SherWords

Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy

2011-12-24T18:25:00.001-08:00

(Please click on the image to see it as it's meant to be seen.)

Four Days Off the Grid

2011-12-04T18:25:00.000-08:00

The forced-air furnace doesn't work without electricity, so Ft. Harrington's only heat for the past four days was from the wood-burning stove in our barn of a living room at the far end of the structure.

When our gasoline-powered generator died last year, we decided not to go to the expense of repairing or replacing it. A long time had passed since there had been a power outage longer than a couple of hours here in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and we figured that PG&E had beefed up the grid sufficiently that the expense wasn't really justified.

Wrong.

The wind started to pick up a bit around midday last Wednesday, the last day of November, while I was at work. Diane tells me that the power went out here in the mountains at about 3:30, and we were a little surprised that it was still out when I got home after dark. We settled in for a pleasant evening by candlelight, warmed by the wood-burning stove in the living room.

Diane and Kelsey by candle- and stove-light.

The "pleasant" part of that stopped at about midnight, as December came in like a dragon. My friend Paul, the meteorology guy at our college, told me the next day that winds had topped hurricane force at the tops of several mountains around the Bay Area that night. While not that strong down here in Ft. Harrington's hollow, it was plenty strong enough. The sound of small branches hitting the roof was almost nonstop for a while in the wee hours, and the characteristic rifleshot-crack of redwood limbs separating from their trees, followed by the whoosh as they fell their hundred feet or more through other branches, followed by the thud (or worse) when the widowmakers hit the ground punctuated the night.

25 feet long and having fallen about 100 feet, this "widowmaker" redwood branch fell in about the best place it could have, causing only minor damage to a grape arbor (at left) and the rose garden area (at its far end).

Things had settled down a bit by dawn, and it was evident that we had been very, very lucky, as had all of our immediate neighbors. While there was lots of damage to peripheral structures, nobody's house was crushed. (At last report, though, at least four homes were destroyed by falling trees elsewhere in these mountains.)

Crunched deck railing.

The electrical power grid had been devastated overnight. Both main lines into the San Lorenzo Valley, one up from Santa Cruz to the south and the other over the mountains from the Bay Area to the west, were so badly damaged in wilderness areas that crews and equipment had to be brought in by helicopter to essentially rebuild large sections of them. It took nearly four days for power to be restored here; the Fort was off the grid for 93 hours and 15 minutes, ending at 12:45 this afternoon.

Old Kelsey and I keep each other warm. (Photo by Diane Harrington.)

The lack of a generator made things a bit more inconvenient and uncomfortable than we would have liked, but we mostly feel like we dodged a bullet -- or an RPG -- or two, and know how lucky we were. The two big "widowmaker" redwood branches that fell on our property only damaged a deck railing and a grape arbor -- far less damage than they would have worked if less considerately placed. Also, this was a dry wind, not a rain storm. If it had been a typical wet winter storm, with the ground soaked, that fierce wind would have toppled whole redwoods, not just pieces of them. That nightmare would have been just horrendous -- but it didn't happen.

Seven minutes before the power came back on: Jax (lower) and Cooper (upper) keep the old man warm and vice versa. We didn't keep the fire going except in the evenings, and -- while not cold by northern December standards -- the temperature in the house during the day was generally in the upper 40s and lower 50s Fahrenheit.

No, it didn't happen this time. But it will. And you can bet we'll have a generator when it does.

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Old Dog Makes Another Comeback

2011-11-25T17:44:00.000-08:00

Kelsey and Jax this evening. Note the shaved places on Kelsey's forelegs: they were for intravenous ports' insertion during his time under general anesthesia three days ago.

About a year and a half ago, we had a cancer scare with old Kelsey-the-Dog. Further testing ultimately showed that the scary initial test results were due to something considerably less dire.

This week we had another big "whew" episode with our stalwart friend and guardian of Fort Harrington. A couple of weeks before, he had developed a bit of a yeast infection in both ears, and his veterinarian put him on a course of topical antibiotics for ten days. By the time we took him in for a follow-up, it was clear that he had lost all hearing in both ears.

That follow-up visit with the vet was three days ago, the Tuesday morning before Thanksgiving. The infection had cleared up completely -- but his ears were hurting him so badly that a standard visual inspection proved impossible, even with me and a burly vet tech gently but firmly trying to keep him immobile. Since he had recently had a routine blood panel that showed good kidney function, we decided to put him under general anesthesia to try to see if the cause of the pain and deafness could be ascertained.

He made it through the anesthesia well (though it ultimately took him two days to shake the unsteadiness and grogginess) -- but no progress was made on diagnosis. The vet took a head x-ray while he was unconscious, and made arrangements for consultation with a radiologist next week.

I picked him up on Wednesday morning, and the vet was convinced -- as was I -- that his deafness was complete and permanent. We had a short conversation about coping strategies for living with a deaf, aged dog, and I took him home. I made a brief post about his condition on Facebook before heading off to work.

When I came home after work that night, the poor guy was shaky and miserable. Diane said that she had tried all sorts of test noises during the day, and he hadn't responded visibly to any of them. I took him outside to do his business in the darkened front yard.

While we were out, someone up the hollow whooped and hollered at something, the noise echoing down the draw. I glanced at Kelsey, and saw he had his head up, alert in his standard vigilant-alert pose. He was ahead of me and to my right, about ten yards separating us. I clapped my hands once, hard.

His head whipped around. The wrong way, but it whipped around nonetheless.

That night, we continued making noises, testing him and confusing the spaniels mightily. Some things he seemed to notice, most not.

Thanksgiving day was a different story. Hourly, it seemed, his responses to sounds increased. By evening, he seemed to be almost completely back to normal, and today, "Black Friday," the recovery seems to be complete. Not only that, but the pain is gone, too.

We have another appointment with his vet tomorrow, and it will be interesting to hear what she has to say. My completely unprofessional guess is this: he's a geriatric dog (the chart on the vet's wall says that a rough human equivalent age to his is 85), so maybe his body just doesn't recuperate as quickly now after things like infections as it used to. Whatever the reason, he's shown his resilience once again, and we had a much happier Thanksgiving for it.

He's still hard of listening sometimes, but he's always been like that. I think it's the Akita in him; they have a reputation of hard-headedness.

Two Astronomers and the Forest of the Iroquois

2011-10-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

I had a hard week at work last week. It was nothing particularly epochal or even unusual -- just a confluence of typical trials, round budget pegs to be pounded into square bureaucratic holes and the like. Friday's afternoon wasn't so much like a liberation as it was like a temporary reprieve, knowing, as I do, that Monday comes soon after, and verbal cheese like "Student Learning Outcomes" will, again, become hash to be taken seriously.

I stopped by the grocery store on my way home, depleted and stone-brained dull. As I pushed my cart into line, something in the soundtrack of the audio pablum of Safeway's muzak caught my attention. By the time I reached the front of the line, my skin was all a-goosebump, and I had to concentrate on stopping tears lest the checker judge me to be dangerous.

"Sailing to Philadelphia" was playing as I waited to pay for my wheat chex.

The song is a hauntingly beautiful duet by Mark Knopfler and James Taylor. In it, they reprise an imaginary discussion between two Englishmen in the 18th century who took on a surveying job in the new world: surveyor Jeremiah Dixon and journeyman astronomer Charles Mason. Their "Mason-Dixon Line" marking the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, between America's South and North, even today has a greater societal impact than a geographic one -- but Jeremiah and Charlie couldn't have known what their line would demark in the larger world of future politics. They only knew that they were headed into a wilderness.

I am, personally, a product of their divide. My father's family is from the North, my mother's from the South, and both sides go back several generations, and both sides sacrificed sons in battles with the other's sons.

I am also, like Charlie, an astronomer of little note but with great appreciation for the science and its beauty. The roots of that appreciation lie in my younger eyes' view of dark, sparkling, starry skies in upstate New York, afforded by breaks between the trees in its forest, the forest of the Iroquois.

So this verse, sung by Taylor as I fumbled for my Safeway Discount Card at checkout, damn near broke me to tears:

You're a good surveyor, Dixon,
But I swear you'll make me mad.
The West will kill us both
You gullible Geordie lad.
You talk of liberty --
How can America be free?
A Geordie and a baker's boy
In the forest of the Iroquois?

I grew up in the Forest of the Iroquois, and might not have without Jeremiah's and Charlie's efforts. And then I went on to be an astronomer.

Sherwood in the Forest of the Iroquois, 1961. Photo by Lynn Harrington.

The Safeway checker wouldn't have understood that I was fumbling for a card with Charles Mason's name on it, so I didn't tell her. I just paid cash for my wheat chex, and then drove off toward my home in the Forest of the Ohlone.

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Forty-Five

2011-10-01T04:05:00.000-07:00

Doug Harrington (1 October, 1966 - 14 November, 2006) stalking crayfish at his great-aunts' house in Upstate New York, summer, 1975.

That's his brother Adam's hair, fuzzy in the left foreground. Adam has put together a celebration of his brother's life in video-slide form and posted it on YouTube today. Please go visit, if you have a few minutes to spare.

Ireland Revisited: Afterword

2011-09-20T16:18:00.000-07:00

412 years ago, my 10th-great grandfather, John Harrington, included the following in a report to his godmother the Queen on his recent deployment to Ireland:

I have informed myself reasonably well of the whole state of the country, by observation and conference: so I count the knowledge I have gotten here worth more than half the three hundred pounds this journey hath cost me.

If I ever meet Sir John, I'll tell him that I got the other 150 pounds' worth.

I'm not going to be as bold as he was with my assessment after two deployments, though. While I think this pair of Harringtons is now reasonably well informed about certain aspects of Ireland that we knew nothing about before, we are also well enough informed to know that the "whole state" of any country, even one as small as that one, is beyond us.

Our first reconnaissance is done, though, that much is certain. What comes next will be very different from exploration of geography -- I doubt very much that any future visits will lend themselves to a daily account or mapping. Instead, what I think lies ahead for Ireland and me is some in-depth research on some very specific topics. The precise form of what comes out of that research will depend in large part on what's uncovered in it, but I know who its central figure will be, and he's not one I would have expected before this second trip to Birr.

Laurence Parsons, Fourth Earl of Rosse, may not have been a riveting intellectual giant like his father or a reckless technological and industrial giant like his younger brother, but by virtue of time and position he ties together a parade of fascinating personalities and a sea change in the way we all live our lives. His time spanned from the first automobile tragedy to the runup to WWI's mechanistic horror, his astronomy bridged from the gentility of a country gentlemen's avocation to the first mountaintop professional observatory run by a modern university, the geography of his story spans from Birr to Santa Cruz. The next steps in research are to try to get a sense of the man himself beyond his brusque diary entries and to fill in more details concerning his week in Northern California in 1891 -- including trying to crack the mystery of those four blank diary pages.

As concerns the latter, I'm anxiously awaiting the re-opening of the Lick Observatory Archives at the University of California, Santa Cruz, just down the road from my home here in Boulder Creek. The archives have been unavailable for many months due to facilities renovation, but should reopen before the end of the year, and I'm anxious to see if I can find more about the Fourth Earl's interactions with the Lick staff of the time, including the Observatory's blustery (and largely unpopular) first Director, Edward Singleton Holden. I know a little something about that particular cast of characters already, having worked as an editor and archivist for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, an organization founded by Holden in 1889.

As concerns a sense of the man himself, I suspect that will require getting dusty in Armagh and Trinity College, Dublin for starters. The archives at Birr, fascinating as they are, primarily show only one end of conversations: letters received. Letters from Lord Rosse to the astronomers at Armagh and writings of his during his long tenure as Chancellor of Trinity College should help give more insight than his short diary entries do.

This will be fun.

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A few footnotes:

A big difference:

The biggest difference to us between our 2006 visit and this one four years later is not a hard call: it's the ease of getting around Ireland on the roadways. The reach of "dual carriageway" superhighways from Dublin now radiates to all of the island's other major cities, and no place in Ireland is more than a couple of hours by car on good, modern roads from Dublin, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Cork, or Waterford. It is as though all of the US had made the transition from 1930s roads to a complete modern interstate network in less than a decade, and the effects on the character of Ireland will be profound and permanent. The network was just in its finishing stages in August, 2010. The following video clip shows eight minutes of a drive along the M7/N7 toward Limerick, and gives a pretty good flavor of the magnitude of the transition. The first third is along a new superhighway (the M7), the middle third is along a new connecting road from the superhighway to a village, and the final third is along the N7. The connecting road is typical of new non-superhighway roads which have also proliferated across the island, and its breadth and clear sight lines bear little resemblance to the narrow, hedgerow-walled roads they replace. The N7 from Birdhill westward in the last part of the clip is typical of what constituted a major national highway during our 2006 visit.

(The banter between Diane and me at the roundabout refers to a joke I had cracked during a visit with Lord and Lady Rosse about how American tourists might be miffed that the Irish seem to be intent on not remaining picturesquely impoverished and quaint.)

Photos in a trice:

A link to this has been posted on this blog before, but it's sensible to repeat it here: all of the 700-plus photos in the albums of this trip over on sharrington.net can be seen in rapid-fire on this YouTube video in only six minutes:

Plans gang agley:

Back in July of 2010, this SherWords post invited readers to hold on to a map of our intended travels to compare with what actually happened. Just in case you've lost yours, here are the two maps -- planned on the left and actual on the right.

Evidently, a major ankle injury tends to sag one's peregrinations down and to the right.

Which leads to this closing note: I knew before that my wife is a tough cookie who doesn't let a little pain stop her. I just didn't quite appreciate the magnitude of her grit. If it had been me taking a tumble off that stile in County Antrim, I can guarantee you that a lot more of our days would have looked like August 26.

