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Wednesday,
Nov 20, 2002
We arrived in Dingle
at around 6:00 pm, and it was dark as midnight by then. A tip:
try to avoid getting into the Dingle peninsula after dark (the
roads contort in ways unknown to humanity) and when traveling
from Cashel to Dingle, avoid the Mallow road (especially if it
has been raining). We found our B&B, Ballymore
House, and no sooner we had walked in the door, our host,
Maurice, had hot coffee and cake ready for us in front of a
really nice peat fire. Ahh...
Dingle was to be
honeymoon part of our honeymoon trip; four days of bliss,
disconnected from the world, with only the sea and the land
(and the sheep, all 500,000 of them!) as our companions. Our
room had a view of Ventry cove, but it was dark and raining
when we arrived, so we couldn't see anything. All that changed
in the morning, when the sun welcomed us to this remote corner
of Ireland.
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
Next: Dingle, next page (2)
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