The flowers may rise in Spring,
The trees may bud, the waters run,
The merry finches sing.
Or there maybe 'tis cloudless night
And swaying beeches bear
The Elven-stars as jewels white
Amid their branching hair.
Though here at journey's end I lie
In darkness buried deep,
Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
Nor bid the Stars farewell.
Sung by Sam in The Return of the King
Hello everyone!
I have just gotten back from my trip to Western Ireland. This trip was one of the two class trips that Notre Dame takes us on while we’re here in Ireland. The trip is guided by Kevin, our professor, and chaperoned by Joe Stranix, our emergency contact and stand-in parental figure (in terms of organization, responsibility, and even endearment). The poem I chose to use to start off this blog actually describes the trip pretty well, besides the fact that I’m not lying buried deep in darkness at journey’s end. We were indeed traveling through western lands beneath the sun, with steep mountains, strong and high towers, rising spring flowers, and jewel-white stars among the branches of the trees.
Please note that I am being very detailed about this weekend’s trip, as I want to record and remember everything that happened. I’ll be splitting the weekend into a few posts, so don’t feel like you need to read them all at once (or read all of them at all) if you don’t want to!
This is how our journey began: We had to be down at the bus stop outside of UCD by 8:00. That was rather unfortunate, considering that I spent the night before packing until 2:00 in the morning. I was trying to get everything that I needed ready for my spring break travels, which would begin with an 8:00 flight out of Dublin the day after we got back from the Western Ireland trip. So, with all of the things I need for spring break in a pile in my room, and with my backpack and my small suitcase very full, I joined the small migration from my dorm to the bus stop. I was tired. It looks like Kaitlyn was too. Allison was doing a bit better.
Ryan and Ashley
Melissa and Sam in the background (Sam knows how to speak Irish, by the way, and how to write it, which is a whole skill on its own because nothing is spelled like it sounds)
Jackie, Kayla with the beautiful blonde/red hair, and Mary
Andrew was in charge of making sure all the ND students at UCD got on the bus. We had two people arrive late because they overslept, but Andrew took care of everything. Here he is in action.
So our journey began. We picked up the ND students who are going to Trinity (they’re in a year-long program) and got on the road. It didn’t take too long to get out of Dublin. Soon we were traveling through the countryside.
The Irish countryside starts out, as you go west from Dublin, as a very flat place. Not as flat as Ohio, granted, but fairly flat. This, Kevin told us, is due to a large plain of limestone under the soil. Limestone erodes easily, so therefore the land gets very flat.
Now, one thing that makes the Irish countryside awesome is the random castle-towers that just pop up once in a while.
Another thing that makes the Irish countryside awesome is... sheep! Yes indeed, for the first time I saw sheep in Ireland. There really aren’t many in the city. Everyone was really excited to see them. Every time we saw them, people would shout “sheeeeep!” Jackie decided the singular for sheep should be ‘shep,’ and so we all said “shep!” if there was just one sheep. Sometimes people would slip and say “sheps!” which was silly and not correct. I’m sure it made Kevin laugh at how suburban we all are. He grew up in a family that kept sheep. Check out these:
More awesome sheep later. A third thing that makes the Irish countryside awesome is that as well as old castle-towers popping up everywhere, you get lots of cool old stone churches that pop up everywhere too. Some of the churches even look like castles.
Then we stopped for lunch in a little town called Adare. Irish buildings are really cute. They like to use bright colors, which we do not do enough of in the states.
We ate lunch in a very fancy hotel. It was just soup (some kind of squash soup) and little tea sandwiches. All of the boys were suffering for lack of substantial caloric food. What’s more, there were four kinds of sandwiches, and one contained ham, which is a problem for the devout Catholics in the group because it was a Friday during Lent (and they can’t eat meat except for fish on Lent Fridays). So, they didn’t get to eat the ham sandwiches. Here’s a picture of the room where we ate lunch, and then a picture of the hotel lobby.
Outside the tourist information office, I found a friend! He was sitting on the sign and making fun crowing noises at me. Until other people came along and scared him off.
This town also had a church that looks like a castle.
Within the tourist info center, I was looking at the keychains of family crests. There was no Neidecker (surprise surprise) but there was a Wilson! So I bought it. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of it, so you’ll just have to wait until I get back to see it, unless you really can’t wait, and then I’ll take a picture of it and put it in the next blog entry.
Kevin made the bus driver stop on the side of the road so we could stretch our legs and get a good view of everything. There was a cool stone circle in front of the bus, but I don’t know why it was there.
The views were amazing. Like most sights on this trip, the pictures don’t really do it justice.
Melissa, Allison, and me!
I’ll take this opportunity to say that this was a ridiculously beautiful day. Kevin told us that days like this in West Ireland in early March only come every 100 years. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the wind was extremely, extremely calm for that area. It was great. Really wonderful. So, before you all get inspired by my pictures and start booking vacations to West Ireland in March, consider that it’s usually rather windy and rainy. It is, apparently, usually a bit warmer, but compared to Ohio and Indiana winters, the temperature was really very nice.
