Ireland day nine: A bunch of Blarney

The day dawns grey and cool, with a steady rain falling. Even the gorgeous pair of Red and White Setters at the Castlemartyr reception desk are looking rather mopey (perhaps they don't get their regular walk in weather like this?).

But it will not get us down: today is our last full day in Ireland and we have a lot planned!

I pack in the Full Irish Breakfast once again, and we pack up the car once again, and we are on the road once again.

Just down the road from Castlemartyr is Barryscourt Castle, recently (2002) renovated and restored by heritage experts from the Irish OPW.

Sadly, an enormous storm in February damaged the electric equipment in the castle and so they cannot admit visitors to the tower house, which is a shame because from all accounts the restoration was particularly well done.

But Robin, the OPW docent on duty this morning, cheerfully puts on his all-weather poncho and gives us a great tour of the gardens and grounds in the rain. His enthusiasm is infectious and even though we don't get to see the inside of the restored castle, I am glad we stopped.

Donna reports that the Pippin apples in the castle garden are yummy; they have carefully planted traditional varieties of Irish fruit trees in the restored orchard, paying as much attention to the authenticity of the garden restoration as they did to the tower restoration.

Our next stop is legendary. Many Americans may not have heard of the Rock of Cashel, but nearly all Americans have heard of the Blarney Stone.

Though I know a lot about it ahead of time, Blarney Castle, it turns out, surprises me. I am taken by three unexpected things:

1. The height of the main castle. The keep itself is more than 90 feet high, and it is built on a large rock bluff overlooking the river, which adds another 30 feet or so to the river-facing face, which makes the overall impact quite dramatic
2. The extent and beauty of the surrounding gardens and grounds. Visiting Blarney Castle involves much more than just kissing the stupid stone: there is a manor house, a number of outbuildings, and hundreds of acres of beautifully-maintained gardens to wander through
3. The particularly clever "Poison Garden," full of medicinal, yet toxic, plants, many of which are quite uncommon and so are fascinating to see growing just 2 feet away from you.

But of course, you're there to see the stupid stone.

So, uncertainly, but with excitement, we enter the castle and begin climbing the stairs. Several times, we have to stop in side rooms and rest, for 10 flights of stone spiral staircase are surprisingly fatiguing.

Finally, we are at the top, and it is overwhelming. You emerge from the tight quarters of the windowless spriral staircase and find yourself standing in the open air, atop the Blarney Castle parapet, 100 feet up in the clear Irish air!

And you barely have time to catch your breath (that is, if your fear of heights allows you to breathe) before you find yourself at the Blarney Stone itself.

Donna eagerly hands me the camera, drops her backpack, purse, and coat at her feet, backs up, lies down, leans back over the side of the wall into thin air and KISSES THE STONE!

I snap 3 pictures, the Castle employees snap 2 more, and down we go.

The Castle is arranged such that you can take your time on the descent, viewing some of the other parts of the tower, but we're so breathless from visiting the top that we pretty much race down.

Still, we linger on the castle grounds for at least another hour, visiting the Poison Garden and the Rock Close and several other sights before we are ready to move on. We linger, knowing that these are mostly manufactured sites, not authentic ones, because they are attractive and enjoyable, but I am drawn on, to find more and truer destinations.

Thus we drive up the roadway through Mallow to Charleville, where we find the turn for Kilmallock.

Kilmallock is a fascinating medieval town, with sections of the city wall still standing, incorporated into the modern houses and shops quite seamlessly, and with several city gates still present as monuments of their own. There is an old friary and a collegiate church here which we explore, accompanied by three young ragamuffins, bored by the inactivity of summer, kicking the dirt and playing throw-a-stone to pass the time.

Now we are on the road again, up through Bruff and Holycross until, after being lost (yes, again), I find the Grange Stone Circle, the largest (114 stone) stone circle in all of Ireland.

Although the circle is large, the stones are smaller and the location less dramatic than at Dromberg, so the overall effect is much milder. Still, we enjoy wandering around, keeping a certain distance from the grazing cows.

Then, just as we are about to leave, I wave a salute to the farmer across the road. He waves back, and slowly walks across the road to meet us.

It turns out that he is the owner of the land on which the circle sits, and he is pleased to talk with us. His name is Timothy Casey, and he spends 20 minutes with us, explaining the stone circle, showing us other sites nearby, and sharing pictures of his children, one of whom has moved away to America. We promise to send him a postcard from the U.S.A.

Time is short, so we bid farewell to Timothy Casey and drive around to the other end of Lough Gur to the visitor center.

