Tour de Ireland Wrap Up

So after hunting Hogan’s in Ballinlass, we were off and back on our rapid rate plan. First, a quick stop through Limerick and John’s Castle. It was cool, but we missed the tour inside. Oh well, back on scheduled, we blazed down to Cork. After securing a charming B&B, renown for its vegetarian sausages, we went out for a look around. Taking a clue from the sight-seeing tour bus, we grabbed their route map and did a self tour with our own rental vehicle. What a budget & time saver! Who thought of that, oh yeah, I did.

John's Castle in Limerick

A quick stop at the four faced liar – an old clock tower with four sides and you guessed it, all telling different times. We hiked to the top bell tower, crawling throught the pigeon poop and the 6 to 13 ton bells. The views from the top were amazing and on the way down, we actually got to ring the clock/church bells. So cool and they even provided sheet music with rock songs to boot!

Climbing the bell tower of the 4 faced liar!

We next found ourselves in jail! That’s the cork city “goal” (Galwool). It was very interesting and creepy at the same time. Lastly, we made our way to an old castle on the water that the city turned into a Science and space observatory. We didn’t go inside, as it was used for admin stuff, but we did talk to one of the astrology people who gave us a great tip on a website: http://www.starmaps.net/ . You can down load the night sky for whatever latitude you are at, for the current month, for free – handy indeed! Especially for navigating.

Brian in the Cork city Gaol! Women fighting for him in the background

Right so, off we went as we still needed to get to the Blarney Castle and kiss the Blarney Stone. The town was quite charming and the castle grounds quite large. Among the cool castles we have seen this was a very cool castle. It was built on a small but solid rock bluff that made tunneling into impossible and the wall were 7 stories high, so no man could throw a line up. What I really enjoyed was the garden! Not only did it have neat nooks, water features and a witch’s tree, it had fairy glades. I felt like a kid again, running through the foliage, yelling at Brian every two seconds – “look at this”, “did you see that”, come over here, no you come over here”. Yeah, it rocked! Oh, and yeah Brian kissed the Blarney stone. Legend says it empowers whoever kisses it with the gift of gab. I’m not sure that was such a good idea for Brian. It’s not like he is ever lost for words.

Blarney Castle Grounds

More of the Castle

Kissing the Blarney stone

The Witches Tree - so Cool!

From there we blazed back to disappointment. As many of you already know, and for those who don’t, the sailing trip from Ireland to Malaysia was cancelled. We made it as far down at Arklow, just 50 miles before our jump off spot, south of Dublin before we had boat & personnel issues. As in, the engineer/ mechanic/ electrician went AWOL, and he took some crew with him, leaving only Brian and me, not nearly enough crew and well, boat issues. Brian and I returned the boat back to its original berth…. Enough said, it was tough.