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Click here to go back to the beginning of the series.

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Click here to go to the photos on sharrington.net.
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Ireland Revisited: Across the Western Ocean

2011-09-07T06:53:00.000-07:00

Day 35 of 35: Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones stayed in the room next to ours the night before our departure. He's 19 days older than I am, but looks 19 years older, at least, and I guess that's what comes of packing so much fun into your life. No rock star shenanigans that night: the only noise coming from that direction was the occasional knock on his door by what we figured was his manager or agent, shouting "Ronnie! You have to be at [xyz] in [abc] minutes!" Carlos Santana didn't look like he needed such shepherding, but, then again, Carlos is a whole month younger than Ronnie and me. We didn't bother Mr. Wood beyond simply nodding to him as we passed him in the lobby.

Homeward bound:

To the airport, early morning. To American immigration (which no other foreign country has at the Dublin airport.) To Aer Lingus. To Chicago. To United to San Francisco, to Adam, to the pickup truck, to home.

US presence in Dublin's airport. (This is the "old" passenger terminal; the new one opened just a few weeks later and incorporates the most comprehensive US Customs and Immigration station outside the Western Hemisphere.)

Aer Lingus's "St. Aoife" at the Dublin Airport as we awaited departure. This was the aircraft that brought us from Chicago to Dublin weeks before – but here it was about to take people to Boston; ours was to be the next flight out after that.

The trip home was largely uneventful, unlike last time, and gave no opportunity for a dramatic end to this narrative.

And that's fine by us.

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All of the sets of additional images from this trip can be accessed through this index page over on sharrington.net.
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Next and last -- Afterword (to be posted after a few days' break)
Previous: September 6, 2010 -- Dublin in the Rain
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Dublin in the Rain

2011-09-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

Day 34 of 35: Monday, September 6, 2010

Our last full day in Ireland this time was a very rainy one, spiked by the obligation to return our rental car by the middle of the afternoon. Fortified by our experience on Saturday, we braved Dublin’s traffic by driving into the city in the morning, parking in a garage near Saint Stephen’s Green. We left the big, expensive camera back in the hotel because of the rain… and Diane’s little Canon point-and-shoot didn’t work well, so we have very few photos of this day. It’s just as well; we were so sad to leave that the mist and the gray and the drizzle fit our mood better than any photo could capture.

Park Lake in the rain, St. Stephen's Green.

Sherwood (blue jacket) shopping on Nassau Street.

Back in the hotel, starting to pack.

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The full set of slideshows from this trip will be linked at the end of tomorrow's installment.
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Next: September 7, 2010 -- Across the Western Ocean
Previous: September 5, 2010 -- The Mountains of Mourne
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: The Mountains of Mourne

2011-09-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

Day 33 of 35: Sunday, September 5, 2010

Drifting in the rain on Carlingford Lough.

Postponed to last by circumstance, we finally drove up from Dublin toward Belfast and swerved right at Newry in County Down (UK) into the Mountains of Mourne. Diane had wanted to see this storied part of Ulster for a long time, and we had initially planned to go there early on in our trip, but circumstances kept pushing us back toward the end.

The day was wetly gray, and seemed played in a minor key. As we drove, we kept turning the car's radio on to get news of something we knew nothing about a few weeks before: the All-Ireland Hurling Final being played in Croke Park, Dublin. The match on this day, roughly the Superbowl of the GAA, was between Tipperary and perennial powerhouse Kilkenny. Both county colors -- black and amber for Kilkenny, blue and gold for Tipp -- had been on prominent display in flags and pennants all over both counties throughout our travels, and we couldn't help but get interested in what was going on. Tipp won in an upset.

In the Mountains of Mourne.

Southward-looking panorama from near Hilltown, County Down.

After a misty ramble through County Down’s highlands, we drove down southward toward the coast at Kilkeel:

… and then westward and northward along Carlingford Lough back toward Newry and the border, then back to the Republic. (Despite the sound of its name, Carlingford Lough is not a lake, but rather an inlet of the Irish Sea. It forms the easternmost part of the border between counties Louth and Down, between Leinster and Ulster, and thus at present between Ireland and the U.K.)

Deep water port equipment at Greenore, on the south side of Carlingford Lough, in the Republic.

Along our drive back through the rain to Dublin, we took a detour toward the border near Dundalk, looking for a settlement named Drumboat for our friend Ronnie Peterson, part of whose ancestry comes from there. We were not successful in locating the place, and rain was coming down so hard by then that we abandoned the search after wandering into Northern Ireland once again, but we know where to look next time!

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More images from this rainy day in the mountains and around Carlingford Lough are available here.
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Next: September 6, 2010 -- Dublin in the Rain
Previous: September 4, 2010 -- Moving Day
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Moving Day

2011-09-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

Day 32 of 35: Saturday, September 4, 2010

Moving day. Sighing day.

Heading out the door, September 4th.

We left the Bothy today, headed back to Dublin and ultimately to Boulder Creek, and, as four years ago, sadness hung around us like a mist. We love this place.

Ready to go.

The day was taken up with the now-short drive (thanks to the new M7 motorway) to Dublin and checking back in to the Radisson Blu hotel at the airport (or “rad-ISS-un SASS” in the funky dialect and outdated business vocabulary of our satnav’s speech imitation routine.) Rain began to pick up pick up as we left Birr, and intensified as we approached Dublin. The weather had almost precisely coordinated with the calendar in switching from high-tourist season in August to September’s lower expectations. It felt comforting, in a way.

Not a rocky road.

As we approached Dublin, we decided to drive into the center of the city instead of using the ring-road M50 superhighway to avoid it. We wanted to see, on this weekend day, if driving there would be comfortable. We still had two full days ahead of us before our flight home, and wanted to spend one of those days in the city; driving would be a more efficient use of our time for that than the bus would, but only if we thought we could tolerate it.

We're glad we did drive through Dublin on this rainy Saturday. It was a nice way of sightseeing, and traffic was light. From our experience, Dublin isn't a particularly harrowing city to drive in, as long as one is accustomed to driving on the left (as we were by then.) In fact, it's pretty pleasant compared to large American city centers.

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More images from September 3 and 4 are available here.
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Next: September 5, 2010 -- The Mountains of Mourne
Previous: September 3, 2010 -- Last Full Day in Birr
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Last Full Day in Birr

2011-09-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

Day 31 of 35: Friday, September 3, 2010

Hornbeam hallway in the Cloisters, Millennium Gardens, Birr Castle Demesne

Our last full day in the Demesne was mostly spent in the Bothy packing and cleaning; Diane's ankle was too sore from yesterday's trudging up and down the Hill of Uisneach to do much beyond that.

I took a last early-morning walk, including a visit to the brick bridge over the Little Brosna and, of course, to see our friend near her new palace.

The annual trimming of the Millennium Gardens' hedges had been completed the day before, and they looked mysterious in the early morning mist (top) and grand in the later morning’s full sunshine.

In mid-morning, I went over to the Castle, where I had invited myself to take snapshots of our host and hostess. Lady Rosse offered to take a photo of me wherever I wanted; I chose the “Yellow Room,” where we all had a great time two Fridays ago. Especially given the pioneering achievements in photography by a previous Countess of Rosse, I am tickled to have a photo of myself in Birr Castle taken by the current Lady Rosse. (The fact that it's a really nice picture helps a lot, too!)

A count, a countess, and a no-account.

They are delightful people, and we’ll miss them.

I finished the benches’ panoramas project with views from two near the castle, favorably illuminated in evening’s sidelong sunlight. Along the way, I took one more look at the reconstructed Leviathan, still not operational but still a stirring sight for those who know its story.

When we arrived in early August, the castle's ivy was all a lush green. As we prepare to leave, its walls are well along the way to changing their seasonal wardrobe.

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More images from this day will be available in a two-day set that will be linked at the end of tomorrow's installment.
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Next: September 4, 2010 -- Moving Day
Previous: September 2, 2010 -- The Hill of Uisneach
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: The Hill of Uisneach

2011-09-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

Day 30 of 35: Thursday, September 2, 2010

Uisneach Denizens

This was to be our last true vacation day headquartered in the Bothy; Friday, our actual last full day, would be taken up mostly with packing to leave early the following morning. Today broke with clear skies and a light mist on the ground.

Two-panel panorama of the Bothy in the early light of September 2nd.

After I took a brief trip to the library and its internet connection, we set out for the Hill of Uisneach near Mullingar, said to be the ancient center of Ireland.

Along the way, we took an unplanned detour to see the southernmost tip of Lough Ennell through which the River Brosna flows (Mullingar is at the northern end.) The lake appears to be a great recreation asset for the local people, well away from tourist attractions and, of course, beautiful.

This area at the lake is called “Lilliput,” because of Jonathan Swift’s connection to the region: he frequently retreated to this area in general and this lake in particular to gain solitude for writing. A sign near the shore at this place provides a map of the Mullingar region for bicyclists and reads:

It’s time to take things slowly… Quiet country roads with stunning views of rich pastureland and beautiful lakes provide the ideal backdrop for your cycle routes. Enjoy some fresh air, peace and tranquility. Mullingar is your starting point. A busy market town with excellent facilities and amenities, Mullingar is finely situated on the River Brosna near the ancient centre of Ireland. Visit the beautiful Renaissance style Catholic Cathedral and admire breath-taking frescoes. Visit the local tourist office at the Market Square and see the statue of the late Joe Dolan, commemorating the life and music of Mullingar’s own and internationally renowned singer and entertainer. Venture north to Lough Owel and on to Multyfarnham with it’s [sic] 13th Century Franciscan Friary. Follow in the steps of ancient Irish warriors on the Táin Trail and cycle alongside the Royal Canal, built in the 1800s, and now a recreation amenity and wildlife haven. Cycle south around Lough Ennell, relax at Lilliput amenity area and visit the 18th Century estate at Belvedere where bike parking facilities are available. Whichever route you choose you will enjoy a pleasant cycle in a gentle landscape rich in lake and canal, lore and legend.

I’m sold, but I have no bicycle.

From the lake, we backtracked to our original destination, the Hill of Uisneach (pronounced “Oosh’-nuk”.)

The hill is not on public land, or administered by the OPW. It is on a working farm, and permission to enter should be obtained from the owner. The farmhand who gave us our map of the hill (left over from a Mayday celebration there, an annual New Age spiritual gathering called "the Festival of the Fires" at the traditional center of Ireland) also gave rather ambiguous directions for the easiest walk to the top. Against Diane’s better inclinations, she followed her husband on what turned out to be a very circuitous and rather arduous trudge through pastureland up the 600 feet or so of vertical relief. Not bad for someone on a bum ankle.

Clockwise from upper-left: Parking area and sign on the R390 road west of Mullingar, Diane trudging, more Diane trudging, and curious cows.

The summit features a variety of recent structures, mostly wicker – and an incredibly stunning 360° vista to the far reaches of Ireland. From that point, it is easy to understand why this place has been special in a number of ways for thousands of years.

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More images from September 2nd, including a very large, 360° panorama of the view from the top of the Hill of Uisneach, are available in this slideshow on sharrington.net.
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Next: September 3, 2010 -- Last Full Day in Birr
Previous: September 1, 2010 -- A Midlands Ramble
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: A Midlands Ramble

2011-09-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

Day 29 of 35: Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Dominican Priory ruins, Lorrha, Co. Tipperary

As we headed into our last three full days in the Irish midlands and I had finished my time in the archives for this trip, the urge to do a lot of running around to many places became almost overwhelming. Before Diane got going on this morning, I made a quick trip to the little village of Lorrha at a nexus of very back roads between Birr and Terryglass on Lough Derg, through which we had driven the previous evening on our way back from dinner at the Derg Inn. Lorrha turns out to have a number of attractive ruins in its vicinity, including the Dominican Priory, established in the 13th century and now serving as a graveyard adjacent to a modern church.

Details, Dominican Priory, Lorrha.

Once Diane was ready to go, we started on a three-county, generally west-to-east meander across nearby parts of the midlands. We started in Portumna, County Galway, a familiar town to us because we had traveled through it many times in 2006 and on this trip. We had always intended to visit Portumna Castle, but never seemed to have the time. We did so, finally, on this day.

Portumna Castle.

The castle – really an Elizabethan-style mansion – was built in the 17th century as the Irish headquarters of the English Clanrikarde family. It was almost entirely destroyed by fire in 1839, leaving only the stone outer walls intact, and was abandoned. The ruin was taken over by Ireland’s Office of Public Works (which administers and operates Ireland’s public antiquities sites) a few decades ago, and the OPW has been slowly restoring the place to an approximation of its 1700s state since the 1960s. Progress is slow because funding is sporadic. So far, only the ground floor is in shape for the public to visit.

From Portumna, we meandered back through the rural environs of Lorrha in North Tipperary, to look at a tower house in a farmer’s fields (Lackeen Castle), and then on to the town of Banagher on the Shannon in County Offaly.

Lackeen Castle (top) and Banagher's bridge across the Shannon.

Finally we followed the Shannon eastward and upstream to the ancient monastic ruins at Clonmacnoise. We had visited Clonmacnoise in 2006, and returned this time as much for its view of the Shannon as for the ruins themselves.

Clonmacnoise, the Shannon, and a fellow visitor.

And, then, finally home to Birr, the Demesne, and the Bothy. An evening stroll gifted us with a short visit with Miss Kitty, another with Lord Rosse (who was driving back from somewhere in the Demesne’s far reaches), and…

… two sociable horses and some of the last vestiges of the weekend’s fair.

