Ireland through the ages

Our trip to Ireland was, for us, a trip through the ages. It all began 5000 years ago, that's before the pyramids and Stonehenge when the first farmers settled Ireland. These farmers built, besides their homes constructions called today "Irish Passage Tombs" and we were lucky enough to be able to see inside one - we have never, and will probably never again, be inside something so old. The passage tomb is a mound on the ground -looks a bit like a little hill really - which was built of stone to house the ashes of loved ones and their spirits. Newgrange was discovered in the mid 1700's by the then owner of the farm who needed stone to improve and build new roads on his land and he thought that the mound would make an excellent quarry. He was right, but after a few digs he soon realised what he had found (or at least knew it was something quite special) and stopped the quarrying. It was left untouched for a couple of hundred years, and during that time some graffiti artists had a good time (signatures dated 1874), trees grew over it, the stones collapsed a bit on the outside and then the Irish government stepped in around the 1960's. The trees were cut and the outside stone wall (white limestone) was reconstructed using reverse-engineering ie they put the stones back where they thought they should live. The inside has stayed in tact through out time without a single leak (considering the rainfall in Ireland that is no mean achievement). Newgrange sits on 97 large stones placed approximately like a circle. We wandered along a very narrow passage way (Harry nearly managed to get stuck!!) to the middle which is in the shape of a cross, each corner having a basin for the ashes and looked up at a roof built up with layers of stone often carved with circular patterns (representing life, death and after life - or perhaps the 3 passage tombs Knowth, Newgrange and Dowth all within a small area -our guess is as good as the guides I imagine). The most intriguing part of Newgrange is the doorway, above it is an opening - called the roof box - which lets light in for 5-6 days a year during the winter solstice. They reconstructed this using electric light for us to see the effect. The light comes through the tunnel and shines all the way to the back of the chamber. Because the earth is slowly changing on its axis the light is now about 18 inches from the back and it is expected to take another 20,000 years for it to return to its original place. If you are lucky enough to win the annual competition (only 50 winners out of approximately 35,000 entries last year) you can go during the solstice to see the impact. Impressive enough to be on our WOW list.

1. Mt Kau Kau, Wellington
2. Cathedral, Milan
3. Cemetery, Milan
4. Newgrange, Ireland
5. Quantock Head, England
6. Waffles, Brussels
7. Food, Gdansk
8. Tower, Glasgow
9. Cycling in the Snow, Amsterdam

Walking the cliffs of Dover, England

And so we move on down through the time tunnel - to around the 1300's - some 4,300 years later. Slane Hill, not far from Newgrange sits proudly on top of a hill looking over the countryside. It is a derelict abbey and castle (the castle was very dark and quite depressing and I could easily imagine that some not very nice things happened there). Around the same time but to the south of the country the Norman Monks in another abbey were doing some practical works. They lived near Hook Head and after I guess a few years of rescuing and burying ship wreck victims they decided to help build and man a lighthouse - funded I think by the Earl of Pembroke. It is now the oldest operational lighthouse in the world and besides all the normal things we've been told about lighthouses was quite exceptional in that it was firstly fired by coal, had large rooms to house firstly the monks and the light house keepers and their families (quite a squash I think but comfortable for say 3 monks at a time). Out buildings would have offered some privacy and a bit more space. The coastline is rugged with low lying rocks that have eroded to make caves for seals to live when they aren't playing and fishing in the sea. Another few hundred years (1800's) on and we landed at New Ross not far from the lighthouse. The farming region was home to a number of poverty stricken families (due to the potato famine - but even with potatoes I think life was a bit grim) who left for America in emigrant ships - some were lucky to have their fare paid for by benevolent landlords while others saved hard for their £5 fare (the cost of an acre of land). The boats were small, overcrowded (under 14's counted as half a person and babies as nothing but both had to share adult rations). Steerage passengers had limited rations and fresh water (3.5lb biscuit, 3.5lb of flour, oatmeal or rice, 3 quarts of water, 1lb potatoes per day). It must have been similar to when my grandmother left for New Zealand from England in the late 1880's. On one of these trips from Ireland John F Kennedy's great grandfather emigrated to America on the Dunbrody. (I couldn't help thinking that in the 1960's Ireland celebrated one of their own becoming President of America and just recently another poor country Kenya has celebrated a similar victory). We drove past the grandfathers house (small, stone cottage) and the arboretum named after him and wandered through the replica of the Dunbrody. We could only begin to imagine the appalling conditions and how courageous these people were (or was it because anything was better than what they had in Ireland?). We were the only ones on the tour and when we arrived at the visitors centre (which incidentally the Irish are really good at hiding. We came across three towns where the arrows pointed us towards a tourist centre, which either took us in a circle through the town to a nonexistent building or into a river. We did find one but it was closed on Fridays). Anyway, New Ross's tourist centre was open and we bought our tickets to visit the Dunbrody. We were told to wait in the shop until it was time for the tour - two seconds later the man serving us moved in front of the counter and announced that the "2.30 tour of the Dunbrody was about to begin" in a loud serious voice. It was quite funny as we were the only ones in the shop and on the tour. While looking through the steerage conditions I was thinking of an article I had recently read in the paper where the EU have changed the conditions around the sale of fruit and vegetables. 30% of food is wasted in the EU countries due to the shapes, size, weight and look that fruit and veg must have if sold to customers. You haven't until this week been able to sell, and we haven't been able to buy curvy cucumbers, crooked carrots, or knobbly fruit. There are still rules though, a small carrot must weight at least 8 grams, a large one must weigh 50 grams, a cauliflower must not be less than 11cm in diameter. I will begin to carry a tape measure and scales when we go to the supermarket to ensure we are buying 'legal' food. During the tour we watched a video about the times, the building of the replica and it finished with JFK quoting the famous saying by George Bernard Shaw (an Irishman)

