- The Troubles I’ve Seen: Northern Ireland, Day 1
- Whiskey is a Food Group, Right?: Northern Ireland, Day 2
- Call Me Flower If You Want To: Northern Ireland, Day 3
- Where Did All These Irish Come From?: Northern Ireland, Day 4
- It’s Not a Conspiracy If It’s On a Plaque: Northern Ireland, Day 5
- Boa Hoo Hoo: Northern Ireland, Day 6
- All’s Quiet: Northern Ireland, Day 7
- All Time Favorites: Northern Ireland, Day 8
- Downtime, Uptime: Northern Ireland, Days 9 and 10
- Dublin Denouement: Northern Ireland, Days 11+
- Dublin Din-Din: Restaurant (and Hotel) Wrap-Up, Northern Ireland Post Scipt
Our 7th day of this trip was relatively smooth, certainly as compared with the chaos of previous days. The car worked all day(!), our hotel’s heat situation was more manageable than it had been in Derry (granted that’s a relative thing, but still), and the weather stayed sunny though cool and windy. Bereft of catastrophes, we had a lovely day of hunting down ancient piles of rocks… I mean, the rocks are the same billions of years old as all the other rocks, but the piles are novel. Tromping around, I found myself thinking of an old beau of Lisa’s who is now happily married to a woman with whom he goes geocaching. Geocaching is a niche hobby that, reducing greatly for brevity, hides little tokens in strange places and then provides the GPS coordinates to the geocaching community. People track the “treasure” down and… do things. Replace it. Add their own thing. It varies. The point is, as far as I can tell, not to collect faux treasure but to have an excuse to tromp around in strange and interesting places. That’s what I was thinking about. Lisa creates these fantastic, elaborate itineraries that involve a handful of these fascinating neolithic/bronze age stone formations, but at least half the value for us is the crazy drives we take, the adventures in finding the things in overgrown wilds, and just the general scenery. I guarantee we see more of the wilds of Ireland than people who go on bus tours even if they ostensibly end up in the same places. Take today for example.
Our day actually began with what might be called duds. Our first site (Dunnamore Wedge Tomb) was completely impervious to discovery, despite google being absolutely sure we were in the right place. And by the way, we joke about google’s idiosyncrasies as much as anyone, but really it’s mind-blowing how well it says “oh you want to go to this obscure cairn? Drive to the red pin, then follow the dotted line and Bob’s yer uncle” and 90%+ of the time it’s spot on. We couldn’t do these trips nearly so well without it. So yeah, we’ll give the occasional “dammit Google you need to stop with the day drinking” but still… The second site (Creggandevesky Court Tomb) we’re pretty sure we found, but the gates you would have expected to be open to access it were locked – private property or not, that’s actually really rare. While I consulted with the nearest farmstead and got some “I think its up the road a bit further” directions, Lisa did a deeper dive online and came up with the news that the site had recently experienced increased flooding and had been closed to public traffic for safety reasons. Oops.
Our third site finally proved to be visible, if only just. It was also on private property and, as far as we could tell, there wasn’t access to it directly. However, it was clearly visible from the road, and so we got a few shots of Loughmacrory Wedge Tomb. A wedge tomb is just that: a wedge-shaped tomb; shorter and narrower on one end, taller and wider at the other. Interestingly these tombs are often on an east-west axis but nobody knows why. It’s nice getting a look at this one, but from a distance, and overgrown like this, it’s hard to get a lot out of the experience. What we did get a lot of though, was attention. From sheep. They’d been out in the field minding their own sheepy business, but when we showed up, it was just too exciting. Best guess, things that look vaguely like us (i.e. other people) often show up and provide the best stuff, like move to a new field, supplement feed etc… cool stuff indeed. So, in very short order we had a whole flock of ’em staring at us with occasional bleats. I’m telling you, if you think your dog can register disappointment when you aren’t taking them for a walk after all, try driving away from sheep who thought you were bringing the awesome sauce. Sad bleats.
The day was getting warmed up, though. Our next stop was the Auglish Stone Circles and Alignments, which were pretty amazing. They were also a great example of the “C” type of access (in my own persona grading system). “A” access is when there’s signage and maybe even a car park; the site is probably in the care of the state. “B” access may or may not have signage but is still easy to spot and not too difficult to access. “C” access, however, is when there is almost no clue that you’re near anything interesting, you have to be in the know. Not only that, but even when you gain access to the location there’s no easy evidence that you’re in the right place and you have to tromp along for awhile. In this case, once we found a gate that would open we still had a climb of a few hundred nettle-covered yards up a fairly steep hill; steep enough that we couldn’t see if anything was up there until we were a fair ways up. We persevered mostly on faith (and the fact that this sort of thing has paid off before) and were greatly rewarded. The plural in “Auglish Stone Circles” hardly does it justice. There are numerous circles, with alignments connecting them together. The circles are pretty intact, with stones of more regular shape than we’re used to seeing. The other cool thing was the alignments which, as I think we explained in a recent post, is a line of stones basically serving the purpose of an arrow before that symbol existed. In other words, to draw your attention in a direction. There’s an alignment here that points you right at a break in the surrounding hills. I mean, it could be a coincidence, but given how hard these things are to make I don’t know why you’d lean that way. The last thing about this complex that caught my attention was the signage. It did exist after all; it was at the very top of the hill, tucked into the corner of two fences coming together, looking down on the complex of stones. Is there a path up there? No there is not. Is there any way you’d know that sign was there without making the long trek up the (did I mention the nettle-filledness?) hill with no sign that it was the right thing to do? Nope, none. I really don’t get it, unless the land’s owner is under some obligation to give access and post a sign and was leaning into malicious compliance with a vengeance. Still, the site is definitely worth the trip; it’s where google says it is, promise.
Our final stop of note was to Ballybriest Dual Court Tomb. It was notable for two reasons. First of all, it’s pretty neat and nicely intact. To refresh: a court tomb has an outer “court” (think “courtyard”) with an entrance to the buried tomb portion. This was a large site; I think the amount of erosion that occurred actually put the tomb portion at what is now ground level, giving you an occasionally foreboding sensation. It’s also in a location that screams “of course you put a sacred place here”, with commanding views for miles in every direction. The second reason… you know my access grades above? I had to invent a new one for Ballybriest: “D” access, where the site is also the occasional home of a real live bull and you just have to keep your head on a swivel. I don’t know what it says about us that we went in but we did. It was, thankfully, a bull-free experience. Our day complete and our survival rate steady at 100%, we made for our hotel for dinner and a pack-up, ready to move on to a new part of Ireland on the morrow. (Meh, not my best, but it gets the job done.)