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More images from this day's wanderings are available in this slideshow on sharrington.net.
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Next: September 2, 2010 -- The Hill of Uisneach
Previous: August 31, 2010 -- Back to Brú na Bóinne
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Back to Brú na Bóinne

2011-08-31T09:16:00.000-07:00

Day 28 of 35: Tuesday, August 31, 2010

We set out nice and early (but not uncivilizedly so) from the airport hotel to re-visit our friends the cows along the banks of the River Boyne. As long as we were there, we decided to nose around a part of the area’s megalithic wonders that we hadn’t seen four years ago.

OPW shuttle bus at the Brú na Bóinne site. Despite its destination sign, it's at the staging area for Knowth.

Cows at the Boyne, burial mounds at Knowth.

In 2006 we toured the largest of the 5,000-year-old passage tombs, Newgrange. This time, we took the blue OPW shuttle bus from the Visitors' Centre to the more distant Knowth cluster of mounds, including the largest and highest one, which you can see a bit of in the top photo on this post.

The passage tombs have been restored to various stages, allowing visitors to see the inner structure of some and the likely working appearance of others. The largest tumulus has two long passages toward chambers near its center (unlike Newgrange, which has one) aligned due east and west (the Newgrange passage is aligned with the winter solstice sunrise point instead). The outer end of the eastern passage can be viewed from a small room near its end, but the passage itself is off-limits to visitors.

Ireland's OPW has provided a path to the top of the largest tumulus, not the first time that a subsequent civilization has constructed things atop the builders' artificial hill. Archaeological evidence shows that it has been used many times over the past 5,000 years by different people as a fortress and even the site of a small village.

At left above, Diane (just to the right of the wood posts, a partial reconstruction of what was probably a ceremonial structure) lends perspective to the size of the large tumulus. The sweeping view from its summit of the Boyne valley is a lovely one; at right we are looking westward along the Boyne.

After our stay at Knowth and the Brú na Bóinne complex, we drove back to Birr along a leisurely route, one designed more for its own sake than for speed. Major highways in Ireland, including the new superhighways, are laid out like spokes radiating from Dublin toward the other relatively large cities on the island. We purposefully worked our way across that plan, traveling an arc across the midlands. Our time in Ireland was dwindling toward its end as August prepared to give way to September, and we were in no rush.

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More images of the Knowth complex are available in this slideshow on sharrington.net.
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Next: September 1, 2010 -- A Midlands Ramble
Previous: August 30, 2010 -- Powerscourt and Howth
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Powerscourt and Howth

2011-08-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Day 27 of 35: Monday, August 30, 2010

Howth Harbour at dusk.

Another brilliant morning, this one accompanied by the sounds of a small city being disassembled – the tents and other structures of the Irish Game and Country Fair being taken down and away. The complete process would take several days.

While Diane was preparing for our trip to the Powerscourt House and Gardens (and our overnight stay in Dublin), I visited the Demesne’s science museum, primarily to photograph some items concerning the 4th Earl (who gradually had become the focus of much of my archives explorations.) I was specifically looking to take some pictures of a birchbark canoe he had shipped back from Canada on his first trip to North America in 1884:

(Portrait of the Fourth Earl of Rosse courtesy of John C. McConnell, original photographer unknown.)

Three weeks before this day, we were preparing for our first excursion away from Birr, the one to County Antrim that wound up in the hospital at Coleraine and changed the nature of the rest of the stay in Ireland. While packing for that trip, Diane tucked her passport away in her suitcase in one of those nooks and pockets that modern suitcases seem to have a pox of. That action was forgotten, understandably, in all that happened later in the Northern Ireland adventure.

A couple of weeks later, she couldn't locate her passport while sorting through things in her shoulder bag. Having forgotten hiding it away in that odd suitcase pocket, she thought it lost, and we set up an appointment with the US Embassy in Dublin for an emergency replacement. (While the prospect of being stuck in Ireland wasn't entirely displeasing, we did have family and beasties back here in the US that we needed to return to.) Embassy staff were very helpful, as were the people at the Birr Library where we needed access to scanners and the internet. We were set up for an appointment on the morning of Tuesday, August 31st -- the day after this one -- so we made a hotel reservation in Dublin for this night, Monday the 30th.

While packing for the jaunt to Dublin, of course, the passport was found. So we cancelled the Embassy appointment, but kept the hotel reservation and made a 2-day holiday-within-a-holiday of it.

We set out for Powerscourt in the Wicklow Mountains at around noon and were there in only about two hours – the new ease of long-distance auto travel in Ireland continued to impress us. We were initially disappointed that more of the grand house is not open for viewing – and the parts that were (most of the ground floor) are given over to shops – but forgot about that pretty quickly in the overpowering sweep of the gardens and grounds in general.

Clockwise from upper-left: the great house from the terraced gardens, its domes reminding us of the Armagh Observatory three weeks earlier; Triton’s fountain and pond; Sugarloaf from the forest at the demesne’s far reaches; a bee at work in the walled garden (can you find him?)

Many more photos from this beautiful day at the Powerscourt Gardens are available in the day's slide show over on sharrington.net.

We stayed the night at the same airport hotel that we have always used (for familiarity and price, not because we’re particularly charmed by it – it’s serviceable and acceptable for a crash pad), planning to get up early tomorrow for a return visit to Brú na Bóinne. We had some time after dinner before the sun set, and decided to see if Howth harbour is as charming in 2010 in the evening as it was in 2006 at midday.

Oh, my.

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Many more images are available in this slideshow on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 31, 2010 -- Back to Brú na Bóinne
Previous: August 29, 2010 -- A Fair Day, Too
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: A Fair Day, Too

2011-08-29T10:31:00.000-07:00

Day 26 of 35: Sunday, August 29, 2010

I attended a Sunday church service for the first time in decades today, at Lord Rosse’s invitation. During the organ recital a week ago, he had pointed out the memorial plaques on St. Brendan’s inner walls, many of whom are for Parsons family members, especially the Earls. He made special note of a very large one for the Third Earl (the “telescope Earl”), high up behind the balcony, seeming to look down on the congregation, the pulpit, and the altar. I hadn’t brought my camera then, thinking it would be out of place and somewhat disrespectful at a small music recital in a church, but Lord Rosse encouraged me to come back with it to the following Sunday’s service. So I did, but kept it hidden under my hat on the pew beside me during the service itself.

Right, above: the third Earl’s memorial plaque. The last sentence is, “He was renowned in the loftiest range of science, and he revealed to mankind by the unrivalled creation of his genius a wider vision of the glory of God.” The memorial is about five feet tall. Left, above: outside the church is a recent sign which commemorates the world’s first automobile fatality, which took place in the road at the place where I was standing to take the photo. It occurred in 1869, two years after the third Earl died, under the iron wheels of a steam-powered vehicle of his design. The victim was one of his cousins, Mary Ward, herself a noted scientist, a pioneer in microscopy. More about Mary Ward and about this accident can be found in the second part of this earlier post on SherWords.

This afternoon Diane and I thoroughly enjoyed the last hours of the Irish Game and Country Fair, including:

... a display of carriage driving by the Birr Equestrian Centre...

... and another fascinating round of falconry.

Two little creatures particularly delighted us, a champion terrier and a small African vulture.

The next-to-last event at the Fair’s main arena was the “Final of the Five Nations Working Terrier Championships,” in which the year’s winners from previous fairs in Ireland, Northern Ireland (which was described by the M. C. as “technically another country”), Scotland, Wales, and England were squared off against one another for the year’s final round of judging. The winner was this little black guy from England:

During the entire awards ceremony, he was absolutely fixated on the second-place trophy, a stuffed fox head, and would pay attention to nothing else.

The African vulture, the opening act of the falconer's final show, was just about as cute as a buzzard could possibly be, and "cute as a buzzard" are four words I never thought I'd string together.

He responded to the sound of the falconer’s voice like a well-trained dog might, he worked the crowd at the fence (which he’s doing in this picture) masterfully, and his bouncing, rolling, lurching ground gait was hysterical. While only about the height and weight of one of our chickens, his wingspan was impressive:

Afternoon fades on the fair's last day.

==================================
Many more images from the two-day event (including links for further information on some of the activities) are available in this slideshow on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 30, 2010 -- Powerscourt and Howth
Previous: August 28, 2010 -- A Fair Day
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: A Fair Day

2011-08-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

Day 25 of 35: Saturday, August 28, 2010

This day was the first of two in the Demesne devoted to the Irish Game and Country Fair, now an annual event at Birr Castle. (Birr was not yet a stop on the Great Game Fairs circuit when we last visited in 2006.) It turned out to be very enjoyable -- and a very big deal. Newspaper accounts in the following week pegged the two days' total attendance at about 35,000 people.

Since the Bothy is inside the Demesne's walls, we could watch the literally last-minute preparations and the opening of the gates (please click on any image to see it in a larger format):

Above right is the scene at the gate nearest us (there were two others, one by the Croghan Lodge at the far end of the public park part of the Demesne from the castle, and one far back in the farming area where the shooting events were held.) The arrivals were a trickle at first, but by mid-afternoon, the place was awash with people.

Things we saw during the day (in addition to many, many vendors of food and wares) included:

A demonstration of western riding techniques and clay pigeon shooting...

... terrier racing (a hoot!) and...

... lurcher racing...

... falconry, and a horse and hound display by the local Ormond Foxhounds hunt club. While the hawk pictured above was content with short flights from the falconer and his bait, his kite seemed to enjoy the afternoon as much as any human, staying aloft and circling the main arena for well over an hour with only occasional stops in nearby treetops.

Lord and Lady Rosse made a grand entrance around midday:

Lady Rosse told me the next morning at church that their carriage ride had come as a surprise ("I wasn't dressed for that at all!") The coach and pair are owned by the couple at the reins, and they rent out for weddings and such. They had volunteered their services for a similar entrance at last year's Fair, but weren't expected to do so this year.

I'm glad they did.

==================================
Many more images from the two-day event (including links for further information on some of the activities) will be linked at the end of tomorrow's post.
==================================

Next: August 29, 2010 -- A Fair Day, Too
Previous: August 27, 2010 -- Before the Fair
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Before the Fair

2011-08-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

Day 24 of 35: Friday, August 27, 2010

This day was one of several on this trip which felt a little like we imagine most days would be if we actually lived in Birr. For me, that entailed a little work (research in the archives, writing, and continuing the bench panoramas photography project), some errands, and a lot of slacking off. Missing, of course, were family and animals, and those are not minor things.

My time in the Archives on this morning was spent trying to get a little more of a feel for what the 4th Earl of Rosse was like as a person. I came across accounts of an incident early in his earldom, in 1868, when he and his brothers were arrested by a couple of drunken policemen. The incident’s last reference in the archives was a letter to the 4th Earl by the head of Ireland’s constabulary, which included this bit of highly-accomplished groveling:

A fuller account of this episode is included in this earlier SherWords entry.

The day was brilliant with plentiful sun and dramatic clouds. Diane and I spent most of midday shopping downtown.

The above corner of Emmet Square, looking almost due north, includes the brick post office building and, to its left, grey buildings that contain offices of the Enrights’ enterprises and Enright’s Bar (the short building immediately to the left of the P.O.) Birr’s most famous current musician, Mundy (Edmund Enright) occasionally still helps out there, pulling perfect (it’s said) pints of Guinness for customers.

In the late afternoon and evening we strolled around the Demesne, watching final preparations for the weekend’s Irish Game and Country Fair. While doing so, we stumbled on a part of the Demesne we had never seen before, the “Secret Winter Garden” and its thatched-roof gazebo.

Vendors' tents being prepared for the 2010 Irish Game and Country Fair. The structure in the background at right is part of the support structure for the great telescope.

Secret Winter Garden, Birr Castle Demesne.

At the end of the day we strolled past our old friend’s hangout. She was there and, after a short conversation, followed us back to the Bothy for a snack. She is still very, very wary, stopping every few yards to look all around nervously – but I don’t think she needs to worry about the obnoxious Bichon any more. We hadn’t seen it running loose since we mentioned it to Lord Rosse a week earlier.

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More images from this day can be seen in this slideshow over on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 28, 2010 -- A Fair Day
Previous: August 26, 2010 -- Brian Boru's Revenge
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Brian Boru's Revenge

2011-08-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

Day 23 of 35: Thursday, August 26, 2010

At the end of our long, busy day on Wednesday, we treated ourselves to dinner at one of Killarney’s supposedly better restaurants – and Diane’s lobster and my rack of lamb were delicious. Something in my meal obviously hated me, though, because I woke up at about three on Thursday morning with a very aggressive case of the disgustings – maybe we can call it Brian Boru’s Revenge. Luckily, my system seemed to have emptied itself of offending rich dinner by checkout time, and we could undertake the three-hour drive back to Birr, even though I was otherwise still feeling pretty much awful. On arrival back at the Bothy, I crashed on the bed and slept for 16 hours.

Diane evidently felt fine and, bless her soul, didn't smirk at me even once, so far as I could tell.

The only photo taken on Thursday, August 26th.

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Next: August 27, 2010 -- Before the Fair
Previous: August 25, 2010 -- Killarney
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Killarney

2011-08-25T05:53:00.000-07:00

Day 22 of 35: Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Jaunting car path, Killarney National Park.

This day we spent altogether in the Muckross House and Gardens area of Killarney National Park doing things that tourists do in Killarney. We found what we expected: those things have become typical "tourist things" because they are delightful, and because the people of Killarney have honed their craft of tourism for two centuries very well.

First, we took a horse and trap ("jaunting car") ride around the grounds and gardens of the grand house, getting a feel for the place to help us decide what to do with the bulk of the day.

