Wednesday July 31
Stay tuned.
Didn’t bother to take the optional buggy ride into the park/forest this morning. We walked past them at that first castle yesterday, and there is a permeating stench of what happens to the oats after the horse has finished with them. We noticed the same familiar pong around the clydesdales last night. So I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend about an hour parked 6 feet behind the business end of a well fed horse.
Stopped a few times, and went through some oddly named and just odd wee villages.
There was the Red Fox Bar, which had rebuilt a historic bog village.
A little context. These were the huts built by and for the poorest people in Ireland. They lived remote lives, away from what was to become ‘civilization’. Built from the earth and what is on the earth.
An interesting detail of this area. They are called bog villages, because they are built literally on the big. It appears that for great tracts of this part of the country, there is rock and there is bog. Now the bog itself, is made up of rotten vegetation. Each spring, new growth would burst through and aim for the sky. Every winter the rain and wind would beat it down to rot on the ground. Year after year, century after century, this process would be repeated, until the rotted vegetation was perhaps up to 5m thick.
But wait, there’s more. Once people started to populate these areas, they discovered a life-saving property. Dig it up in brick sizes, stack it up and let it dry, and it makes great fuel for the fire. I asked why these clods burn when the clods we dig up at home would likely have the opposite effect. The answer is simply that there is no dirt here. No soil. This is why only potatoes would grow here. They don’t need soil to grow. But that’s a story for another time.
Full disclosure. I DID happen to have an Irish Coffee there 🤷♂️
There was also the peculiar village of Killorglin, whose claim to fame was that they were once saved from an invading army by a gaggle of goats. Ever since, they have an annual 3-day celebration called King Puck, where they choose a goat and park him up on a tower, and drink to his good health. During these three days, all pubs are open 24hrs. This is a party that promises to get rough.
So if you’re looking for an excuse for a 3-day bender, hurry along. It starts in about 10 days. And then again every August.
Otherwise, lots of water views, some of Dingle Bay, some straight out into the Atlantic, and then some lakes as we came back into Killarney. But doing that road in a big-arsed bus was certainly a testament to the skills of our driver Gerry. It was also a challenge to my anti-carsickness philosophy.
So here’s the evidence.
This morning we’re off on a day trip, on a scenic route caller ‘The Ring of Kerry’. I guess I could do something with that, but I imagine none of the three Kerry’s I work with would thank me for it.
Stay tuned.
Didn’t bother to take the optional buggy ride into the park/forest this morning. We walked past them at that first castle yesterday, and there is a permeating stench of what happens to the oats after the horse has finished with them. We noticed the same familiar pong around the clydesdales last night. So I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to spend about an hour parked 6 feet behind the business end of a well fed horse.
Stopped a few times, and went through some oddly named and just odd wee villages.
There was the Red Fox Bar, which had rebuilt a historic bog village.
A little context. These were the huts built by and for the poorest people in Ireland. They lived remote lives, away from what was to become ‘civilization’. Built from the earth and what is on the earth.
An interesting detail of this area. They are called bog villages, because they are built literally on the big. It appears that for great tracts of this part of the country, there is rock and there is bog. Now the bog itself, is made up of rotten vegetation. Each spring, new growth would burst through and aim for the sky. Every winter the rain and wind would beat it down to rot on the ground. Year after year, century after century, this process would be repeated, until the rotted vegetation was perhaps up to 5m thick.
But wait, there’s more. Once people started to populate these areas, they discovered a life-saving property. Dig it up in brick sizes, stack it up and let it dry, and it makes great fuel for the fire. I asked why these clods burn when the clods we dig up at home would likely have the opposite effect. The answer is simply that there is no dirt here. No soil. This is why only potatoes would grow here. They don’t need soil to grow. But that’s a story for another time.
Full disclosure. I DID happen to have an Irish Coffee there 🤷♂️
There was also the peculiar village of Killorglin, whose claim to fame was that they were once saved from an invading army by a gaggle of goats. Ever since, they have an annual 3-day celebration called King Puck, where they choose a goat and park him up on a tower, and drink to his good health. During these three days, all pubs are open 24hrs. This is a party that promises to get rough.
So if you’re looking for an excuse for a 3-day bender, hurry along. It starts in about 10 days. And then again every August.
Otherwise, lots of water views, some of Dingle Bay, some straight out into the Atlantic, and then some lakes as we came back into Killarney. But doing that road in a big-arsed bus was certainly a testament to the skills of our driver Gerry. It was also a challenge to my anti-carsickness philosophy.
So here’s the evidence.
