sheep noises, most of which do not sound like baaaaa....  

Given there was nobody there, we opted to wait and set up our tents after we had checked out the climbing.  There would be no competition for tent sites, it doesn’t get dark until well after 10:30, and there was nobody around to take our money anyway.

So we drove on to the parking lot at the beginning of the Gap.  Technically, we could have driven in, but given there are very few places to pull off the road, we decided to walk the 10 minutes to the first climbing area.  Also, so far our day had included driving in the car and drinking beer.  A brief walk would do us good.

Looking into the Gap of Dunlow from the first climbing area which was conveniently close to the road

The Gap is back there I think.

Looking back towards Killarney

The climbing guidebook said that if we couldn’t find the first climbing area, which was right off the road, maybe we should reconsider choosing rock climbing as our sport – we took this as sort of a challenge.

Lizz and I staring at the first climb.

It wasn’t hard to find. 

All the climbing here is trad – there seems to be no affinity for bolts in Ireland, even though many of the routes could easily use them. Lizz led the first climb, me feeling no compunction to lead anything after having drunk beer.  Because the anchors were about 10-15 feet back from the cliff and clearly designed to either set up top ropes or for lead only, we ended up top roping the other climbs associated with the anchors.  This was fine since strangely, I was not used to climbing with so many clothes on – which adds extra weight!

It may be summer in Ireland and the sun may be out and stay out a really long time, but that doesn’t mean it is warm. 

However, I know I am a whimp.

We climbed until these little annoying bugs called midges came out and then we headed back to set up our tents and try to avoid getting eaten by bugs.

The campground that was a golf course

It looks innocuous but is possibly the hardest tent I have ever had to set up

The next day it was still unclear how we were supposed to pay for the camping since there was nobody there to take our money and no place to put it.  In general, the Irish seemed quite relaxed about the idea of payments.  We finally gave it to a random woman who was in an office attached to the camp bathrooms.  She said she didn’t work for the camping people, but that she was happy to take the money for them. 

Sometimes figuring out how to pay for stuff is one of the hardest cultural transitions.

We went back to the Gap for more climbing and stopped for an Irish breakfast at the café right before the hiking part begins.  An Irish breakfast involves a lot of different kinds of meat – sausage, bacon, ham (Canadian bacon), blood sausage, some sort of white sausage, and egg, and then a fried hash brown plus toast, a roasted tomato and baked beans.  You really don’t need to eat anything else the entire day after that.  Plus you have imbibed sufficient salt to last for a week.

Irish Breakfast

After this large breakfast, up the trail we went, this time to a different climbing area.  Getting to this area involved getting past the horse guarding the entry.  

The horse didn't really want to let us through the gate.

Also, passing lots of sheep who sometimes thought we were chasing them, though mostly ignored us.  

I called this one Fluffy...

Both areas were super fun, but mostly we top roped given the lack of gear placements and such.  Hence no climbing pictures – since toproping isn’t picture worthy. 

Other area...

Still, you simply could not critique the great weather and scenery.

Our climbing trip over, we headed back to Cork so Lizz and Kelly could get some work done before we headed out the next weekend to Sligo and the Yeats/food/copyright war festival-adventure.

Before we left for Sligo, however, we had a few more day trips.  Since the day is so long here, you can really do two or three days in one.  We would work in the morning, then drive somewhere, then hike or do something else. 

It turns out that Cork is really close to Blarney and while I had never really given much consideration to the Blarney stone before, we all went up to kiss it nevertheless.  While clearly going to kiss the Blarney stone constitutes a pretty conventional tourist experience, it was super cool. 

First, there was an awesome castle, and who doesn’t want to get to wander around a cool castle.  

Lizz, Kelly and I with Blarney Castle in the back

Blarney Castle

 

Kelly in the "Young Ladies" Room

Lizz on the spiral staircase which is an engineering feat.

Lots of things grow out of the walls here.

More of the castle.

Lining up to kiss the Blarney Stone with all the other tourists.

Second, while I had imagined a sort of large stone pillar standing in a field that people walked up to and kissed, this is nowhere near the truth – to kiss the Blarney stone, you have to lean back outside the very top of the castle while this guy holds on to your legs so you don’t slide right out and go crashing 60 feet down to land on your head.  Imagine American lawyers getting their hands on something like that!  

Kelly kissing the stone

Lizz kissing the stone

Your head goes out through that hole up there....

Castles are dark.

Third, while kissing the stone is fun and all, the Blarney castle grounds is host to a poison garden, which has to be the coolest garden I’ve ever seen.  Technically, not all the stuff in the garden would kill you – they were growing poppies and a pot plant, for example, but still, it was super educational and also made you realize just how poisonous numerous ornamentals in your front yard can be. 

Poisonous and also good for witch deterrent it turns out...

Clearly not poisonous but I guess a good reason to grow one.

Mandrake is so poisonous they stuck it in a little cage.

Also poisonous

Yep... foxglove is poisonous, but all Agatha Christie mystery lovers already knew that.

A beautiful trellis of poison...

Not poisonous, or at least not in the poison garden, but it was super cool.

My sixth day in Ireland saw us driving to Southern Cork to a place on the map called three castles. 

 

Looking out on the Atlantic which was very quiet

The life preserver was a long way from the water.

Our goal had been to head down towards this place called Sheep’s Head to go hiking, but then we got distracted by the name Three Castles and so we went there instead.  This turned out to be the location of what Lizz and Kelly call “castle bits,” which are scattered all over Ireland, mostly in a state of disrepair.  This particular castle bits was a destination not as popular as the Blarney castle was. 