There are horse carts all over Killarney, acting as taxis of a sort for tourists. At the advice of our hotel desk clerk, we drove our horseless carriage to a gathering area across the road from an entrance to the Muckross House and Gardens to hire a ride around the grounds. Our driver’s name Arlen; the horse was Pearl. We were very lucky, it turned out, with our random draw.

Arlen appeared to be the oldest of the many drivers on the grounds that day (and old Pearl, at 17, was probably the oldest horse.) Arlen proved to be able to “read” his clients very quickly, and drove us much more slowly than any of the others, who seemed as intent on making the ride itself exciting for their riders. Arlen stopped and dwelled often on details along the way: subtle clues in the terrain that showed where water might be welled easily, explaining why the ancient abbey was built where it was, for example, and botanical oddities. Much of what he told us might actually have been true. This is exactly the kind of thing that Diane and I love to hear and see, of course, and Arlen picked up on that almost immediately. He was also the only driver we saw who stopped along the way to take photos like the one at above-right. (He handled the bulky Nikon very well.)

A faster car.

Our horsedrawn wander around the grounds took, I estimate, twice as long as others on the same circuit – we were always being passed by faster carts – and that, it turns out, probably cost Arlen money. The Irish government regulates the horse-and-trap operators very stringently on all things from care of the animals to prices they can charge for certain services (like our tour of the grounds.) Since our price was based on the trip itself, not on how much time it took, it’s easy to see why the other drivers were considerably faster. At the end of our ride we included a substantial tip in payment, but maybe not enough (thinking about it later) to compensate for Arlen’s potential reduction in day’s income by catering so well to our preferences.

Incipient streaky rashers.

After our amble around the grounds, we walked around the Muckross Traditional Farms area, where working examples of “traditional” (i.e. up to the advent of electricity and internal combustion farm machinery in about 1925 or so) Irish farming are kept going by the Office of Public Works (OPW).

The buildings and equipment reminded us a bit of the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York, but the fact that these were working farms added a great deal – especially (for us, anyway) animals of all sorts from barn cats through draft horses. (Diane made lots of four-footed friends, including a young Irish Wolfhound.)

We finished our tourists’ day with a tour of Muckross House itself (during which no photography is allowed). We felt a happy connection to the grand old mansion because of something we first learned from Arlen that morning and which was mentioned repeatedly during the tour itself: the last people to live in the house were Maud and Arthur Vincent, daughter and son-in-law of William Bowers-Bourne. Bowers-Bourne was the California mining tycoon who built the Filoli estate in Woodside, California, whose house and grounds we have visited often over the years. He purchased the financially-distressed Muckross estate the second decade of the 20th century for his daughter and her Irish husband as a wedding gift.

Muckross House from its public side, and...

... from the servants' side.

The ultimate cause of the financial distress of the original owners was none other than Queen Victoria, whose two-night visit here in 1861 required six years of remodeling and renovation which proved more expensive than the family could recover from. Such remodeling is typical preparation for a visit by the royal family – even our hosts, Lord and Lady Rosse, had to do some heavy-duty renovations to Birr Castle when Princess Margaret visited in 1960 with her husband – and her husband was Lord Snowdon, Lord Rosse’s older half-brother, who had grown up in the place.

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More images from this day can be seen in this slideshow over on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 26, 2010 -- Brian Boru's Revenge
Previous: August 24, 2010 -- The Beara Peninsula
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: The Beara Peninsula

2011-08-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

Day 21 of 35: Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Uragh stone circle, Beara Peninsula.

As we had long planned, today we visited the Beara Peninsula, the lesser-known peninsula to the South of the famous “Ring of Kerry” around the Iveragh. Possibly because its land is divided between two Counties, tourist-conscious Kerry and less-so Cork, it has never been developed for tourism much at all, and certainly not to the degree that its famous neighbor to the north has been for almost two centuries now.

Driving on the Beara can be a bit of a challenge, but the reward is well worth the effort.

Two sides of Kenmare. The town of Kenmare sits at the junction of the Iveragh and Beara Peninsulas. At left is a view off the N21 on our approach to Kenmare; at right is a view back toward the Iveragh and the Ring of Kerry at the beginning of our exploration of the Beara.

Ring-to-Ring panorama: view north from the relatively undeveloped “Ring of Beara” toward the famous “Ring of Kerry” in the distance.

Gleninchaquin

A jaw-dropping realization for us was the absolutely stunning beauty of Gleninchaquin, a glacially-carved valley that echoes that of the Lakes of Killarney in all ways except for population. At its upper end is a privately-run park which comprises dramatic waterfalls, working farm areas, lakes, gardens, and miles and miles of hiking trails. The proprietor, Donal Corkery, noting Diane’s hobbled condition, offered us a ride in his vehicle…

… to what he called “the finest view in Ireland”:

If you spend some time with the high resolution version of this panorama linked in this day's slideshow over on sharrington.net, you might be hard-pressed to disagree with him. (That’s Mr. Corkery at right, inspecting his domain with binoculars.)

Also in Gleninchaquin, outside of the private park between a couple of lakes in the chain, is the most strikingly-placed Neolithic stone circle I have ever seen, one brought to my attention by Irish photographer Tony Mulraney on Flickr. Called the Uragh Stone Circle, it is on the crest of a small hill in the middle of the valley with a beautiful backdrop no matter what direction one views it from.

The Uragh stone circle is relatively small, at least physically: Diane, leaning against the tallest stone, gives you a sense of scale.

Views along the main – and only – road into Gleninchaquin. This one-lane track extends southward for about ten kilometers from its modestly-signed intersection with R571 on the north side of the Beara Peninsula.

The most dramatic episode we had on the road up Gleninchaquin we don’t have any pictures of: a heart-stopping encounter with a double-trailer truck hauling a load of pine logs out of the valley. That took a bit of squeezing, backing, and praying to resolve. (A large patch of mature pine re-forestation – which Lord Rosse, a UN expert on reforestation in third-world countries, called a “horrible mistake” all over Ireland because of the nature of the wood and the way it was being planted – is being removed from Gleninchaquin, to be replaced with plantings of native species such as oak.)

The south side of the Beara Peninsula provides spectacular views and picturesque towns along the north side of Bantry Bay:

We drove back to Kenmare via Glengariff and the road over the Caha Pass (with three tunnels along the rugged mountain road), and stopped there to do some gift-shopping before heading back to our hotel in Killarney.

Left: Glengariff. “Harrington” is a name we saw in several places on the Beara Peninsula. "Murphy" was my mother's maiden name, so the white pub sign (which you can read if you click on the image to see it larger) in Glengariff tickled me. Right: Kenmare shops.

Left: “The White Room” lace shop in Kenmare. Right: inside “Soundz of Music,” a great little music shop with a wide variety of high-quality musical instruments (seriously). Yes, those are flying-V and solid-body electric ukuleles hanging among the more traditional ones.

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More images from this day, including a links to very large-scale, detailed panoramas, are available here.
==================================

Next: August 25, 2010 -- Killarney
Previous: August 23, 2010 -- To Kerry
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: To Kerry

2011-08-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

Day 20 of 35: Monday, August 23, 2010

Today we drove to Killarney for a three-night stay in Foley’s Town House, a hotel in the heart of that tourist town that we stayed in on our previous trip to Ireland.

Diane in Room 35. This is a 90-degree panorama of several vertical frames, so its geometry is a little whacko.

In the intervening four years, Foley’s had been remodeled as a “boutique” hotel (in a desk clerk’s word), each room decorated individually with furnishings obtained at auctions across Europe. Our room, number 35, was exquisite – the furnishings, we were told, were from a German castle, and its location at the back of the hotel, well away from the busy street, was very, very quiet. We are a little concerned, though, about the establishment’s ability to survive: it had very few guests during our stay (in fact, on the first night, only two rooms were occupied, judging from the hotel’s car park and the number of places set for breakfast the next morning.) The restaurant, highly touted in guide books, was similarly near-vacant in the evening. Other hotels farther from the city center didn’t seem to be in a similar drought, so Foley’s location may be working against it somehow in the global economic downturn.

Now a pleasant drive of only three hours.

The drive from Birr to Killarney on the vastly improved (and still improving) Irish highway system was only three hours, so we had plenty of time for some exploration before settling in.

Looking toward Killarney from Ladies' View: an iconic Kerry image.

The vista from Ladies’ View of the Lakes of Killarney in their glacier-carved valley was stunning as usual. We continued up past that on the N21 toward Kenmare, stopping at the summit and doing some shopping at the Avoca store at Molls Gap. From Molls Gap, we took the road less traveled, down into Black Valley:

Looking down into Black Valley from Molls Gap (approx. 135-degree panorama.)

Heading down the back road from Molls Gap to Sneem from which the narrow road into Black Valley branches. (Click on the image to read the signs.)

Black Valley, despite its immediate adjacency to one of the most heavily-visited tourist destinations in Ireland, is “unspoiled” in a very isolated sort of way. Electricity is relatively recent (1970s), its road is little more than a one-lane track, and there is no cell phone service there due to the precipitous surrounding mountains of Macgillicuddy's Reeks. It is gorgeous.

In Black Valley.

The stream through Black Valley pours over a series of cascades on its way to the Lakes of Killarney.

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More images from this day, including a link to a very large-scale, detailed version of the Black Valley panorama, are available here.
==================================

Next: August 24, 2010 -- The Beara Peninsula
Previous: August 22, 2010 -- Clonfinlough and Its Stone
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Clonfinlough and Its Stone

2011-08-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

Day 19 of 35: Sunday, August 22, 2010

New church in the hamlet of Clonfinlough.

This was a day of mixed activities in and around Birr, including getting ready for our first extended foray since Diane's accident. We would head for the peninsulas at the southwest of the Island the following day, and she spent most of the day in the Bothy preparing for that, staying off her ankle as much as possible.

Back in the muniment room.

My day began with another morning trip to the archives, this time to take pictures of some of the images in the 4th Earl’s photo album from his trip to North America in 1891, including his visit to Lick Observatory and Felton. The album is not part of the archives, and Lady Rosse was very kind to bring it to me from the family's private materials.

The road to Lick Observatory, circa 1891. I have driven that road many, many times over the past four decades, and recognized that curve immediately.

The photos in the album were mostly postcards, such as these from San Francisco.

This stand of redwoods is in what is now Henry Cowell State Park, California, very near our home.

The door I now usually used to and from the Archives is one on the castle’s lowest level marked “Castle Flat,” which I suppose used to be the servants’ entrance. Below is Castle Cat (as opposed to Bothy Cat), a one-eyed sweetie, about the same size and cobby shape as the Bothy Cat, who is clearly fed at that door.

Her bowls have been empty at each of my visits, and she has let me know about it in no uncertain terms. Also notice the iron boot-scraper – varieties of such scrapers are built into the stonework by every door to the castle that we’ve seen, including the formal, main entrance.

This photo was taken as I was leaving the castle after my morning in the archives; it is a view toward the great telescope from near the castle's front door, off limits to general parkland visitors. From here, it's easy to see why the telescope's east support wall is much more ornate than the bare, functional west one: the east wall is the one that can be seen from the house!

In the afternoon I took a short foray out of town to the north, toward the Shannon and the ancient monastic city of Clonmacnoise (which we had visited four years ago.) I was looking for a hamlet that Ronnie Peterson had asked me to take a photo of, a place called Clonfinlough, in which a friend of hers spent her childhood. I had located a place called “Clonfanlough” on Google Earth before we left for Ireland, and its dot was just to the east of Clonmacnoise, but no map was terribly helpful in guiding me to a precise spot. After some pleasant exploration on back roads to the south of the River Shannon, I found a loose string of mostly new homes and a new-looking church on an unnumbered road off the Clonmacnoise road… and an intriguing sign:

The sign points to a long, uphill path, very well-maintained and closely bounded by tall hedgerows, to this gate:

Beyond the gate, lying in an ordinary pasture, is the Clonfinlough stone. The stone is roughly square, about six feet on a side. What I did not know until later that day (when I stumbled across an explanatory sign in a village miles away – as accidental a find as the stone itself, but I wish I had the accidents in the other order) is that the stone is covered with what are believed to be Neolithic engravings (including the carved shod-foot print at right), perhaps depicting a prehistoric battle. Had I known that at the time, I would have paid more photographic attention to the other marks, but there is no explanation at the site of what the stone’s significance is.

Clonfinlough stone and detail with my toe (to give a sense of scale.)

It was clear, however, that the stone's location atop the long esker on the Shannon's south side provides a magnificent view to the South:

That evening, we attended an organ recital at St. Brendan’s church at the other end of Oxmantown Mall from the Demesne’s main gates. Lord Rosse had told us of the event when we visited with him and Lady Rosse on Friday evening, and urged us to attend. It was well worth our time, both for the music and for the experience of the church’s interior (and for watching the interactions of its small congregation.) After the recital, Lord Rosse pointed out the memorial plaques on the walls to the prior Earls of Rosse, including the largest one, behind the balcony, looking down on the entire congregation, to the Third Earl (the “Telescope Earl”). He took me upstairs to the balcony, where I could see the plaque more clearly and read its inscription, which is a beautiful one that expresses a scientist’s awe at the universe around him. I wished I had my camera there, but I hadn't thought it would be appropriate. Lord Rosse urged me to bring the camera to the church sometime after our venture to the southwest, and I did so the following Sunday.

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More images from this day are available here.
==================================

Next: August 23, 2010 -- To Kerry
Previous: August 21, 2010 -- Clare
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Clare

2011-08-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Day 18 of 35: Saturday, August 21, 2010

Kilkee harbour, panoramic view.

This day was devoted almost entirely to a meander through County Clare, partly informed by our 2006 stay in the strange and beautiful karst of the Burren. While there were two specific goals of our daytrip, we mostly wanted to just explore in freeform style, having seen the main tourist attractions (the Cliffs of Moher and the Poulnabrone Dolmen) on the earlier trip.

