The Irish Countryside

8 November 2009

Yesterday we had decided to get up and catch a bus for a tour of county Wicklow just SW of Dublin.

We started out heading toward Glendalough "Glen of 2 Lakes" where St. Kevin set up his monastery. It was an incredibly beautiful valley. An interesting thing our guide pointed out was that it was carved out by glaciers and the 2 lakes likely used to be one and in the next 5000 years they will likely disappear altogether.

The ruins were pretty cool. They included a rare double gateway and a huge keep where the door was 4+ meters above the ground, serving as a fortification during raids as well as a kind of beacon to help people find the monastery in the thickly-wooded valley.

We got to wander around quite a bit.

Then it was back to the bus to head to a good lookout point. You could see the beautiful valley all around and even the ocean!

Another interesting tidbit: the government has been planting a type of pine tree (Swiss or Norwegian--can't exactly remember) for paper that is really hurting the beautiful environment. They're too small so birds cannot nest in them, they're too close together and ground animals will not make homes in them, the needles fall and poison the water, and after they are cut down the ground is completely stripped of all nutrients and is unusable for at least 10 years. A long time ago the government promised to stop, but as we drove on our guide was able to point out seedlings recently planted. Pretty horrifying... Just thought I'd share.

We drove out of the valley area and into the flatlands.

Then into Kilkenny. We got a break for lunch so we ate in the small castle garden and wandered around the town a little. Then we met back up for our guide to lead us around and back to the bus. The castle had been in the same family's hands from the Norman time until the 1930s and belonged to relations of Anne Boleyn.

We checked out the Black church--named so because of the black-cloaked Dominicans. It had this cool statue of the holy trinity--I guess God has a forked beard...

Then we went up to this other church that had a tall keep similar to the one at the monastery ruins. No one paid to go in because it was pretty expensive, and in any case we were heading right out.

Back into Dublin and we went out to the same big pub as the night before and listened to some more music. Liz and I got a Kilkenny in honor of the brewery we saw on our trip.