There, an extremely enthusiastic docent offers to give us the "5 minute overview"; 20 minutes later she winds down after realizing that we had had about all we could take. But there is a lot to talk about, as this beautiful lake has been the site of human settlement for at least the last 6,000 years, and there are archaelogical and historical sites spanning that entire time (of which the Grange Stone Circle is just a small part).

In addition to the stone circle, we visit archaelogical digs, stone forts, a medieval church ruin, a medieval castle, and, at the end, a "wedge tomb" called the Giant's Grave, carbon dated to 4,000 B.C., far and away the oldest human-created site we've visited in Ireland.

But it is late, and we are tired; we make our way to the Dunraven Arms in Adare, coming full circle. It is just as charming as it was a week ago, though there is no wedding tonight. We have a nice meal in the town pub, relax, unwind, and get ready to travel tomorrow.

Ireland day eight: the Rock of Cashel

Thanks to the M8 super speedway, we make it from Castlemartyr to Cashel in surprising time, and we are at Cashel by 10:00; this will be our only time in County Tipperary.

Then I get lost.

But Donna gets us found again: "patience," she says, as we spot that the sign is actually pointing us down a tiny road that I had taken for a pedestrian walkway the first time through town, so narrow was it.

But just 100 feet down that little lane is the car park, and we are settled, just as three massive tour buses arrive. Well, this is the most-well-known tourist site in all of Ireland, so it is surely no surprise to see them. Let us just say that, when the circumstances require, the good people of Ireland can find room at the loo for all.

We have a nice tour guide, if a little harried (Cashel is simply mobbed, even though we are reasonable early), and he does his best to show us about.

Appealingly, he ends our tour in Cormac's Chapel, perhaps the most spectacular medieval site in Ireland, still holding up quite well even after all the events of the previous 1,000 years.

We pause on the way out to view the pictures from Queen Elizabeth II's visit in 2011, the first visit to Cashel by an English Monarch since King Henry II presided over the Synod of Cashel in 1172.

We walk down into Cashel town center, which is very nice itself, and Donna finds a small cafe which packs us a picnic lunch. We walk about 1 km down the hill with our lunch to Hore Abbey, the last Cistercian Abbey to be founded in Ireland, in 1266.

We are happy: we have finally managed to have our picnic lunch in Ireland (for some reason, this had been eluding us up to this point), and at a place of indescribable history and beauty.

We pop back onto the super speedway and in just minutes we are in Cahir, at the superb Cahir Castle.

Cahir Castle is your perfect dream of a medieval castle; it is hard to imagine any castle that could be better.

It is remarkably well preserved (the portcullis still works, and can be lowered to bar the entrance into the inner keep!), and we get to go everywhere: climb stairs, explore keeps, climb ramparts, descend into dungeons, etc.

A nifty room-size model shows the famous Siege of 1599; cannonballs from that siege are still embedded in the castle walls!.

A seemingly hidden staircase starts by descending toward the river, then ascends sharply and emerges at an outer tower with a commanding view.

It is, bar none, the best castle we have visited in Ireland, and I am happy beyond describing that we managed to include it on our visit.

The super speedway delivers us back to East Cork. We drive down to the oceanside, to Garryvoe Beach, where we walk along a beautiful beach and Donna plays in the waves. If we hadn't stayed at all those other wonderful places on our trip, I would have loved to stay here.

A few kilometers down the road is Shannagarry, home of the world-famous Ballymaloe Cooking School. We tour the school's shop, then walk through the beautiful gardens for 40 minutes or so, seeing barely a quarter of the gardens, focusing on the sections where the students gather fresh herbs and vegetables each day for their classes.

Her recipes are a bit intimidating, though: stinging nettle soup?

The Shannagarry Design Centre has a very nice William Penn museum in its basement; it turns out there is actually quite a bit about William Penn I hadn't known.

We drive down to the end of the road: Ballycotton, with its postcard-perfect lighthouse on an island just offshore. Dozens of people are fishing from the pier: Ballycotton is famous for its seafood. We walk along the cliffs and Donna gathers shells and we watch the fish swim about in the shallow tidal waters.

Then back to Castlemartyr, to rest and unwind.

Each day seems better than the one before, which seems hardly possible.

Perhaps we are getting the hang of this whole traveling thing?

Or perhaps Ireland is simply as magical as everyone has always said.

Ireland day seven: East County Cork

I must not be very practiced at sleeping in hotel beds, even extremely nice ones, because again I am up with the sun. We have a nice breakfast and take our time packing up and checking out, but even so we have left the hotel quite early.

