Highmoon's Ponderings

Sunday, Nov 24, 2002

Our hosts at Ballymore House, Maurice and Theresa,
with Yvette as we were getting ready to leave.
Nov. 24, 2002

We left Sunday morning, but not without feeling that we had left part of ourselves in Dingle, and that we would have to come back to claim it. Thing is, for the rest of our lives, Dingle will be the place where we spent the most peaceful days of our honeymoon.

Yvette & Danny at the Connor Pass observation point.
Nov. 24, 2002

Since Galway was our next destination, we decided to head north via the Connor Pass; seemed like a good excuse to drive up to one of the highest points in the peninsula and enjoy the scenery. Once you reach the summit, you can pull over to see the peninsula from an incredible vantage point. The fields seem to undulate with the wind, and the various lakes, ponds and streams sparkle like quicksilver. In the distance we could see all of Dingle town, waving us good-bye, and reminding us to return one day. But for now, the road called, and our next destination promised to be simply amazing.

Danny on the side of a mountain on our way out of Dingle. Note the clouds not that far away.
Nov. 24, 2002

Our drive from Dingle took us north, where we had to take a ferry to cross the River Shannon, on our way to the Cliffs. It was early afternoon when we arrived, and we were not prepared for what we saw. The Cliffs of Moher are about as simply a natural sight can come, and yet they take your breath away even from afar. Extending for about five miles from the mainland, they soar up to 650 feet above the raging waters of the Atlantic below. A fine mist hangs permanently in the air, though it is almost impossible to hear the waves crashing (unless you ignore the warning sign and go to the platform and brave the strong winds for a chance to peek over the edge, which Danny thought about doing, except Yvette had no desire to become a widow on their honeymoon). You can see, however, the hundreds and hundreds of birds that make their homes on the crags of the cliffs, playing in the updrafts, well aware human onlookers envy them.

There are a few places on Earth where it is hard to
deny the hand of God in the world; this is one of those places.
Nov. 24, 2002

We wandered the area of the Cliffs up and down, even going to the little tower built by a local lord with money to spare, trying to see the Cliffs from every possible angle. These pictures do not even begin to do justice to the Cliffs of Moher, so be sure to visit them one day.

Yvette & Danny at the Cliffs of Moher.
Nov. 24, 2002

As much as we liked this place, we had to get on the road in order to make it to Galway not too late. There was, however, yet one more ancient stop on our map before getting to the city…

We took a detour on our way to Galway because we wanted to see the Burren, an area unique in Ireland. Once a glacier-covered tundra, it today offers an ecosystem found nowhere else in Ireland, with glacier-gashed limestone peeking from the ground, a network of tunnels that once housed bears, and various archeological sites, including the one we really wanted to see, the Poulnabrone Dolmen. Believed to be a “druid’s altar” a couple hundred years ago, today we know it is a stone-age portal-style grave, possibly a chieftain’s though no one knows for sure. While a center is promised for the future, today the dolmen stands alone in the middle of a field, and it takes a 200-meter hike to reach it. As you can see in the picture, we got there just before dusk (meaning at around 4:00 pm), but we had enough light and time to really marvel at this ancient artifact still standing after four thousand years. The Burren is supposed to be incredible in the summer, with flowers bursting out of the limestone all over; I guess we’ll just have to come back and see. Very carefully we picked our way back to the car and then drove for another two hours to reach Galway.

Poulnabrone Dolmen, a 4000 year-old grave, still captures the imagination.
Nov. 24, 2002

In Galway, we stayed at the Cill Cuana B&B, a place we reserved that morning before leaving Dingle (had it only been one day?). In fact, from here on, all our accommodations would be booked on-the-go, one of the perks of traveling in winter. Cill Cuana was decent, but not a place I would go back to; it was just good enough for the night. In fact, Galway felt pretty much like that.

Galway is a university town, and you can’t miss it. This would have been great if we had been with our friends, but on our honeymoon, and especially after the quiet solitude of Dingle, Galway simply grated on us. We walked the pedestrian part of town, dipping into the King’s Head Pub, there since the 16th century, for a pint and some music (rock covers, not bad). Galway is full of street artists, buskers, and on our way back to the car, we passed by a young woman with her guitar, strumming along in the chilling wind. She started to sing after we were about 10 feet past her, and her voice made us turn around simply because we had to know who it was that was singing. She was amazing, and we purchased her CD right there. Her name was Orlagh De Bhaldraithe (see the Links). After this it was back to the B&B and to sleep.