The first specific goal was to drive across the wilder southern fringe of the Burren, less frequented by tourists than the northern, Galway Bay area. The other was to try to find the hamlet of Killeinagh, near Ennistimon at the Burren's southwestern edge. The Killeinagh quest was spurred by our longtime internet friend Veronica Peterson; one of Ronnie's great-grandfathers, Patrick Shannon, grew up on a farm there. She says of the place that it "comprises 47 acres, pop. 16, all Shannons." When we found Killeinagh, we found that it also comprises great beauty.

Two major unanticipated, unscheduled delights were the gorgeous western coast of County Clare (which we angled off our loosely-plotted course from Limerick to Ennistimon to see) and the ancient Kilmacduagh ruins near Gort (which we didn't know existed until its tall, tilted round tower hove into view around a bend in the road.)

We traveled this loop clockwise on this day, a total driving distance of somewhat less than 200 miles (the long lake inside the loop at the east is Lough Derg; click anywhere inside the image to see it at a legible scale):

A few photos from the day follow here; many more are available of the full day on the usual website (linked here and below) and of the Killeinagh area on the slideshow we put together for Ronnie Peterson. Please click on any photo here to see it significantly larger:

The village of Moneygall, home of one of President Obama's great-great-great grandfathers, and a place the President would visit in person nine months later. A cropped version of this photo was then used in a White House publication as an illustration... but there's more to the story of this photo and the White House than just that!

Boats resting in Kilkee harbour.

Farmland along the western coast of County Clare. As you can see, the weather co-operated in spectacular form for us on this day.

The Killeinagh burial ground.

Our highway from Ennistimon through Killeinagh to Kilfenora in the heart of the Burren.

Lickeen Lough, a popular fishing lake among local residents.

Kilfenora in the heart of the Burren.

Leamaneh Castle. The original tower house, which constitutes the right-hand corner of the structure in this view, was built in the 15th Century by one of the last High Kings of Ireland; the remainder dates from the 17th Century. This grand ruin is now mainly associated with Red Mary O'Brien.

Karst hills in the southern extremes of the Burren.

Abandoned boat on the shore of Lough Bunny (photo by Diane Harrington.)

Kilmacduagh ruins and graveyard.

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More images from this day are available in this collection on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 22, 2010 -- Clonfinlough and Its Stone
Previous: August 20, 2010 -- Sparkling Stories, Sparkling Wine
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Sparkling Stories, Sparkling Wine

2011-08-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

Day 17 of 35: Friday, August 20, 2010

Diane approaches the Birr Theatre & Arts Centre.

The repercussion in pain for Diane of our excursion to Kilkenny on Tuesday chastened us into sticking close to home for the remainder of the week. Luckily for us, this week of extremely limited mobility coincided with Birr's annual Vintage Week and Arts Festival, so there was a wide variety of things for us to experience nearby. Going to an antiques show and suddenly finding ourselves surrounded by more than 30 Rose of Tralee contestants on tour, for example, is something that doesn't happen in Boulder Creek. At least not often. (Concerning that "on tour" link: camogie is like hurling, but played by women.)

On this day, Friday, we attended a midday session (with sandwiches!) with storyteller Niall de Burca at the Birr Theatre and Arts Centre. The theatre is on Oxmantown Mall, a pretty one-block street connecting the main gate of the Birr Castle Demesne and St. Brendan's Church of Ireland.

North side of Oxmantown Mall.

South side of Oxmantown Mall.

The north side of Oxmantown Mall is lined with stately Georgian houses, shoulder-to-shoulder. The south side of the Mall has a wide grass border between it and a variety of different kinds of structures, including the Theatre and the modest house that contains Birr Castle Demesne's business office in its basement.

Approaches to the Birr Theatre & Arts Centre (left) and Birr Castle Demesne office on Oxmantown Mall.

On our way to the Theatre, I showed Diane the street entrance to the Birr Castle Demesne Estate Office, where I had gone on Monday to transact some business with Lord Rosse's assistant, Jessica. To reach the office, one walks through this gate, all the way past the building, and through the gate at the far end of the path. From there, turning right takes you along the edge of an abandoned yard to a low door on your right to a sub-basement hallway. At the end of that hallway is a T-intersection with another hallway; turning right and walking several more paces brings you to the estate office: a bare space with a small window near the ceiling that looks out at ankle-level at the path you can see in the photo above, since the previous path has taken you on a downward, spiral trajectory of 270 degrees. Exposed pipes add a sense of dungeon (though the place was spotlessly clean), but Jessica seemed bright and cheerful and happy with what she’s doing.

De Burca, the storyteller, is a tall, handsome young man with a rubber face, and is a charmer (as anyone who bills himself as a "storyteller" has to be.) The audience for this lunchtime performance was very small -- my guess is that there were no more than 30 people in attendance -- and we sat at a table right in front of the stage. His stories were transporting and classical in their delivery, no props, just a stool on a bare stage. By the time he finished, we were convinced of two things: that the 30 people behind us could laugh and applaud like 300, and that we have to find a pooka, danger be damned.

When he was done, De Burca came directly to our table and sat and talked with us a while. Obviously he had us pegged as being from Elsewhere, though he feigned surprise that we weren't local. We chatted about what a treasure tourists from abroad miss if they never travel to the Midlands (as most don't) and about how much he enjoyed our part of California when he was there. As I said, he's a professional charmer.

That evening we had wine and a very nice visit with Lord and Lady Rosse in the “Yellow Room” of the castle. Lord Rosse was especially interested in what I had found in his great-grandfather’s diaries – specifically of his interest in the redwoods, since he (a dendrologist of worldwide renown) had no idea that the 4th Earl had even a passing interest in trees. He and Lady Rosse were also curious about the four blank pages I had found in the Northern California part of the 4th Earl's 1891 travel diary, and said they would look among the family photo albums for more records (not in the archives) of that trip.

Later that night, back home in the Bothy, as Diane and I talked about the people we'd spent time with over the past few days, we chewed over a perception of the American political landscape that both Lord Rosse and Campbell Black had expressed: a dismay at what one of them (I forget which) characterized as a "growing celebration of ignorance." That confluence was a little striking, given that one of them is a self-described "Bolshie," while the other is one of the last remaining relevant members of the old Irish aristocracy. It was hardly the only evidence we saw in 2010 of a growing Irish concern about the land "across the western ocean," though. I noted before in this series that American flags, while not absent, are not as common in Ireland now as they were four years earlier, and commentary on RTÉ frequently noted that American economic difficulties were a big part of the Celtic Tiger's demise. "When America sneezes," as we heard a commentator say one night on the Bothy's little TV, "Ireland catches a cold."

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More images from August 18, 19, and 20 are available in this collection on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 21, 2010 -- Clare
Previous: August 19, 2010 -- Tea in a Tower
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Tea in a Tower

2011-08-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Day 16 of 35: Thursday, August 19, 2010

Clonony Castle, 2006

My morning on this blessedly rare dank and blustery day was spent back in the Archives. I had arranged with someone on staff to arrive early, so didn't have to go through the main Castle entry (which would have required Lady Rosse's answering the door) but rather through a door on the very lowest level in the rear from which I could get to the muniment room via a back stairway.

Looking up from the back entrance, looking down across the years.

We finally got to meet Campbell Black and Rebecca Armstrong in Clonony Castle on this afternoon. (I say "finally" because we were originally scheduled to visit them on Monday, but had postponed because of the freshness of Diane's ankle injury.)

Campbell and I had encountered each other on the internet four years before, a result of an error I had made in the caption for a photo of Clonony Castle that I had posted shortly after our 2006 trip to Ireland. He was well-suited to make such a correction, since he and his wife are the owners of the old tower house, and have been restoring the ruin to habitability for almost ten years. (The process of restoration is frustratingly slow for them in large part because of the difficulties of dealing with the Irish bureaucracy in matters concerning antiquities.)

There was something about his writing even in the telegraphic medium of e-mail that I enjoyed, so instead of just making the correction and forgetting about it, I kept up an occasional electronic correspondence with him. It wasn't until several months later that I realized who, exactly, I was exchanging IP packets with: the author best known as Campbell Armstrong. While most noted for thrillers (very good ones, if you like that sort of thing -- I'm especially fond of his Jig and Jigsaw, since they once carried me through being stuck in bed with the flu) but his talents extend far wider than that. His autobiographical All that Really Matters, for example, is as riveting as any of his novels. (To Campbell's irritation, its title was changed for US distribution to I Hope You Have a Good Life.)

Since Clonony Castle is only about ten miles north of Birr, Campbell and Rebecca invited us to visit the tower house for tea during our 2010 stay in the midlands. Rebecca's efforts to make the 500 year old structure habitable have been a consuming task for the better part of a decade, but progress to this point is impressive. The ground floor was nearly finished when we visited on this day, the one above that lacked a few things (like glass in the windows) but was well enough along that we had our tea and chat there:

Diane, Campbell, and Rebecca in Clonony Castle.

The restoration of the room above that one was just underway; Campbell took me up there (and to the roof, which provided a great, misty view of the surrounding Shannon River valley -- and also had my height-fright on full, pounding alert) to see what their contractor was up to.

It was an absolutely delightful visit, and we Harringtons lost track of time completely during it. I'm afraid in retrospect that we were impolite guests on that account: we arrived for tea at 3, and didn't leave until 6:30. I suppose I could say that they have only their charm to blame for that, but their charm didn't physically restrain me from looking at my watch once in a while. I'll admit to being selfish -- I don't often have conversations as good or as wide-ranging as that one was (from politics to writing to Upstate New York winters to having sons in the music business), and I was very, very reluctant for it to end.

Their schnauzer, Oscar, was pretty cool, too.

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More images from August 18, 19, and 20 will be linked to in one group on sharrington.net at the end of tomorrow's installment.
==================================

Next: August 20, 2010 -- Sparkling Stories, Sparkling Wine
Previous: August 18, 2010 -- Back to the 19th Century
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Back to the 19th Century

2011-08-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

Day 15 of 35: Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Birr Castle's muniment room and some of the archives.

This day was one I had been looking forward to for two years, since the beginning of our planning for a return to Birr: my first day back in the archives of the remarkable Parsons family. My overall plan was to look further into the people surrounding the Third Earl of Rosse (the designer and builder of the revolutionary 6-foot telescope, "The Leviathan of Parsonstown," in the 1840s) and for any correspondence he might have had with American astronomers of the era.

The archival material doesn't all fit in the muniment room; overflow storage areas include the entrance hallway past a beautifully-appointed bathroom.

But the first thing I looked at on this morning sent the rest of my time in the archives off in a very different direction: his son, not the Third Earl himself, proved to be the connecting point not only with America but with the entire fascinating cast of characters that was the Parsons family and their friends in the 19th Century. Laurence Parsons, 4th Earl of Rosse, has been a topic in this space before (notably here and here) and will be again, certainly, as I continue to piece together his connections to some of the most colorful and accomplished figures in science and technology in the 1800s. The amount of material I have to go through from 2010's time in the Birr Castle Archives is daunting, though, and I'm not yet retired (!), so that will happen in drips and drops rather than a flood.

My improvised copy stand. Flash is of course not permitted, so the light provided by the window is not only pretty but necessary.

The above images are some visual impressions of the archives and their room, the muniment room in Birr Castle. It is worth remembering as you look at these photos (and others to be posted on sharrington.net in a couple of days) that this remarkable family has lived in this house for 400 years, and that their records and correspondence in these cardboard boxes and on these shelves go back that far as well.

Here's a little sample of what I found that helped trigger my increased interest in the less-famous of Birr's Astronomer Earls:

The Fourth Earl of Rosse's home and 1891 passport.

A pair of pages from the Fourth Earl's 1891 journey to America. On these pages he recounts his arrival in my home state of California. Click the photo to see a significantly larger image. (Diary property of the Birr Castle Archives, image used with permission.)

I am currently in the slow process of transcribing the Fourth Earl's travel diaries of his two trips to America. It's slow in part because I don't have as much time for it as I'd like, but also because his handwriting is sometimes difficult to decipher. Here's what I have for the above two pages and a little more on either side; if anyone can help me with the word I can't figure out here, I'd appreciate it (click on the diary image above to see it large enough to read.) It's also worth noting that at the time he undertook this journey, not only was he a world-famous astronomer, but he was also Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland's most prestigious institution of learning.

Monday, Mar. 23, 1891 [En route by train from Mexico to California -- SH]
Dreary country like a desert will grow nothing in most parts without irrigation & for the most part appears too sandy to be ever of much value. Cactuses up to 20 ft. high dotted over the [word? -- SH] also prickly pear variety. Near Yuma where the line crosses the Colorado river it had been washed out off & on for some miles by a tributary of the C. river & we had to slow down to 10 or 12 miles an hour. Beyond Yuma the line crosses a perfectly barren desert which gets lower & lower as you proceed until it is more than 500 feet below the sea level, general appearance like the mud banks in a river estuary, only at present dried up. Stopped at Los Angeles for the remainder of night, train being more than 3 hours late did not get in till after 1.
Tuesday Went about Los Angeles during morning in horse tram & cable trams wh are extensively developed here & thus obtained a good general view of the town, which in appearance has almost entirely ceased to be Spanish & is now in every way U.S. Continued my journey at 1-35 pm.
Wednesday Reached San Francisco at about 11 a.m. Got room in the Palace Hotel an overgrown establishment said to take in 1200. Became at once the object for the impertinent interrogations of a newspaper reporter who caught me at the manager’s desk. Three others called but I fortunately missed them. One of these called a third time at 9-30 p.m. when I was packing for next morning preparatory to going to bed so I had a sufficient excuse at hand for not seeing him.
Thursday Left for San Jose at 8-30am – journey 2 hours – got a trap & pair and reached the Lick observatory in 6 hours from S. Jose. The road is good & after leaving the flat of the Santa Clara Valley goes up most of the way by a steady & graded ascent. The distance by road is said to be about 26 miles – as the crow flies perhaps 10 miles less. The last hour of the windings up the mountain were accomplished in the mist. This mist continued off & on with tolerable intervals of views, not much interrupted by clouds during my stay, with intervals during which a good view of the country below, all round, could be seen. The Sierras, however, I did not clearly or satisfactorily see.