Soon we started to see the hills/mountains. For those of you from West Virginia (more about West Virginia later), you may not consider these mountains. But they are considered mountains in Ireland, so in the Irish spirit I will henceforth call them mountains.
Our plan was to drive around the Ring of Kerry. Kerry is one of the counties in Ireland. The Ring of Kerry is not related to the One Ring to Rule them All, unfortunately; it’s a loop of road that travels along one of the peninsulas on the Western coast. The road is actually so narrow that tour busses are only allowed to drive one way around it because they couldn’t pass each other if they met on the road! We were headed to the little village of Kenmare, which sits near the end of the Ring’s route.
There are lots of mountains on the Irish peninsulas. They were carved by glaciers long ago and therefore look quite spectacular. So, eventually, the gentle rolling plain that covers most of Ireland to the east ends in an escarpment, which is the beginning of the western plateau. The plateau is made of sandstone, a harder stone than limestone that doesn’t erode as easily. That’s what the mountains are made of. The interesting thing about the western coast of Ireland is that it is made up of stripes of sandstone and limestone. The limestone wears away in between the sandstone stripes, creating ocean inlets. The sandstone remains as mountainous peninsulas that dip like fingers into the Atlantic Ocean. Apparently, the limestone creates very calcium-rich soil, which in turn produces calcium-rich plants, which in turn leads to healthy-boned livestock. The farmers up on the sandstone, however, don’t have it as well.
Kevin told us that the farmers in Ireland burn their fields in the early spring to get the grass to grow better, and they’ve done it for hundreds of years. It’s somewhat of a dying practice, but we saw a fair bit of smoke. You can see it rising in the middle of this picture:
Cool views out the bus window:
See the rectangles of fields on the side of this mountain? Almost all of the fields are bordered by ancient stone walls. You can see these walld dividing the countryside all over the place. Kevin said that the farmers keep the sheep near their houses and the safer land of the valley during the winter through lambing season, and then take them up into the mountains for the summer.
The next town we stopped in had cool architecture (what do you think Mom?):
Within this town was the only church in Ireland dedicated to a non-religious figure: The O’Connell Memorial Church. We have our ND classes at the O’Connell house in Dublin, so of course we had to see his church. It was very beautiful. And it looks somewhat like a castle.
These are Celtic crosses, which are very characteristic of Ireland (hence the name), and they fill the cemeteries. Notice the circles around the center of the cross. These help hold up the cross’s arms, but they are also seen on crosses that are simply carved into a slab (you’ll see what I mean later).
Oh yes, and in Ireland, people like to grow palm trees.
Inside the church:
We hit the road again. Once again, Kevin made the bus driver pull over on the side of the road so he could take us onto a… a bog! I was super excited! Kevin said that we couldn’t possibly come to Ireland without walking on a bog, and I quite agree.
Bogs form once the rainfall in an area gets above a certain level. They are formed by a certain kind of moss that grows on top of itself for years and years, producing layers upon layers of dead moss and moss roots, which holds a ton of water. Apparently, bogs are 90% water. I can believe it when this happens:
Here are my footprints. It was very wet and squishy. Really fun to walk on. See the water coming up around my foot as I step?
Kevin teaching us about bogs:
A view of the bog:
The moss that creates the bogs:
Joe, who is not happy about standing on a squishy bog:
To harvest the peat, farmers used to use special shovels to pull out slab-sized chunks of the bog from the ground. Now they get a machine to do it. We’re standing on the un-harvested bog, with harvested bog on either side.
Here’s the layers of dead moss where the bog has been cut away:
The layers of dead moss form the way they do because the environment within the bog is anaerobic: no oxygen can get down there in all those watery layers. So basically, nothing rots. This is wood from trees that are hundreds of years old, which people discovered when cutting the bog away. Apparently in the olden days, people used to bury their butter in the bog to preserve it, but sometimes forgot where they put it. Archeologists that discover this “bog butter” actually eat it because it’s still good. Apparently. They also find “bog bodies,” the bodies of people who died in these fields long ago, almost perfectly preserved with even their clothes and hair.
Kevin had us all get in a circle and jump up and down on the bog. It’s so squishy that you can feel it in the ground when people jump. You can also see the bog bouncing up and down under people’s feet.
After a little more driving on the bus, we stopped at a beach. It was a cool beach. Here are some views:
There was a bunch of this stuff washed up too. Is it some kind of sponge-creature? It felt pretty rubbery. I wanted to take it home, but I resisted the urge.
There were a bunch of rocks that went out into the water. People, as they are wont to do, started climbing on them.
There were lots of little friends living on these rocks!
It was cool, but then they wanted to take a group picture on the rocks. I had to jump from rock to rock all the way out with everyone else. That was fine, and kind of fun. But then I slipped and got a foot drenched in the ocean. Bleh. Oh well. I got dry socks out of my bags.