Saturday, Nov 23, 2002

Saturday was Shabbat, so we stayed in our B&B up until midday, then went out on a walk all the way to Ventry, some two miles away. The day looked gorgeous, so we thought it would be OK… About halfway to Ventry we could see the storm clouds rolling in from the sea. We managed to get to Ventry, and decided to hike back before the rain really started, only to have the rain really start once we had past the last place we could have taken shelter in. The rain was falling sideways, the wind driving it like thousands of tiny wet daggers. On the plus side, the left side of our bodies was pretty much dry, compared to the utter soaking on the right side. By the time we got back to the B&B, our host, Maurice, asked us incredulously, “What happened!” We told him the day had looked great so we had decided to walk to Ventry; he merely looked at us with a smile that said “silly tourists”. He did dry our clothes and light up a peat fire. We will forever associate the smell of peat with warmth.

Yvette with a pint of Bullmer’s cider at An Conair Pub. It was the first pub of five that night.
Nov. 23, 2002

Given this was our last night in Dingle, we decided to go for the Pub Crawl. Pubs are everywhere in Dingle, including some that do double-duty as stores during the day and pubs at night. Our crawl started at An Conair Pub (nice place, but the music would be in two hours), and from there we hit the Small Bridge Bar (packed, very atmospheric), Lord Bakers for a little food, then Dick Mack’s (one of those double-duty, a leather shop by day and pub by night), O’Flaherty’s (where they had great music, and the man on the banjo turned out to be the owner), and Murphy’s (with great rebel songs!).

Friday, Nov 22, 2002

Friday we decided to spend it in town. We slept late, then drove down to Dingle and walked pretty much every single one of its streets up and down. The tide was low, and following Rick Steves’ suggestion, we decided to walk all the way to the mouth of the harbor. However, we had arrived in Ireland just a few days after the south had been experiencing a week-long period of heavy rains, and the mud was unbearable, more than once almost succeeding in stealing our shoes and socks! So we simply walked around Dingle, checking out the local art, and buying a few things: a traditional Irish wool hat for Danny; natural Irish soaps by Gallunac; a stoneware mug from Louis Mulcahy Pottery; “Twenty Years a-Growing”, a collection of stories by Blasket Islander Maurice O’Sullivan; and “Time to Sail”, a CD by local artist/teacher/musician at John Benny Moriarty’s Pub Eilis Kennedy.

Thursday, Nov 21, 2002

Ventry cove as seen from our room at Ballymore House.
Nov. 21, 2002

After a quick breakfast we set out on Dingle’s main attraction, the drive around the peninsula. Following the route outlined in our Rick Steves’ Ireland guidebook, we set out to see the wonders Dingle has to offer.

Yvette & Danny in Dingle.
Nov. 21, 2002

There are way too many interesting things in Dingle to point them out here; the landscape itself becomes your first must-see sight, so barely out of the town proper we pulled over to the side of the road (quite a feat, considering how small the road is) to drink in the beauty.

The fields of Dingle provide a great contrast to the vast sea.
Nov. 21, 2002

Danny surveys a “fairy mound” (off to the left) standing by the side
of the road. Behind, the Dingle Peninsula shows off her landscape.
Nov. 21, 2002

A “fairy mound” (the buried remains of a small Celtic ring fort) provided our first stop. From here we could survey the mound, the land and the sea. Since it was November, Dingle had a quiet starkness to it. Flanking the road on both sides are fuscia bushes that burst to life in the summer; in winter, they stand as silent sentinels of the main road.

Our next stop was Dun Beg (literally “Small Fort”: Dun=fort, Beg=small), a Celtic ring fort from around 500 B.C.E. that had been excavated due to the fact it would imminently be falling into the sea, give our take some centuries. Dun Beg consists of various concentric stone walls encircling a massive clochan (stone igloos, more on this a bit later) with only the cliff and the sea as a back door. The cliff has been eroding over time (not hard to imagine when you see the massive waves that break against the rocks every two seconds) and some day it will take the fort with it into the sea. Sad, but it provides us all an opportunity to see up close this amazing feat of ancient engineering.

Entryway into Dun Beg fort. The ancient Celts
were small people (the door is only about 5 1/2 feet tall).
Nov. 21, 2002

Celtic construction features no mortar. So pay close attention to those stones, because they have stuck together like that for some 2500 years only because of creative fitting and gravity. It really makes you realize that “ancient” does not mean “simple”; the techniques were different, but how many of our modern buildings will survive 2500 years from now?