By 9:00, we are at Charles Fort, the largest fort in Ireland and perhaps in all of Europe.

Unfortunately, the fort isn't open for visitors until 10:00.

However, the grounds around the fort are open, and well-cared for, and there are trails along the waterfront, and so we walk here and there, taking pictures, enjoying the views, and soon enough it is 10:00.

Inside, there are several small museums and exhibitions, and more areas to explore, but actually the fort is in many ways better from the outside than from the inside.

In particular, the fort is most interesting when viewed from the Harbor Cruise that we took yesterday: the fort was designed for naval purposes and so its main focus is on the harbor.

Apparently, though, it wasn't really a very good fort, because it kept getting sacked (though thankfully, it wasn't completely destroyed any of those times, or there wouldn't be anything left to see).

Actually, the most entertaining aspect of Charles Fort is the durable legend of the White Lady.

Anyway, no matter how you look at it, our time at Charles Fort was two hours well spent.

Then we drove up to Cork, and, for the second time on our vacation, I made a rather serious mistake about route finding and destination selection. For whatever reason, I took a path which lead us right through Cork City, rather than driving around it on the motorway. I found myself in the inner city, in a section of twisting, one-way, un-marked roads, and promptly got myself badly lost. And that part of town, unfortunately, is the poorest and most unhappy part of Ireland that we visited, so it really wasn't a place where I wanted to stay lost. Happily, it didn't take me all that long to find my way through the neighborhood, and back to a road that I recognized, and get us on our way again.

Still, I'm afraid I don't have any happy words to share about Cork City itself. I wish the residents all the best, and may things improve for Cork City as they have for other parts of Ireland.

We left Cork, and almost immediately took the turn to Cobh. Cobh is certainly not as scenic as Kinsale, but it has at least as much history, and plenty of interesting sights.

Cobh is probably one of the most important cities in Ireland from a maritime history point of view. It was the last stop of the Titanic, but more importantly it was the primary point of departure for many of the emigrants who left Ireland and came to America, Australia, or other overseas destination, a fact memorialized by the poignant Annie Moore sculpture as well as several local museums, including the quite nice Cobh Heritage Centre where we spent about 45 minutes.

Interestingly, Cobh also has an old prison on Spike Island in the harbor, which reminded me of the famous Alcatraz Island here at home.

The Cobh waterfront is quite pleasant to stroll along; St Colman's Cathedral on the bluff above the waterfront is just magnificent.

Our next stop is Midleton, a bustling modern Irish town.

But more importantly, for tourists like us, Midleton is the home of the Jameson distillery, and its very enjoyable distillery tour. The tour is fun, if rather pricey and touristy. The tour winds through the old distillery, which began operations in 1825 and was in regular use until 1975 when the new distillery was built on adjacent grounds. The new distillery is all tall steel-and-glass buildings with piping and fans, but the old distillery buildings are lovely and have been nicely preserved by the company.

Each of the 6 buildings that we visit is a museum of its own, including: the old mill wheel; the enormous kilns for drying the malt (using coal fires, not peat fires: one of the signature differences between Irish whiskey and Scotch); the incredible 3-story tall copper still, the largest pot still ever built; the triple distillation system; and the aging warehouse.

The Jameson Distillery tour was certainly the most touristy thing we did on our holiday, but I'm still glad I did it. It was a nice tour, and it broke us out of a bit of a funky mood and put us in good "spirits" (heh).

We trundle on down the road a few more kilometers east, to Castlemartyr, home of Castlemartyr Resort, our home for the next two nights. It is set on land once owned by Sir Walter Raleigh; the hotel reception, dining and banquet rooms, and other common areas are in the manor house built by the Earl of Shannon (who was the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons at the time); and (of course), just a few meters from the main hotel are the scenic ruins of Imokilly Castle.

The resort is quite modern, and is designed as a golf destination, with a super-luxurious spa as well, but for us the main attractions, beyond the buildings and the comfortable room, are the simply spectacular gardens behind the manor house, and the beautiful pastures and forests that adjoin the main buildings.

If we had not spent 3 days at Parknasilla I'd be raving on about Castlemartyr, but suffice it to say for now that we relaxed, had a drink, walked through the garden, admired the swallows as they raced about, and watched the children playing croquet and racing about on the grass.

Ireland Interlude

I'm not quite sure where this stuff belongs, so I'm putting it here.