The Fourth Earl of Rosse's 1891 travel diary.

In the late afternoon, Diane (who had spent the day resting her wounded ankle) and I went to the Birr public library to look around and to take advantage of its wireless internet connection with our laptop computer, since the Bothy does not as yet have internet access. The library and a few other civic services had been moved since our 2006 stay into new quarters in a renovated former convent adjacent to the town's Catholic church.

Birr public library stacks.

The new library is wonderful: airy, light, easy to navigate, and almost breathtakingly beautiful. We were to spend a good deal of time there over the following weeks, not only for the internet access but also for the books and services provided by the very pleasant, friendly staff.

Children's area, Birr public library. An acquaintance of mine via the internet, Mick Dolphin, who grew up in Birr, says that this area used to be the convent chapel, where he served as an altar boy.

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More images from this and the next two days will appear later in one group on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 19, 2010 -- Tea in a Tower
Previous: August 17, 2010 -- Back to Kilkenny
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Back to Kilkenny

2011-08-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

Day 14 of 35: Tuesday, August 17, 2010

This was another clear morning of brilliant sideways sunshine. We were blessed with much more in the way of sun on this trip than we were on our first in 2006. Days typically start like this (or with soft ground fog), followed by rapid buildup of puffy cumulus clouds as the sun’s heat raises moisture from the ground. Frequently there are showers from the cumuli in the afternoons, well-scattered, short, and enjoyable. It has made for absolutely fabulous light and dramatic skies for photography.

The Carroll Oak in early morning.

Birr Castle's eastern face in early morning. The four-pane window near bottom-center of this image is one of the windows in the room that houses the Birr Castle Archives, where I would spend many hours during the duration of this trip, starting the next day.

Most of this day was taken with a return to Kilkenny and a tour of the castle there. Our short drive down to Kilkenny was via our favored backroads through rich Tipperary farmland under skies that Fáilte Ireland might have ordered.

Tipperary corn, Tipperary cows, chamber of commerce weather.

The Butler family no longer lives in Kilkenny Castle, having given up on the place after several centuries, and Ireland's Office of Public Works administers the buildings and grounds, as they do many, many other sites of historical interest in the Republic. They are doing a fine job, it appears, of maintaining, renovating, and restoring the castle as a museum.

Kilkenny Castle, front.

I later said to Lady Rosse that the Kilkenny castle has an “OPW shine on everything, and seems well-embalmed,” and she smiled and nodded. That’s the fate that the Parsons family has worked so hard to avoid for Birr Castle, and so far they have been one of the very few 1600’s “Ascendancy” families that have been savvy and industrious and multi-generationally perseverant enough to keep their Demesne alive, not simply preserved. It takes a lot – a lot – of hard work and expense to keep the government's well-intentioned embalmers away from a place like Birr Castle or Kilkenny Castle.

Kilkenny Castle, courtyard.

Diane did well on the many stairs of the Castle self-guided tour, despite being only five days separated from an accident that we thought at the time would essentially be the end of our mobility. She was healing rapidly, and possesses a great deal of determination.

Kilkenny.

We drove back in a roundabout way, wandering up through Carlow and taking the new M7 motorway from Portlaois to Roscrea. It was fast and scenic, but we worry about what the Americanization of Irish motor transport will mean for little towns like Mountrath, Borris-in-Ossory, and Roscrea, now bypassed by the superhighway.

The Thatch.

We had dinner in the Thatch pub and restaurant in Crinkle (Crinkill), a hamlet that abuts Birr. The food and the ambience was wonderful, but one thing was a little peculiar: how patrons' food orders are taken. When restaurant customers first enter, they are seated in kind of a waiting room near the kitchen with chairs backed up against the walls and given menus. After a short wait, the evening’s restaurant manager takes the food orders, and, after another short wait, leads the patrons to their table in the dining room. From there on, the experience was a very pleasant and tasty one -- with one little caveat: Like essentially everyplace else on the island, the Thatch is very child-friendly by American standards for a modestly upscale restaurant. If you're bothered by children -- many of them, usually -- running loose while you dine, then the Thatch probably isn't for you.

In fact, if that sort of thing bothers you, then Ireland probably isn't for you!

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More images from August 17th can be seen here.
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Next: August 18, 2010 -- Back to the 19th Century
Previous: August 16, 2010 -- In the Demesne
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: In the Demesne

2011-08-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Day 13 of 35: Monday, August 16, 2010

A restful day in and around Birr began with a morning walk to visit Miss Kitty near her new home by the old glasshouse near the kitchen garden. We have found out why she is so wary this time as opposed to four years ago, nervously looking around whenever she wanders very far from the safety of her cushion in the plastic greenhouse where Jimmy the gardener looks after her now. There is a cute white puffball of a Bichon Frise who lives in one of the staff houses near the box hedges with two other dogs (and with people whom we haven’t met yet). On a few evenings now, he has been running free and trying to be the baddest watchdog on the island – barking as loudly and threateningly as he can, running straight toward me until he gets about ten feet from my ankles, at which point it seems to occur to him that I’m laughing at him and he stops and glares at me, until I turn my back on him and start to walk away, at which point the whole dance begins again.

Wary on a wall.

The nasty puffball is a lot smaller than me, but he’s a lot bigger than tiny Bothy Cat, so she stays close to home and we now usually go to visit her instead of the other way around.

Gate to the footbridge to Inis Dara near the Birr Castle Demesne glasshouses.

Taking the occasional stroll in the Demesne was the order of the day, in accordance with doctor's orders for Diane's ankle recovery.

Into Lord Rosse's forest in the Tipperary reaches of the Demesne.

Testing the copying apparatus to be used in the Archives.

Mundane housekeeping was on the menu, too, as was some last-minute homework on my part. My first scheduled day in the Birr Castle Archives was only two days away, and I went through the Calendar (index) of the Rosse Papers for the umpteenth time, identifying still more items I wanted to look into. The Calendar was not available when I last visited the Archives in 2006 (this monumental effort by Anthony P. W. Malcomson was published in 2008,) and was, predictably, a tremendous help in time-management.

Back road near Terryglass.

In the afternoon and early evening, we drove over to Portumna (and a favorite place of ours from our 2006 visit, the Portumna Forest Park). We wandered on backroads south of Portumna on this evening, eventually stumbling upon the beautiful little town of Terryglass and its pier on Lough Derg, through which the Shannon flows on its way to Limerick. Dinner in the Derg Inn was comfortable and fine.

Terryglass on Lough Derg.

Diane walks past Paddy's Bar after dinner in the Derg Inn (background). Note that she's not using crutches!

Lough Derg from the Terryglass pier.

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More images from August 15th and 16th can be seen here.
==================================

Next: August 17, 2010 -- Back to Kilkenny
Previous: August 15, 2010 -- Recuperation with Parade
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Recuperation with Parade

2011-08-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

Day 12 of 35: Sunday, August 15, 2010

Safely back in the Bothy, snug within its hidden space in Birr Castle Demesne, we re-assessed our situation on this morning in light of Diane's physical condition. We called and cancelled reservations we had for two fairly extended trips away from Birr: a return to Letterfrack and Clifden in Connemara for the pony show and another one to Derry, where we had planned on walking the ground of Bloody Sunday and where I could see the last place in Ireland that my most recent emigrant ancestor saw as he stepped aboard the old bark Fanny in 1848.

Maybe next time.

We kept one set of reservations, for the southwest and an exploration of the little-traveled Beara Peninsula, and reckoned that we would do exactly what our place in a long-term rented cottage in a gorgeous private 135-acre parkland in the middle of the island allowed us to do: go wherever or nowhere, follow our whim and capability.

It was to work out beautifully.

Today, the Sunday of the annual Vintage Week in Birr, was the big day of the Vintage Parade. We had watched the one in 2006, and Diane decided that she would test her ankle by seeing as much of this one as she could bear.

View from the Bothy's private gate to the Millennium Gardens on a foggy Sunday morning.

I walked into town while the fog was still around, to get a newspaper and a Vintage Week brochure. The town's preparation for the event was evident all around in the peaceful, nearly deserted streets:

Main Street, Birr, early on the morning of the Vintage Parade, 2010.

We studied a map of the parade route before going, looking for the nearest point on it to the Bothy, to make Diane’s hobble with crutches as short as possible. We chose a point near the end of the parade route, close to St. Brendan’s Church of Ireland a block from the Demesne’s gates. A fine Irish family let us share the steps on their stoop to sit, and listening to them talk – among themselves and to many of the parade participants – was actually more interesting and entertaining than the parade itself.

Parading on Emmet Street, Birr

It turned out that the spot we chose was actually not a very good one for viewing the parade. It was after the reviewing stand, and we later found that a great many of the parade participants (including almost all that we were looking forward to, such as the steam tractors and most of the bands) decided to call it quits after their turn in front of the stand was over, not following the route all the way to the finish and past our viewing point. Ah, well, next time we’ll know better.

The meadow, Birr Castle Demesne, on a glorious Sunday.

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Images from August 15th and 16th will be linked at the end of tomorrow's installment.
==================================

Next: August 16, 2010 -- In the Demesne
Previous: August 14, 2010 -- Out of the Box
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Out of the Box

2011-08-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

Day 11 of 35: Saturday, August 14, 2010

During our 9-hour odyssey in the hospital on the night of the 12^th, we were told that no airline will permit someone in a hard cast to fly – something about a vastly increased potential for fatal blood clots forming – and that we would have to find a “fracture clinic” to assess Diane’s situation in three to four weeks. Since we were scheduled to fly home in little more than three weeks, this added a layer of anxiety to the whole stack of dismalness we were feeling.

Not knowing who else to turn to, we had contacted Lady Rosse yesterday (Friday the 13th), and she was -- in addition to being sincerely concerned with Diane's well-being -- helpful beyond any reasonable expectation. She telephoned her personal physician’s office and relayed their message to us: instead of dealing with and through a fracture clinic, go to the regional hospital at Tullamore (just 20 miles northeast of Birr) and make an appointment with the orthopedics department as soon as possible.

Antrim cattle bid us farewell. I think.

So we were feeling a little more upbeat as we set out on Saturday morning (after yet another fabulous Ulster fry breakfast from Mabel Dunlop) for the long drive back to County Offaly through another day drenched with sunshine.

Northern Ireland farmland along our route, near the border south of Belfast.

The Garmin GPS directions on this day (warily checked along the way with our Auto Association road atlas) proved to be very good: skirting Belfast and Dublin, and making maximum use of the island’s brand-new motorway system, the trip to Tullamore halfway across Ireland’s maximum dimension took only about four hours.

Taking a break at the Bernish Viewpoint near the border.

We arrived at Tullamore around 3pm and (after a quick McDonald’s meal – there are many, many more of those in Ireland now than there were four years ago) went straight to the Tullamore's Midland Regional Hospital. People at the main reception area directed me to take Diane to the emergency area, where our experience could not have been more different from the one 48 hours earlier in Coleraine. The wait was short, the intake clerk was concerned and helpful, and – as great good luck would have it – a semi-retired orthopedist was helping out in A&E that day. After a quick look at the X-rays we had brought with us from the North, he quickly concluded that all bone chips were from old injuries, that the current injury was no worse than a sprain, and that the cast should come off immediately. He liberated Diane’s leg from the “box” (as he called it) and prescribed walking as the best treatment, along with some fairly tight wrapping to keep swelling down. We were out of the hospital and back on our way only 90 minutes after entering it.

Emergency wing of Tullamore's Midland Regional Hospital.

By only three days later, Diane was walking without a crutch, but still in some considerable pain. The pain would persist for the rest of our stay in Ireland, diminishing with time. We had to make some significant changes in our plans -- the Connemara Pony show the following week was clearly out, for example, as was a fairly extended trip to Derry and other points in the northwest -- but, all things considered, our prospects for our 2010 Irish adventure looked far brighter than they had just the day before.

We arrived back at the Bothy in early evening, two very, very happy and relieved people.

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A short slideshow of images from August 13 and 14 is available here.
==================================

Next: August 15, 2010 -- Recuperation with Parade
Previous: August 13, 2010 -- Pause
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Pause

2011-08-13T09:12:00.000-07:00

Day 10 of 35: Friday, August 13, 2010

Di is cast.

From my travel diary for this day:

"Since we were under doctor’s orders not to undertake a car trip today (the cast needed time to set properly before undergoing prolonged jostling), we had to stay in County Antrim a day longer than planned. The twin room we had for the previous two nights was spoken for tonight, as were both other en suite rooms at the Seaview, but Mabel had a very small double room available, directly adjacent to the fancy bathroom off the main hallway. We took it.

"Moving down the hall – moving anywhere – was a chore because we were also under orders not to let the heel of the cast bear any weight at all for fear of shattering it, and the forearm-height crutches Diane was issued (later to be described by an orthopedist in Tullamore in the Republic as “mass-produced pieces of garbage”) were more a hindrance than a help. Mabel had a small office chair with little wheels which helped, but which could not get over doorways’ thresholds with Diane in it, and Diane spent virtually the entire day in bed. Luckily, the few pain-killing tablets she was given at the A&E (a kind we had never heard of) numbed the pain enough for her to sleep.

