August 8-10 The end of a wonderfully odyssey

Our last few days in Ireland have been easy touring on the Big Red hop-on hop-off Bus. Galleries and museums, Trinity College, etc - we’re a bit toured out! The best tour was the Discover Dublin boat tour; our guide Ronan was fantastic. He gave us a running commentary on the history of not only Dublin but also the river Liffey and port of Dublin. 

So much I didn’t know. I must have studied it at school but obviously I wasn’t paying attention 😏. The Vikings! They were a busy lot back in the day. We learnt (among a lot of other things!) that it was the Vikings who established Dublin way back in the C8th. The first Viking Age in Ireland (there was another it seems in C10th after many hostilities) began at the end of the C8th when Vikings began carrying out hit-and-run raids on Irish coastal settlements; they were everywhere! Over the following decades the clever Vikings built naval encampments in Ireland to allow them to remain there throughout the winter - we found something akin to this on the Isle of Skye where they had dug channels inland to haul their boats to ‘dry’ land or inland lochs. Within 50 odd years they had founded a stronghold at what was to become Dublin. The Danes ruled Ireland for some time (not sure how long) and during long periods of bloody fighting. But here we are today firmly on Irish soil ruled by the Irish! 

What with the Vikings then the Normans then the English, what a history the Irish have! No wonder they are a rebellious lot. 

There’s a rich history of rebels and freedom fighters and they are honoured with street and building names. Daniel O’Connell, the Liberator, is still revered. In the early 1800s he campaigned vigorously for Catholic emancipation and generally to improve the lot of Irish Catholics in what was essentially a Protestant country ruled by England. Today the large statue of him at the end of O’Connell St sports a few bullet holes from the 1916 Easter uprising, but the city wears them proudly. 

Such a place! What a journey! Tomorrow we board a plane for home. 

Daniel O’Connell himself.

Great little footbridge over the river running beside Bachelors Walk. No don’t look at Lindsay!

A replica of the Jeannie Johnston one of the many famine boats to take people from starving Ireland to the ‘new world’. She never lost a passenger but so many poor starving people died on most ships that they were called ‘coffin’ ships.

The Samuel Beckett bridge which can swing open 90 degrees from its one pylon. Amazing structure.

The Ha’Penny bridge so called because when it was built in the early 1800s people were charged a Ha’penny to cross it.

Gorgeous front to the Merchants Archway through to Temple Barr

Temple Bar is a colourful place. It has a bit of every and is a popular place to eat or take in the nightlife

Temple Bar is a colourful place. It has a bit of every and is a popular place to eat or take in the nightlife

The Dawson Lounge is the smallest pub in Ireland- it seats 12 people.

St Patrick’s cathedral. Strangely there are no catholic cathedrals in Dublin, including this one!

The house where Mr Guinness lived with his family - wife and 21 children! Boy that Guinness must be good stuff.



In Temple Bar there are a number of lanes dedicated to a range of the arts. My favourite was that dedicated to Irish women writers including the wonderful tragic Iris Murdoch.

Library Square at Trinity.

Fascinating sculpture outside one of the libraries. This piece known locally as ‘Pomodoro sphere’ (Pomodoro was the artist) is entitled ‘Sfera con Sfera’. I’ll leave you to look more closely.

Glasnevin Cemetery. The round tower in the centre stands over the tomb of Daniel O'Connell. He was instrumental in bringing about changes so that Catholics could be buried in cemeteries with protestants.

Oops a bit out of sequence but .... The public could only go as far as the staircase in the museum but there were great little exhibits and these magnificent Irish marble pillars.



Intricate filigree work outside the Museum at Trinity.

August 7 Ancient bogs!

A couple of days ago on our way vaguely northward to Dublin, we headed for a spot on the map, the ‘Bog of Allen’. We had no idea what it might be - other than perhaps a bog! but it sounded intriguing. We went via Sally Gap in the Wicklow mountains where we’d been the day before. It was a glorious drive! We stopped at a number of spots but at one place as soon as we stepped out of the car we could smell the fragrance of the heather. It took us both by surprise. It was heavenly, like smelling the lightest and sweetest of honeys. We spent some time just wandering drinking in the breathtaking beauty of the banks of heather and the mountains.  

But the bog .... eventually we found the Bog of Allen Nature Centre. It was fascinating. We had an enthusiastic young chap take us on a personal, guided tour of the ‘museum’ which traced the formation of bogs and their place in the lives of the people who live near them and their importance to the environment. I reckon we were there (and in their garden) for close of two hours and learned so much. 

Peat has special properties that enable it to preserve many things and this bog (a raise bog), like others, has revealed many valuable artefacts of archaeological significance. For instance, archeologists have found wooden walkways constructed from prehistory and into the medieval period. These allowed people and animals to cross the extensive areas of peatland. They even found a large lump of butter 1000 years old which someone had put there presumably to keep it cool. The bogs also preserve a range of palaeoenvironmental material such as pollen and plants. Other artefacts tell researchers much about the response of past societies to past changes in climate. 

Rare and endemic species of insects, birds and plants are endangered as many of the bogs are drying up. This is due to a number of ‘practices’ mainly linked with immediate economic concerns - power generation mostly, but also agricultural/grazing benefits. I wonder how much the whiskey distillers harvest!?