"Some men see things as they are and say why - I dream things that never were and say why not."
I found some other sayings of George's which I thought were quite interesting

"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton. You may as well make it dance."

"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them."

Belvedere House was also built around the same time, but we travelled back to central Ireland to visit the house and gardens. The house was a big square box, with not a lot going for it on the inside except some cooking hints in the kitchen. "An economical recipe called for half a pound of butter to fry 12 eggs". While some people were so poor they left for unknown lands Robert Rochford built Belvedere as a hunting lodge in 1740. He became particularly famous as he imprisoned his second wife for 31 years as he thought she was having an affair with his brother. He must have been quite a spiteful man as he built a folly 'the jealous wall' to hide the view from his house to that lived in by the younger brother (far grander and bigger than his own). The wall, is a masterpiece of design but unfortunately the younger brothers house has been left to decay with the current owners removing the roof and leaving it to the elements. We had read a little bit about the place while looking for things to do on the internet, but didn't realise that it is home to many of the locations in the Narnia film. We had great fun walking into the wardrobe, visiting the ice house, the octagonal gazebo, the broken table, the Gothic Arch, badgers house and following the paths around Lough Ellen. The garden, had probably passed its best - winter has come to Ireland just a little bit faster than England - as many of the trees were leafless. One of the statues in the garden was not related to either the Rochforts or to Narnia - but was the story of a little bear Agu who travelled with a future owner of the house Howard-Bury (can't remember his first name) during their expeditions of the Tai Shan mountains in Central Asia. Agu came back to England with the travellers and spent his senior years in a local zoo while the travellers later attempted to climb Mount Everest (but didn't make it cos we know who did make it first). They did manage to climb 23000 feet of the mountain in 1921. But Howard-Bury has a much bigger claim to fame - his expedition was the first to see those very large human footprints that belonged to the Abominable Snowman.

