August 19th, 2007

Cliffs of Moher

Finally, the sun or at least glimpses came out and could be appreciated. Even the cormorants we excited to dry their wings in the speckled sun patches.



Armed with a map and a tourist brochure of a bus route The Burren area would be my touring destination today. Of course, I got a little lost in the streets of Oranmore and ended up on someone’s private estate and farmland. These mistakes are actually pretty welcome in Ireland because there is typically something worthwhile along the way, like this old estate building.



Back on track, the road skims along the coastline to Kinvara, a literal town. It seems that the local population hasn’t grown since these little towns were first constructed.



Kinevara is a very tidy little burg complete with harbor and Dunguaire Castle.



At Ballyvaughn there is a “T” fork in the road that can be easily confused with a bend in the main road that heads left. By now my directional radar was screaming that the single-track branch to the right was really the proper path and it was. Through town and along the coast the paved road is only one and a half car widths, even though it is center striped. If a bus comes, forget about it, you are in the weeds.



Blackhead point and the shore near the town of Doolin are very similar to Monterey, California.





There is even a surf school and legions of surfers eager to suit-up to chase the cold water “ankle bangers”.



Wandering along the coastline, I saw a turret with a car parked in front and thought, "Wow, that would be a great place for a view. I wonder how much the entrance fee is to climb the tower?" Driving closer, the realization struck that the answer was "Way more than I could afford." The old castle was a private residence and the car in front was the owner's. Nice digs...



There is a species of plant that is currently setting the roadside on fire. These deeply colored flowering grasses line many of the roads and in the little town of Doolin make for a fun picture with the local wandering pooch.



The prime attraction in The Burren Region is the Cliffs of Moher. Picture the Marin Headlands with a flat top or better yet the bluffs of the Mississippi outside of Alton, Illinois are a fair comparison.





The town, bridge, and beach of Usdoonvarna would be a great place to spend a day. There are many places to eat and shops to stroll through on the main street.



The beaches are broad and the shallow water looked fun for kids.



But, my favorite site was this old stone bridge as you enter town.



The last site of the day and the hardest to find was Poulnabrone Dolmen, a 5,000 year old megalithic burial tomb. To get there one must travel the narrowest roads yet and hope that everyone is going in the same direction. The upside is views of truly ancient farmlands. Some of the stone boundary walls in the area date back over three thousand years.



Poulnabrone Dolmen is one of many stone “round fort” archeological locations in the Burren area. What makes this particular site so interesting is that the main burial tomb is still in reasonable tact. This style of burial is called a “Portal Tomb”, as it marked the passage from one world to the next. Originally the portal door would have been buried under an earth cairn mound. Over the millennia erosion and weathering have exposed the entrance. Carbon dating of those buried in the tomb dates the site to between 4,200 and 2,900 B.C. or the Neolithic Age. The docent of the park mentioned that this part of Ireland is an archeologist’s dream, with over 500 known pre-historic round fort settlements.

August 18th, 2007

Connemara Region

The day started with high hopes and a break in the clouds. Heading back to the mainland the skies actually shone through with a little blue. After a real soaker yesterday, I was ready for the sun.



The territory north of Rossaveal is bog land. The ample rain provides lakes and streams, seemingly at every turn.



They are more black than blue and the streams foam a cappuccino froth color.



The earth is so rich with nutrients that when cut it is coal black.



Local bog cutters stripe the land with gouges into the thick rich layers. Once the peat is cut from the ground it is stacked for drying.



Once dehydrated, teams of men throw the chunks into a tractor bed.



Since peat is a source of fuel it is not surprising that the dried vegetation layer feels an awful lot like very light wood. Foot long sections weigh less than a pound each. In the last one hundred years the combination of overgrazing by livestock and harvesting have reduced the producing peat bog area to only 40% of the original acreage.



Peat is not a renewable resource, as it takes tens of thousands of years to build. The original organic material was from pine and deciduous forests combined with ground cover. The forests have long been harvested to extinction and the remaining ferns and grasses protect the underlying peat. What creates the burnable fuel, counter intuitively, is water. The heavy rains keep the soil and composite organic material moist, which retards decomposition. So the generational layers of plant matter pile one on top of the other, creating weight to compress and pack the lower level organics into a waiting fuel source.

The remaining threats to the existing bog ecosystems are obviously harvesting and not so obviously grazing. When farm animals eat the final cover layer of vegetation, then the soil is vulnerable to evaporation and with that organic decomposition begins.

Enough with the bog facts, Clifden was the first town across the miles of narrow country road. The directional signage in Ireland is minimally instructive at best and mostly obscured by a visual labyrinth of Bed & Breakfast and Restaurant signs crowding out the one needed direction sign. The other challenge in driving in Ireland is that every road is a paved horse path, so the size of the surface has relatively no bearing as to its importance. You could just as easily be on a recognized road as on an extended side road to nowhere. In my case, nowhere was the harbor entrance for Clifden and an eventual dead end into the lifeboat station.



Actually, there were no complaints from me. I was almost literally dead tired, so pulled into the five-space gravel car park and was asleep in almost moments. Two and a half hours later and I awoke to a hallucinating reality. I literally had no idea where I could be and was searching the car for someone. Youth Hostel sleep deprivation, combined with jet lag, dehydration, and a now unbelievably hot car had all combined to create my disturbing awakening. The good news was that the sun was shining brightly and once the seal of the car was broken my head began to clear.