• Much of Ireland looks like Northern California. At times, it seems like we could be in Carmel, or Gualala.

  That is, if the money were Euros, the signs were in Gaelic, and you drove on the left.

• In 9 days, we heard 1 airplane. We saw 4 police cars, and a handful of ambulances.

  At home, we see all that in 20 minutes.

• You can't do your own laundry in Ireland. People don't even understand what you're asking for. They will direct you to places where you can drop off your clothes and somebody else will wash them for you, but the concept of a self-service laundromat simply does not exist.

  I'm not sure why this is, but it is.

• Except for birds and fish, there is no wildlife. We saw no signs of deer, raccoons, fox, rabbit, or any of the other various land animals that we live with routinely at home. However, cows, sheep, dogs and cats roam freely everywhere, to the degree that I think the occasional fences were more for humans than for livestock.

  So keep your eyes on the road.

• Everything is ancient. The Irish live amidst millenia of history. At home, we never see anything older than about 200 years, and it's hard to even find buildings that old (perhaps the occasional Junipero Serra mission, say). We marvel at that history, but in the places we visited, it's just there. Which is not to say they don't appreciate it! They just don't treat it as unusual.

  After a while, we realized that every town has a church, or a castle, or a fort.

• The thing about these historic buildings is: how should they be treated? Some are left as is, some are stabilized, but otherwise not much changed, and some are aggressively restored.

  So far as I could tell, within Ireland, some properties are privately owned and the restoration and access to these properties is handled by the owners (e.g., Blarney or Bunratty), while other properties are publicly owned and are handled by the Office of Public Works, or the the Heritage Council.

  Visions of the Past - How Far Should We Go in 'Restoring' Ancient Monuments? asks some very interesting questions about this process and how we should understand and explain it.

  This idea is taken to its limit when it comes to sites such as Newgrange in Ireland. The gleaming white wall that surrounds the entrance to Newgrange is a modern construction, despite the fact that debate continues as to whether the quartzite rocks found on the site were actually used to form a wall, or something else, such as a plaza surface.

  But perhaps concerns over our 'vandalism' of ancient structures is an illusion...after all, in another four millennia, we will be considered yet another ancient people who modified an even more ancient structure, just as King Tuthmosis IV's repairs to the Sphinx a thousand years after its construction (or at least, the orthodox date of construction...) have now become a part of the monument as we know it.

  Of course, part of the fun of looking at the old architecture is to make fun of it!

• Lastly (in this interlude), the answer to a question that nagged at me throughout the trip:

  Why did so many of the old graves say: I H S?

  It turns out, this is easy to answer: IHS Monogram/Insiginia on 18th and 19th Century Gravestones

  According to the New Advent Catholic Encyclopaedia:

  In the Middle Ages the Name of Jesus was written: IHESUS; the monogram contains the first and last letter of the Holy Name. It is first found on a gold coin of the eight century: DN IHS CHS REX REGNANTIUM (The Lord Jesus Chirst, King of Kings).

  (Check out the picture near the end of that article, of the lintel stone from the Augustinian Abbey in Adare.)

Okay, enough of that. Let's get back to the pictures!

Ireland day six: South and West County Cork

We have a nice breakfast at the Carlton, then set out on the road.

After a little bit, we find ourselves in Timoleague, where there is a beautiful old abbey. We wander through it and take some pictures, and leave a small donation (something we've done from time to time at the other places we've visited, when they didn't have a more formal entrance fee).

We drive a bit further, through some small towns, only occasionally getting lost, through Clonakilty and Rosscarbery and down to a place called Dromberg, where there is an ancient stone circle and some Bronze Age ruins.

Okay, I'm not describing this adequately.

Calling the Dromberg Stone Circle a prehistoric site is definitely not doing it justic.

The circle is imposing, and eerie, and startling, and disquieting. It is located on the hillside in a quiet stretch of farmland, with a commanding view down the hills to the Atlantic Ocean.

The stones in the circle are massive; you feel small standing next to these hulking masses. And it's clear, even before you read the signs and walk about and line them up this way and that, they they aren't just randomly placed: they are arranged.

The ruins of two small buildings a few dozen yards from the circle are, in many ways, not so mysterious: they clearly were the foundations of shelter for the occupants, and they hold structures that are fairly self-evident (the sign explains that one of the buildings, which contains a still-flowing well, was evidently built to create a surprisingly useful water pool, which could be heated, even boiled, using stones heated in the adjacent hearth, allowing the occupants to cook food, wash, clean, even just relax).

