On the road again...

Summer is winding down.  I'm starting to see the back to school photos online, fewer this year with many schools online again this fall.  We are heading back to Italy through Ireland.  It isn't easy to keep up with all of the restrictions and border regulations for three different countries.  We have done our best and made our plans accordingly.  One of the things we need to do is self isolate for 14 days after we enter Ireland.  After that we will then be able to enter Italy.  We thought we would turn this requirement into something positive and spend our time in the less populated West.  Then we will be able to visit family and take care of some remaining business.

Before heading west we had a brief stop in Dublin.  On our first night we ended up at a hotel near the airport.  We discovered a beautiful park across the street.  Santry park is the former grounds of an elegant Georgian manor house.  The current park is a small fraction of the former land owned by the Barry family.  Over the years pieces were sold off and developed.  The house and grounds were turned over to the state after independence and the house was accidentally burned and then demolished in the late 1940s.  Only the front steps and foundations remain, but you can see what it might have been.

In 1912 King Victor Emanuel of Italy gave the Barry family a gift of exotic trees including Sequoia redwood trees.  These were planted along an avenue leading up to the house.  It makes for a very grand entrance.

After Dublin we headed west to Ballycastle in County Mayo.  We stayed in a little traditional style cottage built in the old style.  It isn't old.  It was built in the 1970s.  The house is small and rustic, but the views are spectacular.  From the back of the house you can see the beach and the headlands across the pastures.

One of the things I enjoyed so much while driving around were all of the wildflowers.  There is such a variety and they bloom everywhere.  It's amazing what can happen when you have water.  A few were familiar, but many I don't know.  One of my favorites is the bright orange flower with spiky leaves.  The electric orange is such a contrast to all of the vibrant greens.

Ballycastle itself is quite small.  We went into Ballina 25 minutes away for groceries and laundry.  

But there was enough in the area to keep us entertained for the week we were there.  

The headland we can see from our house is called Downpatrick head.  There is a lot of folklore about St Patrick here.  According to a sign at the site this is where St Patrick confronted Crom Dubh, a pagan chieftain, God, pirate, or robber depending on who is telling the story.  When Crom Dubh attempted to throw St Patrick into an eternal fire Patrick scratched a cross on a stone and threw it into the fire.  The fire collapsed into the sea and created a large blowhole you can see today.  When the chieftain tried to retreat to his fort, St Patrick hit the ground with his crozier. The ground broke and Dun Briste, the stone pillar, became isolated from the mainland.  What we do know is that this was a place for religious pilgrimage and ritual in pre-Christian and Christian times.

One of the interesting things about this place were the little mounds of mossy peat that covered the ground.  They are soft, but sturdy.  It gives it an otherworldly appearance.  You can imaging faeries dancing on the little mounds when no one is looking.

Downpatrick head is along what is called the Wild Atlantic Way.  You can think of it as the Pacific Coast Highway of Western Ireland.  We've spent a lot of time driving along here through County Mayo and Donegal.  It is absolutely beautiful.  We didn't make it to the Cliffs of Moher on this trip, but I don't feel like I missed anything.

Near Downpatrick head is Lacken strand.  It is a beautiful wide beach at low tide that almost completely disappears at high tide.  It's a great beach where people come to play in the sand and water.  It is shallow a long way out.  Coming from Northern California we are used to cold water and cool breezes.  It didn't feel too bad.  The water temp is actually slightly warmer even though we are a lot further north (62F vs 58F).  It all depends on what you are used to.

This has also long been a place for horse racing.  It used to be farm horses and ponies now it is more professional, but still takes place on a temporary track at low tide.  You can drive a car out onto the sand, but you have to watch out for the tides.  They come in high and fast.  We came back through a second day saw van that was nearly stuck in the softening sand.  People were able to push it out, but it was close.

Between Ballycastle and Ballina is the little town of Killala.  It's a tiny little place but has some interesting things.  It isn't the kind of place you would seek out, but it was so fun to see the little things in the area.  I was fascinated by Killala Quay.  You could how much the tides rise and fall.  The boats are designed to be able to rest on the sand at low tide without damage.

Killala is home to one of the few remaining intact round towers.  The towers may be bell towers or look out towers.  No one knows exactly how they were used.  It is interesting that the doors are about 10 feet off the ground.  This could have been for defense, but could also be to help with the structural integrity of the tower.  The tower in Killala is thought to date back to the 12th century and is associated with a 5th century monastery reportedly founded by St Patrick.

On a different day we went out to the Ceide fields, a neolithic/stone age site.  The site is a system of stone farm walls 5500 years old.  The visitor center was closed, but we could take the boardwalk loop through the bog to see the excavated walls.  It was quiet and a little spooky with all of the fog.  My Boy kept coming up with rather Gothic scenarios.  I envisioned Jane Eyre-like scenes.  It didn't help that the visitor's center is the shape of a pyramid on top of a hill.  We barely escaped the bog monsters.

I've read about heather in books, but this is what it really looks like.  It is a tough plant for a rough landscape.

The blue and white zig-zag sign indicates the Wild Atlantic Way.  There is even a N for North and an S for South so that you don't get very lost.  Because, you know, bog monsters.

We decided to take a drive out to Deel castle, named after the river Deel.  It was later called Castle Gore.  The original castle tower was built in the 16th century with additions over the next couple hundred years.  It was fairly intact until the 20th century, but is now a ruin and a very old place to store big black bags of silage to feed your cows.

Nearby is an old late 18th century country house, also called Castle Gore, built by the same family.  It was burned by the IRA in 1922 and now also a ruin.

We had a great time in Ballycastle and would love to come back again another time and continue our exploration of County Mayo.  It is a beautiful peaceful place with a lot of history.