Den Beg from the outside, looking in (that’s the entrance to the left and back).
Nov. 21, 2002

Dun Beg was astounding and humbling, and it was only one of the stops on our tour of the peninsula, so with one last look around the whole area (during which Danny managed to slip on the mud and fall down–you’ll see further on), we got back into our car and drove on, but not before capturing a vision of Ireland.

The rain comes and goes like fleeting thoughts,
leaving amazing rainbows behind as mementos of their visit.
Nov. 21, 2002

The rugged Dingle coastline.
The west of Ireland, so marked by cliffs like the ones above, seems to be proclaiming,
 ”Ireland ends here, not in a submissive slope, but in a defiant and sharp precipice.”
Nov. 21, 2002

From Dun Beg our next stop was the clochans. Scattered all round Dingle, clochans were little stone dwellings that looked like igloos, round and tapered on the outside and square on the inside, that served as houses for inhabitants of the peninsula, from the Celts to the Christian monks who found in Dingle a remote-enough place to live.

This particular group consisted of five clochans, including a double one, in various states of preservation. Two still had their roofs, and we were able to test their effectiveness as rain started to fall and we ran into one of them. While the wind blew outside, inside the clochan only the hint of a breeze was felt, water did not seep in except whatever blew in through the door (which would have been covered with a skin or something, and the temperature was noticeably warmer than outside; a cap stone and a small fire, and this clochan could go on the market as a “rustic” dwelling.

Yvette inside a clochan. Yvette is in the back room of
 the clochan, while Danny took the picture from the front room.
Nov. 21, 2002

Danny inside a clochan (note the mud
stain on the left leg from when he fell back in Dun Beg).
Nov. 21, 2002

We continued with our trip, headed towards Slea Head, but we had to stop for this shot. Dingle, and the area of Kerry in general, was one of the hardest hit areas during the famine. Dozens of ruined “famine” cottages dot the fields, mute witnesses to a horrible time in the history of this beautiful land. Note in the picture below the small size of the windows (mostly boarded) for the house; families during this time were taxed based on the size of their windows, so that families reduced them to the smallest possible size in order to conserve what little money they had. The ruins provide yet one more piece to the tapestry of great highs and great lows that is Ireland.

The ruins of a famine house. The barren hill behind has
been like that since the potato crop failed and the famine began;
up close one can see the rows of rotted potatoes still in the ground.
Nov. 21, 2002

We finally arrived at Slea Head, an observation point marked by a pullout, a giant crucifix (right behind us in the picture below) and a great view of the coast and Blasket Islands. Not quite the westernmost point in Dingle, it is nonetheless impressive. The waves were pounding in with amazing force, leaving a white foam that lingered, solidified, like a welcoming carpet. The mist shoots up like from a volcano, giving the whole area a hazy quality that makes you not doubt any story of faeries or selkies you may hear.

Yvette at the observation point at Slea Head
(yes, it was that cold and windy!). The Great Blasket Island looms in the back.
Nov. 21, 2002

The Blasket Islands are the last refuge of a traditional way of life virtually unknown in Ireland today. While the inhabitants were expelled from the island in the early part of the 20th century, some have returned and currently seek to go back to their traditional way of life. While in Dingle, be sure to pick up some of the books on stories from the Blasket Islands; it is Irish storytelling at its finest (see the Links section for more info).

A reflected rainbow at Dunquin Harbor.
Nov. 21, 2002

From Slea Head we continued on our tour, passing by Dunquin Harbor and Dunmore Head (the actual westernmost point in Ireland, and Europe), and snapping the picture above. Rainbows in Dingle are free and come by the dozens, appearing all around as if playing “peek-a-boo” with you. Once in a while, however, you’ll manage to catch one nice enough to let itself be photographed.

I can certainly see how this land snatched so many traveler’s hearts, and keeps them coming back for more.

Our tour took us next deeper into the peninsula (we had been skirting the coast up to now) to yet another archeological site, this one dating from (in different parts) the 6th-12th century, the Reasc Monastery. Once an ancient Celtic sacred place, the area was turned into a monastery in the early middle ages. Characteristically of Celtic Catholicism (as opposed to Roman Catholicism), there was no attempt here to subjugate or eliminate the earlier culture; instead the focus turns to synthesis, a combination of the two traditions, the newer Catholic one using the older Celtic elements to explain itself. This has given Ireland a unique flavor in world Catholicism, one Rome was not entirely happy with for centuries, in which Celtic legend melds with Christian belief in ways that preserve the ancient legacy without relegating it to the realm of stories of devils and demons, a boon when you consider the other option was Roman Catholicism, which tended to impose itself and eradicate any prior belief system.