But the circle is more frustrating: it just sits there, challenging you with its presence, existential proof of some great purpose to justify such great effort, but mute about the details.

Some stones are horizontal, some are vertical; some are aligned with nearby landmarks; some are aligned with celestrial landmarks; some appear to create openings or passages.

But what does it all mean? We sit, and stroll, and look, and muse. It is moving, that's for certain.

We leave Dromberg and return to Clonakilty.

Clonakilty is close to the perfect Irish village, in my opinion. It has all the charm, beauty, setting, and atmosphere of towns like Dingle, Kenmare, Killarney, Adare, or Kinsale, but it is mostly unspoiled by the tourist crush. There are no tour buses, no gaudy trinket shops, no fighting your way through streets to crowded to walk down.

And don't forget about Clonakilty Black Pudding, part of your perfect Irish breakfast!

We walk for a bit, looking at the stores and houses, buying a bag of sweets, enjoying the town, until it starts to rain. Then we pop into Scannell's Pub for a just-right pot of tea and a chocolate brownie with clotted cream, sitting happily at the bar and listening to all the locals come through and chat with the barman about the latest news of this and that.

We leave Clonakilty intending to find a stone fort nearby, but I don't have the directions right, and instead we find ourselves at the Michael Collins Centre. I'd call it a labor of love but I think it would be more accurate to call it a labor of family history. It is a converted farmhouse, owned by descendants of Collins, who have assembled an extensive collection of information about his life and times.

We park, and pay an admission, and are ushered to a room which has been converted to an auditorium, where a gentleman is narrating a slide show about Collins.

He is extremely well-informed about Collins, and extremely engaging, but there is only so much information that we are prepared to absorb about Collins, so after about 45 minutes we decided that we had to move on, and took our leave.

We returned to Kinsale, getting back just in time to take the harbor cruise, a peaceful trip through the beautiful harbor, accompanied with a nice narration to explain the fabulous views.

After the harbor cruise, we took a short walk through some of the sections of Kinsale that we had missed the previous evening. Desmond's Castle, though not much of a castle, has some fun history to go with it, while St. Multose Church, still in good condition and still in regular use, was built, amazingly, in 1190 A.D.

It was in this church that Prince Rupert proclaimed Charles II as King, after hearing the news that Cromwell had had King Charles I executed in London.

We find an Indian restaurant on a side street of Kinsale where we have yet another yummy dinner, then return to the hotel for an evening swim and a drink at the hotel bar, with its glorious view of nearby Oysterhaven Bay at the mouth of the River Stick (yes, there is a River Stick; it joins Belgooly to Oysterhaven Bay. So there.).

Ireland: Sneem to Kinsale

Once again I am so tired I fall right to sleep, but wake early.

We take a nice long walk through the Parknasilla property called the Clashnachree Trail: down through the woods, past the golf course, and up to a hill with a superb view of the bay and the Beara Peninsula.

By the time we checkout from the hotel we have already walked 4 miles!

We drive down to Kenmare. In the morning, Kenmare is a wonderful town. We browse through the shops. A street market is set up in the town with much to look at.

A co-worker gave us a suggestion before we left, so we walk down to Reenagross Park, a lovely nature park on the River Kenmare. Although the rhododendron are not in bloom (when it would look like this), it is still quite pretty.

With all this browsing, time has passed; it is fully 1:00 by the time we are ready to leave Kenmare.

By this time, though, the tour buses have arrived, and the town center is unbelievably jammed, so there is no way we're going to make the N71 without spending a full half hour sitting in gridlock, so we take the road east out of town; it takes us to Kilgarvan.

Our detour takes us inland and soon we are on the motorway and soon after that we are in Macroom.

Macroom is a commercial town, with some businesses on the outskirts, but when we cross the river and reach the town center we see a castle.

Have I mentioned that the First Rule of Traveling in Ireland is: when you see a castle, stop?

And so we stop, and park, and walk toward the castle.

A nice local woman is walking her dog ("Charlie"), and she greets us, and says: "I bet you're looking for a nice walk" (how could she tell?)

She shows us just the right path which takes us down past the castle and along the river. It is indeed a nice walk, but we have already walked a lot today, so we walk back up and resume our drive.

We turn this way, and that, and take several country roads, and stop for another nice castle (possibly Shippool Castle) on the River Bandon.

Eventually we follow the back road into Kinsale and park.

Kinsale at 4:30 PM on an August afternoon is just a buzz of activity.

There is a carnival with rides for the kids.

There are tour buses stopped for all the shoppers to explore the shops.

