Wednesday, September 22, 1999

Today is a "rest day" on our schedule. Art got up in time for breakfast, but I slept until 11 am, choosing to skip the meal. My calf muscles were so sore I could barely move. We finally went exploring up the main street of Annascaul village, where we were joined by a friendly black and white sheep dog for a while. Then we headed out a mile or so on a secondary road, checking out the train tracks that Art had read about.

Coming back into town, we noticed a large construction project going on behind the main street of the village. We stopped to talk to a fellow with a shovel. He said it was a stone training center where 10 to 12 students would train, and they were building it because it was a government project to try to train the young people there instead of having them go to England or Germany or France. If they trained there they might not move away. The fellow said people in Annascaul know how to make money and how to keep it. I suggested "crafty" as a descriptive word and he said that was a good one.

It rained off and on during the day. I was glad to have the choice of staying indoors today. We each had a massage - my feet hurt and Art's shoulder was bothering him - before heading to the South Pole again for dinner. Ran into the "horse caravan" people again (Brian and Julie) and Derek, the solitary English walker from yesterday. Had a long conversation with the three of them before heading back to our B&B.

We saw several dogs of the sheep-herding variety, but no cats!


Thursday, September 23, 1999

We headed out of Annascaul after breakfast, climbing immediately on a narrow surfaced road. Long, lovely views of the valley behind us. Art noted old stone markers on the hillside, the remains of forts or castles. How great that he brought the binoculars!

Down a hill to Minard Beach, where we could see a ringfort high on a hill to the left and Minard Castle close by on the right.

Most ringforts were circular single defenses, used as settlements for families and stock.... The position of the stonefort here at Cahernahacree appears strategic and probably was used as a lookout to protect the harbor. It was destroyed by the removal of stone from it but its outline and positioning are still evident.

Art wanted to climb the fence and ascend the hill to get a closer look at the ringfort, but I told him that if he fell up there I wouldn't be able to get to him or to get help. He decided not to go, but I knew that he was annoyed by my conservative approach.

We headed up to the castle, trespassed, and tromped around the outside. In spite of warnings, Art went inside. Cromwell's forces laid explosives in the four corners in 1650, so the structure has been unstable for the last 350 years.

Then up through Minard village and a route around the main road to visit an old cemetery and burial ground. There were recent burials, but also some so old only mounds in the grass were left, and the inscription stones were wiped clean by the weather and the passage of time. We saw one ogham stone - with ogham marks. Another one from this burial ground is in the National Museum.

Ogham was a form of classical Celtic writing and the first known written language of Ireland. We find it written on stone and it generally bears a commemoration to a leader or the inscription of a priest. This ancient Irish alphabet dating from the 4th century is named after its mythical founder Ogma who was the Celtic God of Eloquence and is similar to Runic used on tombstones.

Then on down the hill to a "tiny" Lispole where we stopped for supplies and a chat with an old man whose English we barely understood. He had several nasturtium beds and other varieties of flowers. Gave me a couple of seeds and said he would give me a bag full if I came back by. On the way up the next lane we met a woman walking with her dog. She asked us where we were going, we said we'd be in Dingle that night. She said there was good Irish music at some of the pubs there. She recommended one of them, said she might be there herself that night. As it turned out, we didn't go to the pub, but it was good to have a person along the road be so friendly to us.

Along the hillsides then for about four miles of what I thought was farm roads and back pastures but which later reading said was the ancient farmers' road. It was muddy in parts, and overgrown in most. We saw a dead sheep guarding one of the stiles - also numerous cows in our way, and a couple of watchful bulls. At one point the river bridge had been plugged with debris and the river rerouted itself. Art tossed rocks until he had created a path for me to cross. I have rarely known such chivalry.

All day the hills were covered with clouds, so we couldn't see how tall they were or that there were many stone structures. That was discovered the next day when the clouds had cleared off.

We crossed farm after farm. The stiles got to be less than a charming novelty and more of a nuisance. The day's walk was described as 13 miles and it seemed to me that we had already walked at least that far, yet we were still in farmland with no coast in sight. It was getting late in the day by now, our feet were very sore and our bodies tired and hungry. On this segment of our walk I was concerned that we'd gotten off the trail and were heading the wrong direction. The area was quite isolated and stony and there was not another person or a house to be seen - just sheep grazing, as usual. I was relieved when we could finally see the bridge crossing over the river.