Three Castles (bits)

Kelly Hanging out by the Castle

The hike was along a gorgeous coastline and began in someone’s field with more sheep.  

Alert Sheep

Lizz walking towards the castle

We all got lost wandering around the fields because there was insufficient signage pointing the way to Three Castles and no discernable trail that was any different from all the little sheep trails.  Basically, this meant there were a variety of random parties wandering around the fields. 

We finally found the castle through a combination of wandering, Lizz scouting ahead, not going were the other people were going since they also clearly didn’t know where the castle was, and peering over the top of hills. 

In the end, not only were the castle bits amazingly cool, but the coast and the rocks were spectacular.

Sailboat and rocks...

There is a seal in the water down there.

Our last big push was to head to Sligo so that we could find the copyright battle site, attend the Yeats festival and the food festival, all of which were happening at the same time.  I guess technically the copyright battle was hundreds of years ago and absolutely nobody cares about it but me, but still…   

  

The guidebook description of the Copyright Battle

We were excited about getting to go to Sligo on Yeats’ birthday, which was the 13^th of June and so our timing was excellent – if you like Yeats that is.  I like one of his poems for sure.  Can’t say I had thought much about him otherwise.  Sadly, I didn’t know he was Irish, though I obviously do now.

So we embarked upon yet another crazy road-twisting, speed racer drive, this time about 6 hours north but not in a straight line, since the roads here don’t go in straight lines.

Given nothing is direct, it didn’t matter much if we made a slight detour to visit the Donkey Sanctuary.  This is one of Lizz and Kelly’s favorite destinations because it turns out there is a need for a home for abused and neglected donkey’s in Ireland.  There had just been a new baby donkey born, which was adorable.

Baby donkey

 

After our Donkey Sanctuary trip, I volunteered to do some driving so Lizz could get a rest and also get some more work done in the car.  Given I had developed my manual transmission on the wrong side of the road driving skills when in Australia a few years back, this was not as traumatic as the Australian experience was at first. 

Also, Kelly is an excellent navigator to help you get around the roundabouts.

Our first day in Sligo, after our huge Irish breakfast at the cool B&B on the water where we stayed, involved making it to town for the free walking tour, hosted by the visitor’s bureau.

We managed to arrive exactly as the tour was taking off.   It turned out that this particular tour was attended by us, a giant group of teenagers visiting from Italy who didn’t really speak English, and some local women who had never been on the tour but, like us had picked today to go.

Our tour guide began the tour by saying things like, “this is a statute of Keats” at which point, one of the local ladies said, sort of to herself, sort of to us, “I know more than the guide!”  We all befriended the local ladies so we could learn more.

That being said, the tour guide was unintentionally hilarious.  So, for example, when we got to “Kennedy Street,” the guide said, “this is Kennedy street (pointing at the road sign).  While J.F. Kennedy never came to Sligo, we named this street after him anyway.”

Both the new and the old name of the street

Silence.

Then we moved on.

The Irish love Kennedy.

Then we got to the Abbey.  The guide said, “This is the old Abbey which was accidentally burnt down in the 1600s by a candle.”  He went on, “Actually, it isn’t an Abby, it is a Dominican Friary.  They moved down the street, though.”

The Abbey that isn't really an Abbey

And then, aside from a lot of talk about Bram Stoker’s mother, who lived and is buried in Sligo, my favorite line was, “This is Castle Street but there is no evidence a castle ever stood here.” 

End of story.

Mostly we were left with a sense of what the streets were named, but not really why they were named that. 

Urban fishing in Sligo - but at least they have a river.

The city was filled with people celebrating Yeats in one way or another, including a very large birthday cake in his honor and the food festival may or may not have been associated with the Yeats festival.

Yeats on stilts....

Yeats' birthday cake -- in a horse drawn wagon, which just doesn't seem all that sanitary.

Our efforts to find the place where the copyright battle took place was a bit more difficult, in part because nobody cared enough to memorialize it except on the Internet.   

The Church where Yeats is buried AND where the priest that copied the book that led to the Battle of the books was from

We had intended to hike up Benbulben because the battle was to have happened on the slopes of Benbulben.  

I imagine that the battle over copyright happened there -- since this is the view from the church where the priest was from....

However, we got sidetracked by the fact there was a much cooler hike up a different mountain that let us get really close to a Neolithic monument that, being 5000 years old, is older than the pyramids.  Kelly told us all about the Celtic legend associated with the monument, which is sort of related to part of her MA thesis. 

Our hike

They built this wooden plant trail...

Lizz and Kelly by the smaller of the tomb structures

 

The full mound... it is a lot of rocks.

Lizz ignoring the fact it is freezing.

I am clearly overdressed for the beach.

While the list of potential things to do remains longer than the list of what we were able to do, it is very much the case that I have a much better sense of Ireland now than I did ten days ago.  This in part is due to the fact I was able to travel with someone getting a degree in Irish Studies and with folks who had been living there for a year.  

While it is easy to forget that the Irish were colonized, it is a country still shaping its post-colonial identity, it is a country that not that long ago suffered an intense famine that led to the death or migration of literally millions of people, a population loss from which it has still not recovered, it is a country of historical depth and ancient history, and it is a country suffering through EU forced structural readjustment that has privatized its public systems including a recent privatization of the water itself. 

At the end of the trip, however, while we saw plenty of sheep and cows, there was one thing I never saw that seemed like a natural Irish thing to see – a field of potatoes.