"I spent most of the day trying to locate various supplies for her. Filling her prescription for the pain-killers was easily enough done at a pharmacy just four miles away in Bushmills (where the biggest challenge was understanding the young lady clerk’s country Ulster accent). Finding other things, such as under-the-armpit crutches or a bedpan was either not so easy (for the latter) or impossible (for the former) in three sorties as far away as Coleraine and Portrush.

Coleraine: a beautiful city to visit under other circumstances. (Click on this Google Earth image to make it legible.)

"Adding to the frustration then, but kind of comical in hindsight, was the Garmin GPS’s ineptitude on this day of all days. Three times it led me to places where medical supply places supposedly were, but weren’t. The first was the street address of a place in Coleraine. Garmin led me to a spot in a beautiful residential neighborhood. I found that the supply place was listed by name in Garmin’s menu of nearby “places of interest,” so I instructed it to take me there by name instead of address. It proceeded to take me on a route totaling about 2 ½ miles – finishing in exactly the same place in the residential neighborhood, but headed in the opposite direction on the street. So I instructed it to take me to the next “pharmacy/medical supply” place on its list, and it led me to the crowded, narrow streets of old central Coleraine and then – along what turned out upon looking at a standard paper map to be a spiral route – to the ancient center of the city. There was no pharmacy or medical supply place there, but there was a very nice plaza which Diane would have enjoyed a lot were she not back in bed and in pain at the B&B 20 miles away.

"(The Garmin was extremely useful for the most part during this whole trip, especially on the previous night when it led us safely from hospital to B&B through the dark, rain, and distracted anxiety, but it was prone to giving some very peculiar directions. We learned to double-check it against paper maps whenever possible.)

View northward toward the sea from the Seaview on August 13, 2010: one of only two shutter snaps on this day.

"On the few occasions during my driving when I took the time to notice, the day presented spectacular brilliance and clarity. From places along the road from Coleraine northward to Portrush, the Derryveagh Mountains area of County Donegal across Lough Foyle seemed impossibly close, and the coast of Scotland across the North Channel could be seen at the horizon from the coast roads. But today was not one for taking pictures, or for taking time."

==================================
There are no additional slides from this day on sharrington.net.
==================================

Next: August 14, 2010 -- Out of the Box
Previous: August 12, 2010 -- An Unexpected Turn
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: An Unexpected Turn

2011-08-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

Day 9 of 35: Thursday, August 12, 2010

The "turn" in the title of this day's post refers to Diane's ankle, but it was more than just a turn. It was a severe sprain -- not a fracture, as at first diagnosed in the hospital at Coleraine late this Thursday night, but of sufficient severity to cause significant pain and mobility restrictions for her throughout the remainder of our 2010 Ireland adventure.

Other than that, this was a spectacular, wonderful day. Really -- we both remember it as one of the three or four most exhilarating days of our entire trip, right up until she fell off that stile. The day's story has been told in detail in this blog before, so instead of repeating it here, I'll just refer you to those posts via these links (each of which should open in a new tab or window): Part 1 and Part 2 about this day, and Part 3 about the following two days.

The exhilaration was the product of great scenery: the Giant's Causeway, Dunluce Castle, and the almost heartbreaking beauty of the northern County Antrim farmland. It might also have had to do with the breakfast that fueled our day: Mabel Dunlop's fabulous Ulster fry. (Americans, note: "bacon" in the recipe means back bacon, not the strips of belly bacon we're used to.) The Seaview may be the only B&B we've ever stayed in where the "breakfast" part actually deserves its equal billing with the "bed" part.

Here are just a few teaser images from the good part of August 12th; many more are in this day's slide show over on sharrington.net. Remember, for the ones below, you can see a larger image by clicking on the picture:

Approaching the Giant's Causeway

Diane (in yellow) dancing on the Causeway's column tops

The Causeway enters the sea -- Scotland straight ahead.

Entering Dunluce Castle

Dunluce Castle ruins

View from Dunluce Castle (detail)

North Antrim farmland

In north Antrim

Waterfall and cliffs, County Antrim

Cattle by the sea

==================================
The full slideshow from the good part of this day can be seen by clicking here.
==================================

Next: August 13, 2010 -- Pause
Previous: August 11, 2010 -- Armagh to the North Coast of Antrim
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Armagh to the North Coast of Antrim

2011-08-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

Day 8 of 35: Wednesday, August 11, 2010

View from our room, morning of the 11th

After checking out of our hotel, and before returning to the Observatory's hill for more exploration, we returned to the center of old Armagh city to return the key to the awful other hotel. (When we fled the place the previous afternoon, we weren't sure we would be able to find somewhere else to stay, so we had kept the key.)

In central Armagh (photo by Diane Harrington)

While parking our rental car in one of the lots off the main street, behind the hotel, we noticed something about the carparks that we hadn't noticed the day before:

The razor wire atop the stone walls of the carparks was startling. The Troubles are still close in memory in Armagh, and its evidence, I think, is seen not just in architectural appurtenances. We sensed a harder edge in people in the city's heart than we had felt elsewhere, but, truth be told, we may have brought some of that with us, knowing what little we do about Armagh's sad place in recent history. But additional truth be told, distressing echoes of the Troubles still are heard thereabouts: a month before, a bomb had cratered a road and destroyed a small stone bridge in southern County Armagh, and three days after our stay in the city another bomb detonated in the town of Lurgan about ten miles to the north, injuring three children.

The ongoing violence is noted in sadness, not judgement. My home state of California is, by any measure, a more violent place than Northern Ireland is. As Cervantes famously cautioned, If thy roof be made of glass, it shows small wit to pick up stones to pelt the people as they pass.

Armagh Observatory's historic main building

We left our disquiet behind quickly. When we arrived at the Observatory's hill just blocks away, the sunlight had become bright, as it would be through most of the day.

Children at the Hill of Infinity summit's modern stone circle

After walking the Hill of Infinity again, and exploring the Observatory grounds, we resumed our northward trip.

The day's travel

Our route to the next stop, a planned two-day stay at a B&B near the Giant's Causeway on the north coast, took us through the pretty village of Moy (invariably called "the Moy" by its people.) Diane wanted to stop there because it's the home town of a former member of her favorite musical group, "Celtic Thunder."

Approaching Moy from the south

The River Blackwater winds around Moy's southern flank. (Photo by Diane Harrington)

A pleasant northward drive through more prosperous-looking farm country eventually brought us to the North Coast of County Antrim and our home for, as it would turn out, a bit more time than we had planned on, Mabel Dunlop's Seaview bed and breakfast.

The Seaview, Bushmills, County Antrim

==================================
A slideshow of images from our two-day trip from Birr to Bushmills can be seen by clicking here.
==================================

Next: August 12, 2010 -- An Unexpected Turn
Previous: August 10, 2010 -- To Another Country
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: To Another Country

2011-08-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

Day 7 of 35: Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Our route from the Bothy in Birr to Armagh. The yellow line in this Google Earth image is the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

This was a day of driving North to Armagh, the first leg of the first of two sorties into Northern Ireland that we had planned. This venture's main goal was to spend a couple of nights at a Bed and Breakfast on the Northern coast of County Antrim, a scenic highlight of the island, with a short stop at the city of Armagh along the way.

In Monaghan city, County Monaghan, a border area. While Monaghan is in the Republic of Ireland, the fuel pumps at the gas station we used there were priced in pounds sterling.

Armagh was long the astronomy capital of Ireland, and the Armagh Observatory is still an active center of astronomical research whose score of astronomers do research around the world in various astronomical specialties. The observatory itself, built in the 18th century, is no longer the site of active observing, but is the enterprise's headquarters, a site of high historical importance in astronomy, housing offices, historic instruments, and archives going back more than two centuries. The Observatory shares its hill with a modern, internationally-acclaimed planetarium, and both institutions do wonderful work in public outreach and education.

The Armagh Planetarium patio (above) and part of the facility's impressive display area (below). The Armagh Planetarium has a very fine interactive web site, in which you can take a virtual tour -- of your own directing -- through the building.

During the 1800's, Birr and Armagh formed a vital astronomical axis, with astronomers frequently traveling between the sites, probably along a route not much different from the one Diane and I took on this day.

My earlier communications with Observatory and Planetarium hadn't mentioned this particular short visit, since it was to be just a very brief stop on our way to somewhere else. The plan was to return a couple of weeks later for a longer stay after I had a chance to dig into the archives at Birr Castle for more details about the relationships among the astronomer Earls of Rosse in Birr, Armagh Observatory's founding Robinson family, and American astronomers of the era. That way, I could more clearly articulate what I would be looking for and use time more efficiently than if I had scheduled such a visit this early in our trip.

The trip itself to Armagh city was uneventful and beautiful, through prosperous-looking farm country most of the way. As we had been told, the transition from Ireland to Northern Ireland was almost undetectable, by far the most nearly invisible international border I have ever seen (not that I've seen many.) The only clues were a slight change in the road surface (which can often happen at the interface between two road-maintenance districts), a change in the color of the shoulder stripes from yellow to white, and a change in the speed limit signs from kph to mph.

While the approaching countryside seemed prosperous, the center of Armagh itself seemed somewhat worn and almost gloomy. The hotel in which we had our reservation, the Charlemont Arms in the heart of old Armagh city, was horrible: creaky floors, dim lights in meandering hallways, a broken elevator (which looked like it had been broken for a very long time), and, worst of all, an overpowering stench of mildew in our room.

We didn't bring our bags in, but immediately went in search of another hotel -- and found a gem: the Armagh City Hotel, which, in addition to being modern and clean, was in a superb location for viewing the city. It helped that we had a wonderful room for that, a second-floor corner room facing the hills of old Armagh and the Observatory.

View from our room's window in the Armagh City Hotel. Two green domes of the Armagh Observatory can be seen in a thicket of trees at the horizon just left of center; the larger dome of the Planetarium is slightly below them and to the right of center.

After a brief rest, it was off to the goal of our stop in Armagh, the Planetarium and Observatory area, especially the fabulous Astropark which shares the hill with them. The park meanders around and up the hill from the Planetarium to the old Observatory buildings.

Goofing around at Saturn. The other big stainless steel ball represents Jupiter, the Sun's size is represented by the arches in the background, and the marble-sized balls for the inner planets cannot be seen in this view.

The first part of the Park's meander is a scale-model solar system, laid out in a linear way. At the end of the model solar system is a set of nested cubes (a structure called the "Hypercube") illustrating exponential notation for youngsters in a striking and clear way:

Stainless steel Uranus (foreground) and the Hypercube.

... and after the hypercube, the Park's path climbs the lush green "Hill of Infinity," on which a strolling person can travel in exponential and well-marked steps from Pluto to the edge of the observable universe, the last marked by a modern-day ring of standing stones at the hill's summit, aligned to the Sun's rising and setting points at the solstices and equinoxes.

Looking down the Hill of Infinity toward the Hypercube and County Armagh farmland beyond.

Like so much else on the island, either North or South, the Park is extremely child-friendly. There is no admission charge for the Park, no fences or gates, no "keep off the grass" signs, and everything is designed to be touched as well as seen.

Dusk from our room in Armagh.

==================================
The slides on sharrington.net for this day are merged with those for the next, and a link to that combined slideshow will appear at the end of tomorrow's installment.
==================================

Next: August 11, 2010 -- Armagh to the North Coast of Antrim
Previous: August 9, 2010 -- Waterford
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Waterford

2011-08-08T08:02:00.001-07:00

Day 6 of 35: Monday, August 9, 2010

The day's loop, traveled clockwise. The distance scale in lower-left can be made legible by clicking on the image to view it in a larger size.

This day was kissed alternately by gentle rain and brilliant sunshine with ideal temperatures for doing things that tourists do. We spent most of it driving a big loop through the South, one whose extremes are marked by Birr, Kilkenny, Waterford, and Tipperary. The main destination, which we approached with some trepidation, was the new Waterford Crystal factory and showroom, but the rest of the drive was beautiful as well.

Kilkenny City. We would return.

Since our destination was Waterford, we had originally planned to take the "loop" bypass of the city of Kilkenny on our backroads wander south. We are very glad that we changed our minds and went through the city's heart. It charmed us into a resolution to return for a longer visit later in the month.

New Waterford Crystal site in downtown Waterford City

The new Waterford Crystal showroom and factory opened only a few weeks before our visit. It is in central Waterford City; the old one was a much larger plant, located in the outlying town of Kilbarry. The factory we knew from our tour four years ago collapsed financially and ceased operations in 2009 during the precipitous fall of the world's economy. All employees were let go; it was a disaster for the city.

An American investment group bought rights to the name, and the current ownership also controls the Wedgewood and Royal Doulton names in fine china and pottery. While most fine glass that now bears the Waterford mark is manufactured elsewhere, the ownership group did build the new plant in Waterford as a showcase and, presumably, a public relations gesture.

Waterford craftsmen: 2006 (left) and 2010

The new factory retains the old techniques and craftsmanship, but has far fewer employees. We noticed significant differences in appearance and demeanor along this year's tour from four years ago: the workers wear uniforms now, for example, and there was essentially no chatting among the workers (whereas lat time there was much banter and laughter.) While the men we saw this time were mostly dour, their work lacks nothing in comparison to the old Waterford's, as far as we could tell.

Waterford concentration: 2006 (left) and 2010

The showroom is every bit as spectacular as the old one. We bought a couple of small items. When they arrived in California a couple of months later, they were every bit as gorgeous as we remembered. They also, to our unwarranted surprise, had been made in Eastern Europe.

