Week Two, Burtown House, Athy, County Kildare, Ireland

The view of the stable houses from the nut grove.

 This week at Burtown we spent a great deal of time in the Grove, clearing ivy and other difficult rhizomes, saplings, nettles, etc. It's soggy, tedious work best done on the hands and knees with gloved fingertips.  And it's rewarding to step back and admire your small patch of temporarily ivy free forest floor.  I've a new appreciation for ivy's reproduction and propagation techniques, it's a wonder it doesn't cover the entire planet.  After the collapse it'll be feral house cats hunting in rolling brambles of ivy spilling out of crumbling skyscrapers.  Forevermore I will do my best to impede the spread of ivy.
 

Messy work.

Anyways, on Thursday evening we rode a loaner tandem bike into Athy (5 miles) to hear the weekly traditional music session.  The bicycle built for two turned out to be totally road worthy and we cruised to town in less than half an hour (Ireland's pretty flat). We were able to store the bike in the back bar without a bother and sat down to two and half hours of uninterrupted music.

This is the second week we have gone. Words almost can't express how amazing it is. Clancy's pub has Ireland's longest running free traditional music session - for 45 years Irish musicians have been gathering there, practicing their art and keeping the old songs alive.

The first night we attended there were 14 players with 20 instruments between them - 5 banjos, 2 guitars, 2 mandolins, 2 Irish bagpipes, 1 bodrhan (a drum), 4 tin whistles, 2 flutes, a fiddle and an accordion. There were six spectators, although some of them turned out to be poets/storytellers and singers themselves. Great craic!

This week, again, there were so many musicians filling the tiny session room that there was almost no room for spectators. At times one musician seems to take the lead, jumping into a song without any announcement. He starts to play and as people pick it up, they jump in. Then, when the song seems to come to a close the leader runs right into another. There is a temporary lull as people quickly shift gears and they're on to the next tune. It is so lively. A woman sang a ballad, "Sonny's Dream." It was just her voice and a guitar. But when she came to the chorus the men joined in singing, "Sonny don't go away, ...." The room was totally filled with men's voices, it was so resonant and sad.

We'll have one last opportunity to visit Clancy's this Thursday and we'll be there again.  Live music has certainly been a highlight of the trip and Clancy's has been the best of it.

Stay tuned for this week's photo appendix, including a trip to Smithwick's Brewery in Kilkenny and some artsy fartsy shots from around the grounds. 

Liverpool 1 - Manchester United 1

Granted this post is a little behind as the match in the title was played nearly two weeks ago, but I wanted to share a tidbit of the experience. Donica trolled the chat rooms and found Fox's Bar on the city square which was the meeting place of the Galway Liverpool Supporters Club, as verified by an email to there contact person. Anyways, we got there about 20 minutes before the 1245p kick off to secure a good seat and a bite to eat.


It was a pretty uneventful first half but the two fellows in front of us were friendly and their comments were entertaining, especially when they nicknamed Rio Ferdinand Jar Jar Binks. When Gerrard scored his free kick goal on 65 minutes the place erupted, myself included. Chicharito's equalizer brought the exact opposite effect out of the crowd save one or two United supporters in another part of the bar. Still, it was a good second half of football and a game Liverpool might've won.

Oh, and then there's superfan number one (wearing the Suarez no 7 in the picture). He was sitting right in front of the big screen in a full kit (socks included). He seemed a bit strange and when he walked past I noticed he had several shirts on which gave him a bit of a hunchback look. Only after the game did I understand why, he had more than just a few jerseys on.




He stopped when he had stripped down to his no 8 and it was then that Donica approached him. "Do you have them on in a particular order?" He smiled real big and answered that defenders were on the bottom then midfielders then attackers, including some of the youngsters like Robinson and Flanagan who were on the bench. We counted and calculated and figured he must have had on about 18 shirts. And all this years kit. Like I said, superfan number one!

Week One, Burtown House, Athy, County Kildare, Ireland

We have survived our first week at Burtown House. True to our expectations, Ireland at the end of October is cold and wet. We have come in from most days covered in mud, with icy fingers and toes.

The kitchen garden is HUGE! It is surrounded on four sides by six-foot-high rock walls. The tool shed looks like a miniature castle. There are so many wonderful things growing there: purple and green kale, several types of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, broad beans and bush beans, raspberries, zucchini (which the Irish call "courchettes," the French name,) pumpkins, acorn squash, rhubarb, artichokes, potatoes, asparagus, fennel, various herbs, gooseberries...you get the idea. Also on the property is a small grove of apple trees, and "the nut grove," whatever that means.