So, I headed to Connemara National Park and what appears to be the highest hill/mountain in the area at a whopping 721 meters.



Longing for a good stretch of the legs Benbough was actually a reasonable challenge. The climb itself was little more than a simple “walk up” but the wind was the strongest I’ve ever experienced.



The gusts were literally strong enough to change the course of individual strides. Clothes were plastered to windward and luffing loudly to leeward. At one point I simply leaned forward into the wind and it held me in place. Working my way around the mountain, with the wind now to my back, it literally blew me uphill. Crazy…



A couple of nice surprises along the national park trails were a colt and mare from the prized Connemara herd...



... and this cute little guy (by the Visitors Center) who thought it was just about the perfect time to stop and play with stones instead of trudging on.



Just as I was getting ready to head to the car park, the skies cleared just enough for a clear view of the summit.



The stretch home brought me by the beautiful Kylemore lakeside Abbey. Ireland is great for surprises this way, as a beautiful lake or building may be hiding around almost any curve.



The clouds regained their strength and thickened on the winding path back to Galway.



Still lacking enough sleep reserves the hostel was a welcome site.



My continuing challenge is that “it is August in Europe” and that means hoards of partying vacationers. I slept great from one to three-thirty in the morning and then the revelers starting making their uncoordinated, boisterous, bunk bed rattling, staggered migration back to the dorm room.



Once settled into bed the chorus of wheezing nicotine saturated snoring insured that restful sleep was now finished for the night.

New Posts - Ireland and More

Hello Family and Friends,

It is funny that traveling once again has given me the time and dedication to get back to blogging. I loved seeing many of you while home in Michigan/California and spending time together just seemed the better use of time than blogging.
"
So now that the world is once again my home there is more time and impetus to keep you informed. "Thank you" to so many of you who "bugged" me to get going again. It is great to know that you all are reading or at least looking at the pictures from the blog.

Along the way, I will catch up, filling in missing pieces, and will let you know the timing of the posts. For instance, a weekend climbing Mt. Shasta was just published along with a day of Ireland travels. Fortunately for this one (Mt. Shasta) you will only have to venture back about three entries to find the pics and story. When filling in later entries, I'll give you the date to search for in this "splash page".

Cheers,
Paul


(Many Summer "fish stories" to come.)

August 17, 2007

Aran Islands - Inis Mhor

Driving in the car, I heard a joke on the radio, “How can you tell the difference between Summer and Winter in Ireland?” (I lived the response today.) The answer is “The rain gets warmer.”

Ireland is having the worst Summer in anyone’s memory. Everywhere I go the locals are bantering about the rain, pouring at a heavier than normal frequency. The month of April was apparently perfect and then a warmer Winter set in.

Taking things in stride I drove from Galway to Rossaveal to catch the Aran Islands Ferry with Inis Mhor, the largest bit of offshore rock, as the target.





The rain threatened to stop while we waited for the boat, but after traveling the channel it opened up for off-boarding at the island’s tiny wharf.



After dropping my backpack off at the hostel the mental debate and “wetness tolerance” index began.



It costs 10 Euro to either rent a bike for the day or take a two hour guided mini-van tour. Armed with a Gortex jacket and a spirit to see the local life I took the bicycle option.



Inis Mhor is literally one large tessellating rock. Somehow in the cracks vegetation began to grow and in places a very thin layer of topsoil established.



To delineate property lines and help this process the natives build stone walls out of seemingly every stone manageable enough to lift. With the constant moisture grasses grow almost while you wait. Tiny paddocks feed livestock practically perpetually.



In spite of the lush grass waiting in the background, blackberries are just too tempting a treat for this cow.



Riding a bike on the island means sharing the road with all kinds of vehicles, from minivans to horse carts.



One of the benefits of taking the bike is the ability to stop and take photos. When wind blown red hair and a horse caught my eye, I knew this would be the classic Irish shot.



Proud of my accomplishment, I shared the picture with an Irish woman, later that evening in the hostel. Her response stunned me, “Oh my God, where’d ya fin’ dat?” She laughed, then called her friend over to look at the picture. Now they were both laughing. “Dat’s not-a horse, dat der is a spotted cow.” I was pretty sure it was a horse, but what they later explained is that Irish horses are typically a single color and this one looked like a local breed of cow. That was when I had to confess that the red haired woman in the picture was actually Dutch, so my classic Irish photo was a total sham.



Apparently, true Irish horses sould look more like these.







For some reason there is something inherently moving or monumental about a Celtic Cross that demands attention.



The main target for the day was Dun Aonchus Fort, a pre-historic stonewalled settlement high on the cliffs.



With the aggressive weathering washing the island practically clean, archeologists struggle to put a date on the site. The best guess is somewhere between one thousand and five hundred BC.





The scale of the fort is impressive with over eleven acres of enclosure, but the cliffs steal the show.



The howling winds and slippery footing made for an “all fours” scramble to the sea cliff edge. Tourists lay prone on the edge while their traveling partners leaned against the wind and held tightly to the daring photographer’s ankles. Others stood on what seemed to be a perfectly safe perch for a “photo-op”, not knowing that their footing was literally hanging over the waiting ocean.



Climbing down from the fort the quaint Irish precipitation nuance turned into a cold nuisance.


Even the horses cowered under the drubbing rain.



The wind whipped across the treeless countryside and howled through the power lines.



There was only one thing left to do, push past the classic houses...







... and on back to the hostel to make dinner in the protection and relative warmth of a kitchen.