And there is a Big Dance Event for all the students who have just received their test scores and been accepted to university. They are all dressed up and bubbling with energy.

We make our way out to our hotel, the Carlton, which is a modern affair about 5 km from town. It is very nice and friendly and the room is lovely, and the hotel has a super pool, so it's time for a good long swim and then a sandwich at the bar.

Ireland Day Four: Killarney National Park

Another long lazy morning. The bakery in Sneem makes delicious raisin buns.

Driving from Killarney to Sneem a few days before, we had seen Kissane Sheep Farms. We looked on the Internet and found they are a working sheep farm, and that if you can arrange it, you can get a tour of the farm and, in particular, see a demonstration of the dogs working with the sheep.

Well, we were both quite interested in that, but we tried calling the farm from the hotel and couldn't get an answer. Of course, this might have been because I couldn't quite parse the format used for Irish phone numbers, so I might have had us dialing the wrong numbers on the hotel phone.

Irish area codes vary in length, between one and three digits (excluding the leading 0), and subscribers' numbers are between five and seven digits. However, a migration to a standard format, (0xx) xxx xxxx, is in progress. However, to avoid disruption, this process is only being carried out as needed where existing area codes and local numbering systems have reached full capacity.

So we drive up to Moll's Gap and stop at the front gate to the farm, where there is a sign instructing to call on the intercom at the gate for further details.

We do that for a while, but noone answers.

These things happen on vacations sometimes. You can't get too hung up on it.

We drive on into Killarney National Park, stopping at Ladies View (for the view), at Torc Waterfall (for the waterfall), and then at Muckross House (for the house).

Muckross House is the real-world version of Downton Abbey, or Monarch of the Glen, or Upstairs Downstairs, etc. It's a 70-room country estate which held 22 live-in servants, hosted magnificent hunting parties, and was once visited by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Its final owners were Americans, the same ones who built the beautiful Filoli House in Woodside, California, which we had visited about 10 years ago.

Our tour guide is very good (this is becoming a theme in Ireland: the docents and guides really enjoy talking about their national treasures to guests), and I enjoy the tour very much.

We realize that we're famished, so we stop at the Estate Cafe. The food doesn't seem to exactly match the menu, but it's delicious and I can definitely recommend the "seafood pie."

The weather is just superb, so we walk through the Muckross Gardens to Muckross Friary, another Cromwell victim; this friary was run by Franciscan monks, not Augustinian monks. As with the ruined monastery at Ballinskelligs, and elsewhere that we visit, the cemetery at Muckross Abbey is still actively used. (I remain somewhat confused about the difference between an abbey, a priory, a friary, a monastery: it's complicated.)

And yes, the Yew Tree in the cloisters is stunning.

The jaunting cars operated for the convenience and entertainment of the tourists give Muckross Estate a very back-in-time feel. As we walk down the long tree-lined path that leads up to the front door of the estate, we can imagine that the Queen's royal procession is approaching, just behind us...

We take an hour and walk through Muckross Traditional Farm, a re-creation of what farming life was like a hundred years ago.

Yucky is what farming life was like a hundred years ago.

On the drive back to Sneem, we stop to try to hike the trail to the Meeting of the Waters and the Tea Room that is said to operate there. The trail is beautiful and we walk for 20 minutes, but I am too tired to make it all the way so we turn back (though we do get some great views of Muckross Estate from across the Middle Lake, as well as that classic view of Brickeen Bridge).

This seems to be a common theme in Ireland: signs often tell you the destination of the road/trail that you have reached, but they generally don't tell you the distance to that destination. You'll come to a junction and the sign might say "this way to Waterford", or "this way to Dublin", or "this way to Limerick".

Which, of course, are major cities, hundreds of kilometers and several hours away.

Or, "this way to Castletownroche," or "this way to Bealnablath," or "this way to Kilgarvan."

Which, of course, are tiny villages of a few hundred people, just a few kilometers away, and likely not even marked on any of the maps I'm carrying.

Which makes decision making at the junction entertaining!

And the trails are like that, too. Looking at it later, on the Internet, I'm fairly sure that the trail to the Meeting of the Waters and Dinis Cottage and the famous Brickeen Bridge was about 2.5 km each way, a 5 km round trip.

And I suspect we walked about 1.5 km before we decided we'd walked far enough.

But I don't really know, and in a way that's part of the pleasure of this part of Ireland: not everything is explained ahead of time; not everything is arranged for the convenience of visitors (including the phone numbers).

When you see a castle, stop.