Here’s the next stop. By this time we were well onto the Kerry peninsula. Here’s the view on one side (note the sheep):
and the other:
We stopped in front of this beautiful statue, but the inscription was only in Irish. I’m assuming it’s the Virgin Mary, but you never know.
I (and others) were excited to find sheep grazing in a pasture very close to our stop, the same ones that are in the scenic picture above. Jackie and Andrew jumped into the field to get a closer look, while I walked along the road and took pictures from behind a stone wall. Aren’t they cute?
I encouraged Jackie and Andrew to try to herd the sheep closer to me. It worked pretty well. The sheep didn’t want anything to do with people and didn’t let Jackie and Andrew anywhere near them. But apparently they really didn’t want anything to do with people, because they decided to bolt and jump the wall!
Joe was not happy with us. Apparently we’re not supposed to go jumping into pastures and harassing some poor shepherd’s sheep. Joe didn’t even want to see my cool picture. Oh Joe. He’s such a sourpuss.
The views continued to get more and more beautiful as we went on.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of this, but as we were driving along, a perfectly white horse emerged from the rocks on a hill above the road. He strutted out onto a rocky outcrop and gazed over the valley below like a king. It looked so cool, and in my excitement I shouted “White horse! White horse!” And then, even louder, “It’s Shadowfax!” (which for those of you who don’t know is the King of Horses that Gandalf rides in the Lord of the Rings.) I think a number of people agreed with me.
Our next stop was the summer home of Daniel O’Connell’s family. (Again, we’re from the O’Connell house, so we can’t pass up this opportunity!) The house was cool, but it was closed, since it’s not during tourist season or anything.
The house sat just on the end of the peninsula. So, naturally, we had to go down to the beach. And how cool that we did. Here’s the path going down to the beach:
And here’s the beach.
This was one of the most beautiful parts of our trip, certainly the most beautiful of the day. There were mountains on either side of the sea, and the beach was huge and flat, and hardly anyone else was there. Just a few local people walking their dogs. The sun was low and made the sea shine, and the sand was just a little wet, so it was firm and pleasant to walk on. I’ve never been to a beach that felt so isolated, so beautiful, and so natural. Usually they feel all touristy, full of bright towels and people in bathing suits and covered in footprints, with shouting voices and shrieking children, like a playground. This just felt like an extension of the land, all at once thousands of years old and at the same time just newly created by God. The whole time we were there, I had “How Great Thou Art” singing in my head.
Apparently someone was wearing high heels:
There were some beautiful flowers on the O’Connell property. I took them especially for you, Kyle.
We piled back on the bus and went on. The landscape continued to show it’s beauty.
See how the mountains in the background glow with the setting sun? It reminded me of the golden hills in California.
We got to Kenmare when it was dark, dumped our things in our room, and went to dinner. I tried to take a bunch of pictures of people, but this one was the only one that wasn’t blurry. This is Allison, Carrie (my roommate for the trip), and Kristen.
After dinner, we went to a pub. There, Senator Mark Daily, who really likes Notre Dame, lead us in some somewhat competitive pool and Giant Jenga. I have to say I was pretty good at the Jenga, but not at the pool. By the end of my team’s Jenga game, the Jenga tower was almost as tall as me! It started about at my waist level.
Senator Mark Daily had given us a tour of the Dail, Ireland’s version of a parliament building, early in our stay in Dublin. He’s the government representative from Kerry, as far as I understand. I unfortunately don’t have a picture of him at this point, but he has curly hair, is young-looking, and is rather attractive to many of the single girls on this trip. It’s actually quite amusing to see them squealing over him whenever he makes an appearance. He’s also friends with Allison and many others of us on facebook.
While at the pub, something very amazing happened. There was live music: just a middle-aged man playing the guitar and singing. At one point, he invited one of the Notre Dame girls up with him (she’s an amazing singer, and Kevin wanted her to sing something). The man decided to sing a song that most people would know. And what do you think he sang? Mr. Wilson, I bet you know what I’m talking about. J Now, all of you should watch the video!
(Just a note: the man in the pink fro and the man dancing with him are both locals. Notre Dame students aren’t that crazy. And I turned the camera sideways at one point, because I wasn’t thinking.)
I was excited beyond belief. I have never actually heard this song before, and here I am, in an Irish pub in the middle of this tiny town in the Kerry mountains, and this is the song they play! I wished you were there, Mr. Wilson, to sing along. I learned the chorus pretty quick. Now I have it stuck in my head all the time, and it makes me so happy! Kevin actually told us that the people of Western Ireland really like American country music because they relate to it well. I guess that makes sense.
Our hotel rooms were very nice. I greatly enjoyed sleeping.
That is the end of day 1. You have just looked at almost 75 pictures and read almost 3000 words. Are you ready for day 2??? I’m putting it in a new post for sanity’s sake.
No comments:
Post a Comment