history « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

history

cycling / history / I do not know what is happening. / Ireland / music / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
25
Jun 13

Cycling the Dingle peninsula

We decided this morning that our current host is like the Irish grandmother we didn’t know we had. The rooms are a bit small, and the WiFi has the curious ability to stop at our front door, but it is clean. The gentleman of the house, Tim, is a retired police officer. His guardia station can be seen from the dining room window. A 30 second commute, he said. Mrs. Eileen made a delicious breakfast and fussed over us continually. One of the other current guests, she said, has been coming to visit her every year for a decade. It isn’t especially hard to see why. You’re just dropping by to spend a night or two with an old friend here. It is lovely.

We went out for a bicycle ride today. Here was our route, zoom in and follow along:

This is just under two miles into the ride and we’re just getting started. We met some nice folks from the D.C. area and swapped pictures with them. Figured it would be the sort of thing where we leap frogged one another all day, but we only saw them one more time.

Here’s a lovely little waterfall we found in Ventry, just under five miles into the ride:

That waterfall is very close to the Dunbeg Fort, or Dun Beag, which is dated to about 2,500 years old. There’s a sign here that quotes National Geographic “one of the very few oldest historical monuments that we have left in this planet.”

So, being history nerds, we started counting things older. Never mind that now, though:

She does handstands at forts and on beaches and other interesting places:

And planks. (She’s taking them back.)

The fort consists of four ditches and five mounds, with dry stone masonry. It was originally a straight rampart, but later work made it circular. There were guardhouses and the remains of a square Clochaun, a dry-stone hut with a corbelled roof, a building technique common in this part of the country’s history. There is also a Souterrain, or a manmade cave if you like, that likely dates to the Iron Age. It was probably used for storage, refuge and passageway.

There’s an active geological fault here, the signs say, which has contributed to some erosion of the original earthworks.

And various reasonable yoga poses, merging old forts with old fitness disciplines in the world. Because she can:

Off to the other side of Dun Beag:

These next several are in the Slea Head area, when we were about 10 miles into the ride. Adam is beginning to think this activity disagrees with him:

Here’s a little more local history:

Is this not the coolest piece of road? A different version of this picture is going into the headers on this page and is presently the image on my home page, too:

We took a lunch break at the Great Blasket Centre, which is full of hardscrabble history. There’s still quite a bit of ancient Gaelic culture in this area, they say.

We found the Reasc Monastery about 20 miles into our journey. It is thought to date to the 6th century and featured seven of those Clochaun huts, six of which were arranged in pairs for the monks’ residences, you’ve just learned a bit about. There is a graveyard with 42 graves and the remains of a slab shrine.

There was a small church oratory here, of course. The area around it was used as a children’s burial ground after the monastery was abandoned.

It is important to note, when you see those Clochauns, or beehive huts, that the re-creations, or remains, honor an important part of the shared European heritage. During the dark ages, places like these huts were where the educated people, typically high ranking church members, lived. These were the people that played a significant role in keeping literacy alive.

You can peer at the walls of the monastery and see what was original and what had been reconstructed by archeologists. (There was a tarpaper layer noting the difference.) And if you wonder where the original stones went, my guess would be into the walls that mark pastures everywhere. here.

At least 10 of these types of slab stones have been recovered from the site. The cross inscriptions of the Reask stones also feature spiral designs and the letters DNE, which you can only barely make out here perhaps. The abbreviation is for Domine, which is Latin for “O Lord.”

This is the Kilmalkedar church, a 12th century structure on a sight that is religiously important back to at least the 7th century. Some of the artifacts here go well beyond that, even. The Hiberno-Romanesque church includes a nave and chancel. The chancel is thought to have been a later addition. The Saint’s Road, a pilgrimage trail to Mount Brandon, passes between the church and the nearby house of St Brendan. There’s a prominent medieval cemetery here, a sundial, cross slabs and this holed ogham stone.

Some literature suggests that stone had been there nine centuries before the church went up, some of the engravings support that idea. It marked a grave, which has suggested that this was holy ground even in the pre-Christian era. The hole was drilled through so people could come to seal a deal—standing on the graves of their ancestors and in front of the house of God by touching thumbs through this stone. People renew their wedding vows there, too.

You go into the church through this romanesque doorway. It has three orders and a round head with a projecting hood made from red and green stone. The keystone is a carved head. As we learned at Cashel these head carvings often had a role in warding off evil spirits. So perhaps this one was a sentry as well:

We finished our ride with a long, easy 300 foot climb as the sun set over Smerwick Harbor. In 1580 600 Italian and Spanish troops (sent by the pope to aid a rebellion) surrendered here to the English, and were slaughtered for their trouble. Have a nice day!