Waterford Christmas tree ornament, 2010

The drive back, wandering to the northwest via Tipperary, was of course pleasant and scenic. The occasional narrow-road sections with hedgerows crowding the asphalt only served to emphasize how much the character of road travel has changed in Ireland in only four years. New construction has made getting around much easier and significantly quicker (but, in some places, at the sacrifice of character -- just as it did in America half a century ago.) There has been a big change in signage practices as well: signs are now well in advance of intersections or roundabouts now in addition to right at them. I've had to stop my running jokes about Irish signs.

The light was spectacular for a little while upon our return to Birr, just as it was when we returned from our trip to Waterford on the 2006 visit.

==================================
Many more images from this day can be seen by clicking here.
==================================

Next: August 10, 2010 -- To Another Country
Previous: August 8, 2010 -- Reunion with an Old Friend
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Reunion with an Old Friend

2011-08-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Day 5 of 35: Sunday, August 8, 2010

We spent this day settling in to our new/old digs and strolling around the Birr Castle Demesne. We had hoped to see our old friend, White Socks (also known as The Bothy Cat), but thought that we probably wouldn't quite so soon in our stay. After all, four years ago she took more than a week before she figured that we were okay and started her regular visits. Also, Lady Rosse had told us during the course of our e-mails setting up this stay that the cat now is being cared for by Jimmy, a gardener, over near the glasshouses, so she's not spending as much time near the cottage as she used to.

Early this morning, before Diane was fully functional, I walked over to the kitchen garden where four years ago the Bothy Cat had shown us her nest in a bit of hedge, thinking that I might catch a glimpse of her there. I did, and in fact we had a good long chat. I wasn't so rude as to tell her aloud, but she has aged a bit in four years: the underlying red of her coat is significantly more obvious now, and there are a few nicks in her ears -- but she's still a sweetie.

Noms then and now: on the Bothy kitchen windowsill in 2006 (left) and 2010

Later, in the evening after the grounds were closed to the public (lots of visitors on this Sunday of warm sunshine!) I went back to visit with her again. This time, after a little discussion, she followed me back past the formal gardens, through our little gate in the wall, and to the Bothy for a nosh and a visit with Diane.

A wary walk home

When she was done eating, she made it clear by standing in the wall doorway that she didn't want me to close the gate behind her unless I went with her -- she seemed much more wary of her surroundings this time than last (and with good reason, as we found out a few days later.) So I walked with her most of the way back home to the gardeners' area before leaving her and returning to the Bothy.

The next morning we found a dead field mouse in front of the Bothy's front door. We presume that it was a gift from our old friend.

The Bothy's sitting room, freshly refurbished

In between the morning and evening visits with our friend, we spent the day at home and wandering the grounds, quietly reveling in being back in Birr Castle Demesne. (I also started the Benches of Birr Castle Demesne project on this day, an effort that was the topic of a previous post in this blog.) A few images from the day, which can be seen larger by clicking on them:

The fernery...

... the old brick bridge over the Little Brosna...

... the Camcor near where it joins the Little Brosna...

... the trail along the Camcor behind the Lake...

... the Lake...

... and its ducks...

... the great telescope's south supporting wall...

... and the Parsons' house in late evening, slanting sunlight.

==================================
A very short slide show from this day can be seen by clicking here.
==================================

Next: August 9, 2010 -- Waterford
Previous: August 7, 2010 -- Back to Birr!
Beginning of the series: Prologue, August 2

Ireland Revisited: Back to Birr!

2011-08-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

Day 4 of 35: Saturday, August 7, 2010

A last glimpse out of our airport hotel window before heading off to the Midlands and back to Birr. Note the approaching airliner in the upper-left and the old cottage -- an island of the past in a sea of autos -- at lower-center.

We checked out of the hotel at about eleven, expecting to reach Birr at about one o'clock. We took the new M4 motorway (not available to us in 2006) and came in via Tullamore, which brought us to Birr considerably earlier than we had planned. It was a very pleasant, easy, scenic drive. As we entered County Offaly, we had a sense of coming home that became more intense the closer we came and the more familiar the land and the roads grew.

The old home-away-from, the Bothy, Birr Castle Demesne

When we arrived, staff had not quite finished preparing the Bothy for us, so we spent a couple of hours driving around Birr and the nearby countryside, re-acquainting ourselves. Many things had changed in four years, the most obvious of which was a new Tesco supermarket on the south side of town. Among its charms, in addition to groceries for the cottage's kitchen, were an ATM and a checker from Southern California who had recently moved here with her Irish husband.

Would look right at home in San Jose

We spent the late afternoon and evening strolling the Demesne grounds.

Fallen champion and as it appeared in 2006

We found that the great old Champion beech tree by the lakeside near the telescope had come down, and, while we were inspecting its stump, Lord Rosse appeared (with clipboard and pruning loppers, out tending things as is his wont on summer evenings.) He told us that the tree had been felled only a day before, at the insistence of the company that was insuring the Game and Country Fair later this month, because of evidence of rot. That's a shame; it was one of our favorites on the Demesne's Red Tree Trail.

Familiar charms:

The Leviathan of Parsonstown...

... the falls in the Fernery in gathering dusk...

... the old brick bridge over the Little Brosna...

... and the Bothy's "secret gate" to the gardens.

It was delicious to be back.

==================================
This day's short slide show can be seen by clicking here.
==================================

Next: August 8, 2010 -- Reunion with an Old Friend
Previous: August 6, 2010 -- The National Stud

Ireland Revisited: The National Stud

2011-08-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

Day 3 of 35: Friday, August 6, 2010

We had one more day to spend in the Dublin area before our time in our home in the Midlands was to begin. When planning the trip, we thought it would take us a couple of days after arrival to shake jetlag and to get used to driving on the left side of the road again. We were wrong on both counts; by Friday we were ready to hit the road and get out of the city.

Once we picked up our rental car on Friday morning, we set out straight away for the Irish National Stud in Kildare, about 40 miles away, and spent almost the entire day there. It's an outing I highly recommend to anyone who likes horses, gardens, and fine scenery.

Above, a stallion is led to the teaser box. At left, Diane has a chat with Indian Haven.

There were many children among the visitors to the National Stud on our day there, almost all of them little girls. Of course.

Fillies and a colt.

The National Stud grounds also boast a museum, a formal Japanese Garden, and a large, lovely, semi-wild parkland called St. Fiachra's Garden. Above, a stony St. Fiachra, patron saint of gardeners, contemplates his domain.

For the second day in a row, Diane attracts gardeners' attention.

The National Stud is evidently a popular wedding site. Low-hanging jokes will be left for harvesting in comments, if anyone cares to.

==================================

The Irish National Stud is a truly beautiful place. If you want to spend a few more minutes with other images from the place, please visit our slide show for this day.

==================================

Next: August 7, 2010 -- Back to Birr!
Previous: August 5, 2010 -- Alive in Dublin

Ireland Revisited: Alive in Dublin

2011-08-05T07:20:00.000-07:00

Day 2 of 35: Thursday, August 5, 2010

O'Connell Street Bridge, Central Dublin

The exercise of the day before seems to have worked, since we were no longer dead come Thursday morning. Unlike 2006 -- when it seemed to take us a week to shake the jetlag -- we felt almost peppy after a quick, 13-hour nap.

We spent the day strolling the central part of the city with extended stops at Trinity College Dublin and the National Museum's Archaeology section. At Trinity, we were entranced by the Book of Kells display, but absolutely dumbstruck after walking up a short flight of stairs from it and entering the Long Room old library. (The Long Room link is to an interactive, wrap-around panorama; it may take a while to load, but is well worth it.) If ever there was a cathedral to learning and the preservation of thoughts, this is it. Photography is not allowed there, nor is touching the books, and that's a good thing, else we would have spent at least a week in that one room.

As the day progressed and our legs wore down, the crowds around us grew and grew, especially along Grafton Street -- and it didn't take us long to notice that among the many languages and dialects we heard around us, two were conspicuously rare: Irish and American English. The rarity of Irish is easy to explain -- it was tourist season, after all. The lack of American tourists was a bit startling to us, though. In 2006, we encountered many of our countrymen and women all over the island. This time, not so much. The much worse condition of the economy in 2010 than in 2006 is one obvious reason, as was the dollar's weaker position versus the Euro, but we were surprised at the degree of the evident dropoff in tourism from the US.

Here are a few images from the day (a slideshow of 20 more can be seen over on sharrington.net):

An Túr Solais ("The Monument of Light," more commonly called "The Spire of Dublin"), which dominates O'Connell Street by the General Post Office, was constructed in 1999 on the site of Nelson's Pillar. Nelson's Pillar, a controversial structure from the time it was built in 1808, was destroyed by some IRA washouts in 1966.

View down the Liffey toward the Custom House dome from the middle of the O'Connell Street Bridge.

Trinity College, Dublin.

Diane, above, unaware of an admirer. She was resting after our visit to the Book of Kells display and the Long Room in the old library, and I was strolling around taking photos, including this telephoto shot from across the quad.

Arnaldo Pomodoro's "Sfera con Sfera" ("Sphere Within Sphere"), above. My first exposure to Pomodoro's work was in 1969, when he was a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and I was a first-year graduate student. I remember vividly my delight at finding -- unexpectedly -- his various works in glens, glades, and gathering places around campus. In a neat confluence, the work shown here is directly adjacent to Trinity College Dublin's Berkeley Library.

I hung around outside the Berkeley Library for a while, watching this fellow painstakingly set up his equipment for a Very Serious Shot of the Pomodoro sculpture. Over a period of about fifteen to twenty minutes, he adjusted his tripod's height over and over, twisted his lens repeatedly to find just the right framing, and moved his whole tripod structure left and right (sometimes by minute amounts), trying to get just exactly the right combination of visual components. Once he had his vantage point's angle and elevation just right, he waited for the instant when nobody would be in the field of view, either in person or in reflection. Repeatedly, he appeared ready to press his remote-control shutter button, only to have someone wander into view.

Finally, his moment arrived. He held the remote up in his right hand, then hesitated, squatted back down to look one last time into the viewfinder, and...

... a half dozen little kids came running out of the library, full-speed, and jumped onto the outer Sfera, spinning it around its vertical axis like a carousel, completely changing everything about the composition.

The photographer slumped down for a moment, and then slowly and methodically disassembled his equipment, put it away in his backpack, and left. We saw him again about an hour later, wandering along Grafton Street, looking left and right as he walked, searching for another target.

The National Museum's archaeology section is in a gorgeous old building on Kildare Street, near St. Stephen's Green. Photographs are not to be taken in the Museum, as I was very, very politely informed shortly after taking this one by the fellow looking at us here.

==================================

Please visit our 20-image slide show from this day on sharrington.net!

==================================

Next: August 6, 2010 -- The National Stud
Previous: August 4, 2010 -- Dazed in Dublin

Ireland Revisited: Dazed in Dublin

2011-08-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

Day 1 of 35: Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

Rushing to Dublin at dawn. According to the cool screen in front of my seat, our land speed shortly before this photo was taken was 695mph (assisted by a 170mph tailwind), the fastest I've ever known I've been moving.

Sleepless but excited, we arrived at the Dublin airport at a little before 8am, local time. That's about the same time of day and exactly the same condition we had arrived four years earlier, and we faced the same problem: we wouldn't be able to check in to our hotel until mid-afternoon.

Dublin Airport's new Terminal 2, nearing completion in August, 2010. It's impressive and award-winning -- but, unlike the old terminal, it wasn't engineered by the Chieftains' original flautist.

The way we handled the issue on the previous trip was straightforward if not elegant. We went directly to the hotel and sat in the lobby for a few hours, listing like zombies, until the staff took pity on us and prepared a room a bit early. While that worked, in retrospect we didn't think it helped recovery from jetlag very much since it didn't provide anything in the way of exercise before sleeping (something that's recommended for travelers over many time zones.)

So this time we took our luggage via shuttle van to the hotel, arranged for the bags' safekeeping, and took the hotel shuttle right back to the airport. There we caught an express bus into Dublin for some sightseeing and (at least on Diane's part) some shopping. We never got any closer to Dublin itself than the airport in 2006, so going into the city was high on our list of must-dos for this trip.

The primary thing on my agenda was to see the epicenter of the 1916 Easter Rising, the General Post Office on O'Connell Street in the heart of Dublin. The primary thing on Diane's agenda was to get a hair dryer that runs on European voltage.

Not just a post office, the Post Office

Not just a national shrine, but a hardworking post office

We accomplished both things. Like zombies.

As you can see in the slide show of some of the day's photos (intentionally left askew as they were taken), I could tilt on the street this time just as well as I could list in the hotel lobby last time. As we wandered agog and dazed, it crossed my mind that maybe this was what Leopold Bloom felt like in the latter part of Ulysses, so maybe it was appropriate that I see Dublin for the first time in that state. When we finally located hair dryers (I think it was in a Macy's, but I may have been partly dreaming by then), a middle-aged gentleman smiled at me while I with eyes glazed watched Diane do her shopping among the hair dryers. "You're the husband?" he asked. I nodded faintly. "You're a saint," he said. I told him that the only part of being a saint I had achieved was feeling dead.

This sign (and the wall behind it to its right) added to the sense of hallucination. (Click on any image, but especially this one, to see it in a larger format.)

By the time we arrived back at the hotel, both of us were feeling saintish dead, but very, very happy. We unpacked, ate, and collapsed.

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A slide show of 18 images from this day is available at sharrington.net by clicking here.

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Next: August 5, 2010 -- Alive in Dublin
Previous: August 3, 2010 -- On Our Way