When we crested the hill we could see Dingle Town about a mile and a half ahead down the hill. It was a long mile and a half and a slow trudge. Once we got into town we noticed the signpost for our B&B - back up the next road nearly half a mile. I was angry that we hadn't been warned about this so we could have taken a shorter way from the top of the hill. Once we got to our B&B I read our directions, and indeed, there was a map explaining the alternate route. I just hadn't read it beforehand.

We stayed at Duinan House, a lovely B&B with more travelers than we'd seen before. This hostess didn't cater only to walkers, so there were several fresh looking tourists. I felt grubby in this very classy B&B.

We asked for a restaurant recommendation and decided to treat ourselves at a "top notch" restaurant, The Half Door. Art had cod and salmon with prawn sauce, and I had rack of lamb. We had an enjoyable conversation with an Irish couple on holiday from Dublin. We asked them for their suggestions on where we should go during our second week. They recommended that we go up the west coast, and particularly suggested the Cliffs of Moher.

After dinner we had to walk back up the road to our B&B. It was after 9pm and quite dark. The road was a main road, but wasn't lit. It was frightening to me to walk along the side of this narrow road, knowing that any cars coming along away from town were probably coming from pubs. It didn't bother Art at all, though. Fortunately, we got back to the B&B without incident.


Friday, September 24, 1999

We have another rest day in Dingle, another breakfast skipped by me. I'm continually surprised that Art can go, go, go, and then get out of bed, early the next morning, cheerful and hungry and ready to go again. I really like that about him. He doesn't appear to slow down much.

We had a load of laundry to take to town, and we'd made a reservation to go on an archaeological site tour at 11 after we dropped off the clothes. It was a breezy day as we left the B&B, a little overcast, but the sky was not particularly threatening. But when we got halfway into town, the rain seemed to come out of nowhere. It poured for about five minutes. We had rain jackets on, but the rest of us got completely drenched. My cotton pants stayed wet nearly all day and I remained chilly, though not enough to go back out to the B&B and change. Of all the miles we walked in the country, the only time we got really wet was on a walking day off, on a short walk into town.

We waited for the tour bus to show up but the fellow never turned up. So we spent the afternoon treading the streets of Dingle, going from shop to shop, up and down streets, some of them more than once. It was frustrating in a way - we had definite, interesting plans which fell through, so we had to fill in the extra time.

It turned out to have some positives. I found a cybercafe and logged into our email for the first time since arriving in Ireland. Touched base with Lori and Jan and sent a communique to Alyx. It was good to connect again, though I wasn't the slightest bit tempted to log into work. By the time we got to Dingle my mind was so emptied of work that I could barely remember what I'd been doing there. It was wonderful, and I hadn't realized it until I sat at the computer in that cybercafe and didn't log on to work.

Also found a bookstore. I'd finished the fiction book I'd brought with me and needed something new. The store had a section on Irish authors so I bought something by Maeve Binchy, whom I'd never read. I remembered hearing that the movie "Circle of Friends" was good, and she wrote the book, so I picked up one of hers. Also bought some herb tea for the afternoons when we'd get into a place and they'd offer us coffee. Art would always say yes, but I can't drink coffee after lunch if I want to be able to sleep the next night. So the herb tea was a good solution for the end-of-day beverages.

I was still having a lot of trouble with my feet - after about six miles of walking they were really painful. One of our travel books had suggested a place called the Mountain Man which was supposed to have knowledgeable owners. We found the shop and stopped in. When I explained the problem, the fellow suggested I bring in the shoes so he could take a look. We decided to stop by the next morning on our way out of town.

Dinner that night at the Armada, another nice little place with a lower tab. I commented to Art that we seemed to be spending a lot of money on dinners. For some reason, though, I wasn't too concerned about it. We'd decided that we wouldn't scrimp on our vacation and, by golly, we weren't. As further justification, our Irish breakfasts were so filling that we hardly ever ate lunch, except for fruit and crackers and odds and ends we'd pick up in little stores.