We've been working hard, and hopefully earning our keep while getting used to the routine around here. I (Donica) have been cold pretty much all the time that I am out from under the bed-covers. James, our host who was raised in this house, called it the "coldest house in Ireland" and I don't think that he is exaggerating. He says that in the winter there is sometimes frost on the inside of the windows!

Even so, there are quite a lot of things about the house that are really neat examples of Irish country life. For example, all the cooking is done in an oven that they call an Aga - an oil stove that is constantly on and hot. No temperature control. There is a hot side and a less-hot side, a little place to keep the kettle warm, and a covered burner for boiling on the stove top. I cooked beets in it, which only came out slightly charred, and an apple tart, which came out great. We are slowly getting the hang of it. The Aga keeps the kitchen warm, and therefor the kitchen is a VERY popular place to hang out.

There are charming details about the house that don't exist in most American homes - fancy shutters for the windows on the main floor of the house that fold across floor-to-ceiling leaded windows, detailed plasterwork above windows and doors, fireplaces in almost every room, and stone walls that are at least three feet thick. Our room is on the fourth floor in a sort of attic-space. Last night there was a terrible storm, and we were warm and cozy listening to the wind and rain pound at the skylight.

Hopefully next weekend the weather will be more pleasant and we can get out to explore and take pictures outside a little bit.

Dun Ducathair, a photo essay

We planned on catching the 815a ferry back to the mainland, however, an alarm clock malfunction meant we missed the boat (perhaps a freudian slip from a tired mind).  Good thing that it's the slow season and there was another ferry at 530p.  So, with an additional day to explore, I set out for a walk to Dun Ducathair, or the Black Fort.  It's "an impressive neolithic semi circular stone fort perched on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic."

Leaving Donica to another cup of coffee I set out from our hostel.

I spied this great blue heron from the porch doing a bit of fishing during the low tide.  I took it as a good omen for the walk.

I walked this road around the bay,

until I spotted this wonderful signage, and took a right.

The road began as a paved gravel drive,

and slowly turned greener,

until it was  true "greenway." I was still confident and around this bend was rewarded with this view of the valley below. 

Continuing on the path became more and more overgrown, but I still had hope.

Alas, a dead end.  Not prepared to back track completely (a half hour detour) I decided to cut across some fields (read as trespass) towards a road on the other side of the valley.

So, I donned my sweater and hat as a disguise.

Success! To the Black Fort.

Up a very steep road,

as evidenced by the ambulance at the top.  I was there.

Or so I thought.  I still had to traverse a massive cove out to the next point.

These three had leapt the crevasse and were sitting on the edge of the cliff.

By the time I made it around they had left but you can just make out the crevasse, and the large empty space just below that will make for a spectacular collapse sometime in the next 1000 years. 

Self portrait #2

Along the way I spotted this snail tucked into the weathered limestone rock.

Getting closer.

An Irish mushroom growing out of a pile of cow dung, for Andrew and Rebecca.

Finally, I arrived at the fort itself.

Charging as an invading barbarian might once have.

The conquering force.

How many invaders met their fate on the rocks below when trying to squeeze past this narrow ledge only to be pushed off by the defenders.

Looking back on the narrow ledge after walking it every so carefully.

A final artsy shot before heading back.

 

The Secret of Inishmore

 It was a rainy, cold day when we decided to take the ferry to the Aran Islands. In fact, the weather was so terrible that the ferry wasn't even sailing from Doolin, where we were staying. We had to take a bus to Galway, and then another bus to the docks in Rossaveal. It was a perilous trip. The ferry was lurching from side to side and crashing down on the waves. A couple people got sea sick. I was just terrified that the ferry was going to tip all the way over!

We spent three nights on Inishmor. There is certainly something to the island's reputation for isolation, loneliness, hard graft. Words don't really do justice to the awe that we felt biking down greenways between ancient rock walls, watching the ocean crash against limestone cliffs, or participating in a wedding reception at one of the islands' two pubs open in the off season.

There are no road bikes on the island, because there are almost no paved roads. There are also very few flat sections, so I was probably breathing hard and cursing my inactivity in this photo.

Signal tower. The highest point on the island. From the roof of the tower one can see 360 degrees.