This pillar stone at the Reasc Monastery shows an ancient Celtic
design capped by a Maltese-type cross, a perfect example of the
synthesis of Christian and pagan traditions characteristic of Irish Catholicism.
Nov. 21, 2002

From the Reasc Monastery our tour kept the “ancient Christianity” theme as we drove to the Gallarus Oratory. Built some 1300 years ago, this is one of Ireland’s best-preserved early-Christian churches. With your ticket you get a short history lesson on the church, enough to know what you are looking at. Note that it is made in the same way as Dun Beg was, meaning only well-fitted stones and no mortar. Gallarus is completely waterproof, a fact we got to corroborate while visiting (did we say it rains a lot in Ireland?), with only a little water getting in through the door and little window at the back, both of which would have been covered with skins or wood. The inside is spacious yet small, large enough for about 15 people perhaps; it is easy to imagine a monk or priest giving mass in this small, stone upturned boat, his few congregants huddled together in faithful reverence, asking God to protect them in this isolated corner of the known world. Truly a magnificent site to visit.

The Gallarus Oratory.
Nov. 21, 2002

From Gallarus we went to the last stop in our tour, Kilmarkedar Church, the old Norman center of worship for this part of the peninsula. Built around the 12th century, a great example of Irish Romanesque architecture, it sits in the middle of a still-in-use graveyard that has risen considerably in the last few centuries. While trying to find our way into the church yard, we stumbled upon an abandoned house just next to Kilmarkedar, but we didn’t take any pictures of it. It seemed to be from about the same time as the church, perhaps a house for the priest and other church staff.

Ogham stone at Kilmarkedar Church. Stories say that locals
would seal pacts by touching fingers through the hole on the stone,
while standing on the bones of their ancestors.
Nov. 21, 2002

In all honesty, with the sun falling, and the bright orange light of the late afternoon casting strange shadows, Kilmarkedar was creepy. We went inside but there was a strange vibe in the air, and after feeling a few tingles that one definitely does not want to feel while in a graveyard (oh, like fingers crawling down your back), we bid Kilmarkedar adieu and got back to town before night fell (at 4:30 pm!!!). That night we went out to eat something in Dingle, and to talk about our wonderful tour. So far we had spent one full day in Dingle, and we would have been happy to move into a house and call this corner of Ireland home.

Earlier today my Play-By-eMail D&D group finished Halls of the Minotaur, the opening adventure in our Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign, West to the Empire. After 4 days adventuring, and pulling a dungeon crawl first for me: actually getting out of the dungeon to regroup and going back to the village to resupply, today we finally arrived at the chamber of the minotaur lord, Toth-ror. It was frightening and dangerous, but we won the initiative, and we delivered righteous justice upon this scourge of the weak. It was especially poignant for me, since I am playing a character who was the squire of a knight killed by the minotaur, so that allowed me to put in some roleplaying bits that helped me develop this once-pregen stock character into my personal avatar in the game.

Kudos go to Mark Gedak for running an awesome game, a game that understood the medium in which it was developing, and took advantage of those, a game that was as much good ole dungeon crawl as it was a challenging excercise in cooperation and focus. Thanks go to my fellow players also for an excellent time and for the effort put in the game as well as in developing your characters (even if the road you took for development makes me groan from time to time).

We will be putting together adventure journals of this adventure, and I’ll be sure to share it here as well.

Now, more adventure awaits, and I am ready for it.

Wednesday, Nov 20, 2002

Yvette in front of the Hillgrove B&B. I can only imagine those bushes in
full bloom in the spring (our rental car is the one hiding behind the VW beetle).
Nov. 20, 2002

Irish mornings are amazing, full of mist and cold, evoking a sense of magic. We gathered up our stuff, had a wonderful breakfast, and set out for our next destination, the Rock of Cashel, on our way to Dingle.

As we drove down the road down the Tipperary plains, the Rock of Cashel jumped out at us from behind a small hill, all majestic and ancient. Local legends say the Devil took a bite out of the nearby Slieve Bloom mountains and spat it out in disgust right in the middle of the Tipperary plains after seeing St. Patrick getting ready to build a great church, thus creating the promontory upon which Cashel of the Kings sits.