But there is a little hope because there’s a slowly growing number of concerned people. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council has purchased at least three bogs to try to preserve the uniqueness and importance of bogs. I won’t burble on, but it is interesting and concerning.  It took a Dutchman to really fire up the action having seen how the destruction of the fens and bogs of the Netherlands impacted his country. Enough! I love bogs.  

We’ve seen quite a lot of large scale peat cutting as we’ve travelled- mountain sides crisscrossed, extensive heathland. And in almost every village we see the piles and bags of peat as well as bags of munched up peat for gardens. It’s frightening when you consider that it takes at least a year for heathland to breakdown to create 1 mm of peat. 

One last bit of ‘trivia’ - Lullymore Island is an island of arable land with a wee village totally surrounded by the Bog of Allen. It was chosen as a monastic site by St Patrick in the C5th because of its remoteness and inaccessibility. It existed until the C17th. But that’s a whole other story. 

What more heather?!





An extensive side of the hill has been dug up for peat. They haven’t gone deep but it represents the destruction of a couple of centuries at least of growth.

Poor pic but this is one of the stones with a cross etched into it. Dates back to the original monastery said to have been established by St Patrick and run by a Druid who he had converted to Christianity. Fascinating!

Not having a catholic background this beautiful little cross delighted me. I saw one in the beautiful but tragic Doolough Valley in the north west.


The monument in Doolough Valley near Louisburgh

The garden wilderness at the bog preservation centre. It is cared for mainly by volunteers. The gardener I spoke to, Wilbert, looks after it mainly on his own. It’s a big job. Wilbert is a retired Dutchman.

Bagged peat

This would be peat for the village fires. People still love to use it even though they have access to other heating forms.

Interesting stuff

August 5-6 What a difference a day makes!

Yesterday we were deep in copper coast country and today we’re driving through Heather covered hills through the Wicklow Gap and national park to Mullaghcleevaun. 

The copper coast was interesting or should I say the history of copper in the area was interesting. Did you know - ‘they’ say that copper was first mined in Mesopotamia over 8000 years ago but wasn’t mined in Britain or Ireland until 4000 years later at the beginning of the Bronze Age. At least as far as they can gather! 

We checked out an old mining site near Bunmahon on the SE coast when they estimate the copper may have formed about 350 million years ago. 

We all have a pretty good idea of many of the uses for copper but something I didn’t know is that it was used as a fungicide to prevent potato blight - successfully or not I don’t know. 

Talking of mining, mining and quarrying are among the oldest industries in Ireland (and I dare say Scotland also) darling back 9000 years to the Mesolithic era when evidence suggests people quarrying flint to fashion axes and other tools. We saw some of that on St Kilda and other islands where archaeologists have explored Neolithic villages. 

But today! A gentle time driving through hills, lush pale green woods and wee villages and then up into the hills of the Wicklow National Park. Deep purple hillsides as far as the eye could see the heather was a joy to behold, suspended loughs and pockets of wooded streams. Quite idyllic if you like that sort of thing - and I do!

The Copper Coast on the southern coast of Ireland



Herons shaft (an abandoned copper mine near Bunmahon) which descended over 250m. Not something I’d choose to do!

The same copper mine. Incidentally the copper coast is a UNESCO Global Geopark.

The rock strata of the coastline is awesome. It’s as if the whole thing has been upended

We drove slowly behind this ‘gypsy’ caravan for miles. The horses were being led through the hills. Further on we saw a sign saying ‘road unsuitable for horse-drawn vehicles’ so sounds like this is not an uncommon sight in the area.



A rock wall watershed. Broad and impressive



The hills were alive .......



Across the hills you could see where peat had been dug. Fascinating thing peat.



I’d love to know what this plant is. It was everywhere growing beside the heather. We think its a local blue berry

July to August. A floral tribute - Part II

This second lot are a mixture of odd succulent types plus others - as well as insects. Some of these and the last batch of pix I posted are introduced species which have become totally assimilated into the wild landscape. Some were once wild then cultivated for the garden and later escaped back into the wild. 

They are all fascinating things that have caught my eye and make me marvel again and again at the beauty of the natural world.  Give me a flower over a cathedral any day!

No idea but it’s coastal.

This looks like a succulent but I am yet to find it in the book

Sun spurge (euphorbia). I love green flowers

You have to look close to see these scraps of colour. Butter wort which have beautiful dark purple violet-like flowers

Sea campion

Do delicate (note to self - widen your vocabulary!!!)

No idea - yet!

Ditto

Like forget me nots but not



Common knapweed - ray form. I hate the use of common for lots a reasons.

This little blurry bunch of pretty baubles is cross-leaved heather

A mixture of heathers

Simply heather!

Hemp agrimony (thistle family)

Judging by the hip I think this is a Japanese rose. But it’s the ‘bee’ that’s caught my eye. Peer into flowers and you never know what you’ll find.



Ribwort plantain. I’ve seen these all my life but now that I have a name for them I look more closely. Their flowers are so delicate and attractive to insects. These are sea side plants

Rather sweet these two sharing the nectar of this pretty daisy. But seconds later the butterfly saw off the bee!



You may not want these in your vege patch but it’s all about maintaining the balance in the food chain. And they kept communities alive at times of hardship and famon.

No fires in this lichen encrusted rocky place.

Tiny shards of light from the water droplets captured by this spiders web sent me back for my ‘camera’

Ah fungi, my favourite. Nature’s most efficient recycler. And just look at the range of wonderful textures