And that brings us to the current day. We travelled around lots of countryside (getting lost on the Wicklow Mountains, in the dark and mist with deer running out onto the road was an experience we would rather forget - we never did find that pub we were looking for - the Johnny Fox the highest pub in Ireland and "located snugly in the small rural town of Glencullen where winding roads take you along a network of panoramic byways" and where we had been recommended to go to for a meal and to enjoy Irish music!). We travelled through little towns (Carlow, Kells, Fethard, Cavan, Slane) and slowly through toll roads due to extensive road works and saw lots of little thatched cottages, terraced stone houses, old mansions and castles. I read somewhere that "Irish towns have an inviting cosiness, because their size and human scale make you feel immediately at home" so how come we got stuck having a coffee in a huge mall where the toilets weren't marked and there was very little seating in the food hall?. We went to a beautiful long, golden sandy Ballinesker beach to find that 'Saving Private Ryan' was filmed there - or the bit of the film about landing in Omaha Beach in Normandy was. So, we'll now have to get the dvds of that film and Narnia out so we can say "we've been there" throughout the movies. Ireland is now becoming expensive for film makers and it looks like unless there are tax breaks for the film industry there may be no more filming shoots. We found that it does add another dimension to visiting when you discover a film or a famous person has been there. Anyway, Loftus Hall caught our attention on the way to Hook Head, a large lonely building that looked very ghostly. From the lighthouse it looked even ghostlier in the mist and the guide confirmed it is definitely a home for ghosts - don't know what will happen to them when the new owners either build a hotel and golf course. We'll have to wait and see. We visited places like Portlaoise (walking tours outlined on the internet we have discovered are a bit useless when they describe and pinpoint places that no longer exist - like the Town Hall - but the gothic railway station was interesting and so were the little boutique shops). Carlow (where George Bernard Shaw lived)was another town where we picnic'd on the sides of the Barrow river (Ireland's second longest river) to the interest of the hungry ducks and swans. We visited the whisky factory at Tullamore where Irish Mist and Tullamore Dew. "Give the man his Dew" a well known saying actually comes from the brewers name D E Williams). The town has a bit of a chequered history - in the 1800's some people wanted to impress their visitors and took them up in a hot air balloon. The wind blew the balloon into the thatched cottages and over 100 houses were destroyed.

Friday night we experienced Christmas in Dublin with many other kiwis who had come to watch the All Black game (not sure if there were many left in NZ actually). They couldn't believe that we had flown to Dublin and didn't have a seat in Croke Park with our name on it for the next day - we couldn't either but by the time we had realised they were playing all the tickets were sold out. We did watch the game in a little restaurant in Drogheda and many of the customers and staff made comments as the game went on. Drogheda was home to Patrick Bronte - dad to Emily, Charlotte and Anne). Dublin is a great place to spend a night - especially Temple Bar-, and we dined at a Irish pub with some Guiness -a NZ flag flying outside before joining others in an evening of Irish music and some more Guiness. The place was so crowded they employed a person to keep the stairwells free to reduce fire risk but we luckily found a little window sill we could perch on while listening to the music and the NZ accent all around us. We said hello to someone with an All Black tee shirt on who described himself as a 'Taranaki boy' and said 'No way' when we said we didn't have tickets - first time I have heard that saying since we have been here.The lights were fabulous in the city - all decked out for Christmas -Nollais shona duit - we assume Gaelic for Merry or Happy Christmas. The Christmas tree below had a light sequence of blue, green and red and we took a video but we can't figure out how to turn it 90 degrees so the tree is the right way up!! One day, we'll try it again. The windows in Brown Thomas - a store I likened to Kirkcaldies - were not quite the normal Christmas theme more like Christmas across the world. Just to make us feel at home we saw a leaflet for a 'Kia Ora' Mini farm which invited groups and birthday parties to enjoy farm life in Ireland.

And lastly our stories of getting to Ireland in the first place. Ryan Air has been flouting new EU rules by not having transparent pricing (we always said they would be hauled into the court room in NZ) eg some fares exclude taxes, insurance is on an opt-out basis, bags are only allowed to be 15 kilos, hand luggage 10 kg and if you don't check in on line and you only have hand luggage you are charged an extra £4 each - airport tax. You only find some of this out when you are at the last stages of booking, or at the airport. Being kiwis (and all other non-EU passport holders have the same probelm) we can't check in online. So, we arrived with our bags (yes, they did fit in the metal frame used to check size - but only just - at least they didn't get stuck like the person in front who had a great time trying to get his bag out) and they did weigh 9.5 kg - less than the regulation 10 - and then had to leave the queue to pay the tax at another counter and then go back to get our boarding pass. The flight was a late one leaving at 10.00 at night and when we got to Dublin we thought - great we will be through the queue while all the EU passport holders had to queue. No way!! We were wrong - there were South Africans, Brazilians, Americans, East Europeans, Asians, Kiwis and it took ages as each passport was diligently checked presumably not to let unwanted and illegal's in. It took ages and we didn't get to the hotel until about 12.30 in the morning.