Here are several extra shots from the day’s ride, mixed with music we heard with dinner last night:

We coasted back into Dingle town, got back to our B&B and cleaned up for dinner at The Dingle Pub. After all of that bike riding, 29 miles and almost 1,000 feet of climbing, on rental bikes he was beat. He kept saying “I do not know what is happening.”

adventures / friends / history / Ireland / maps / Monday / music / photo / video — Comments Off
24
Jun 13

The Ring of Kerry, from Kenmare to Dingle

This was breakfast at Virginia’s Guesthouse this morning. Breakfast is the signature of the place.

Breakfast is what we do best at Virginia’s. Noreen is a dedicated “Foodie” and loves to cook. Therefore our varied breakfast menu is constantly changing from season to season, offering only the very best of produce and featuring lots of creative and personalised dishes, as well as the standard Full Irish Breakfast … Noreen’s signature dish is her award-winning “Blue Cheese, Pears & Bacon”.

Turns out the blue cheese on this plate came from the cows we heard mooing at the Rock of Cashel yesterday. They were just telling us we had something to look forward to.

I’d mentioned the narrow roads. This is common. If you convert this, that’s 50 miles per hour. You’ve no idea …

Today was a big driving day. This is our basic route:

The peninsula has several deep glacial lakes. People tend to bypass these if they aren’t careful, but they are peaceful and can offer some great views:

Here’s a brief video from there:

Ah, the old head-on-a-wall joke …

When was the last time you were at a glacial lake?

Evidence! I have it! She started the making-faces game!

We took several of these photos. My eyes are closed in all of them. Uncanny.

She’s showing off her ring, awww.

And now for some potty humor. We stopped at the Parknasilla Resort. The original place here dates back to the 18th century, and once included the Derryquin Castle, which was burned in 1922 by the IRA. The rest of Parknasilla’s history is … complex … and references Noah.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but you have to check out the bathrooms:

What was that logo?

Check out the handle.

Enough of that. Just outside of Parknasilla everything feels magical:

But then everything does here, even an hour in the car. You get great treats along the way:

There are wide spots designed for you to pull over every so often. Take advantage of them. Linger.

Or you could be like the typical tourist and hop out, snap a picture and then immediately pile back into the car. Be sure to take your time.

If you don’t you’ll miss a lot of little delights.

Our next stop on the Ring of Kerry was Staigue Fort. You turn off a country road and drive up what amounts to the loneliest private driveway in the world. There are two houses in this valley, and if not for the occasional tourist it would be the sleepiest place you’ve ever imagined.

Rick Steeves’ guidebook calls this a desolate high valley, but I disagree. This place has a lot going for it. Check out these next several shots before I finally show you the fort.

Staigue Fort is believed to date between 300 and 400 AD. It was a defensive fortification, a cultural center and perhaps had some religious significance. The walls are 18 feet high in places and almost as thick at the bottom. It is about 90 feet in diameter. There is no mortar, just stacks of stones, and is thus considered an impressive historical effort of engineering.

If you were standing where I am when taking this picture, you’d be surrounded by hilly terrain on three sides. Over my left shoulder, and down a long chute of this valley, is the sea. No one snuck up on Staigue.

And now to show you how quickly the light changes here, and to give you a slightly different view of the fort, here’s a 360-degree effort I shot on Photosynth. See how parts of the shot are over or under exposed as you move around in it? Cloud, sun, cloud, darker cloud, sun. The sky is very dramatic here:

Later we discovered, almost by accident and visited purely on impulse, the local Skelligs Chocolate factory. They give you samples, and it is delicious:

The next stop is “the best view in County Kerry” just outside of Portmagee. Check out these views:

Of course there is a video. It is the sort of place you could loiter at for a long time, after all.

A few animals we passed on our walk up to that view. There were horses and sheep, too.

And then we visited Cahergall Stone Fort. Some of this is still original, though the upper parts are a historical reconstruction. The sign says “It is likely that somebody of importance lived here about 1,000 years ago.” All of this must be frustrating for historians and archeologists. Some of these forts go back 2,500 years after all. Here’s The Yankee climbing the steps on the inside wall:

Adam demonstrates the height of this fort:

We arrived at Dingle, checked into our bed and breakfast — Eileen Collins’ Kirrary House and ventured out for dinner at John Benny’s Pub, I had a hearty, delicious beef pie. These guys were playing, and you can hear one of their songs in the slideshow below.

We had ice cream at the famous Murphy’s. I was not previously aware that an ice cream shop could be famous, but USA Today called it one of the best in the world. It was good.

Tomorrow we’re riding bikes.

adventures / food / history / Ireland / music / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
23
Jun 13

The Rock of Cashel, from Kilkenny to Kenmare

You order the full Irish breakfast, you get the full Irish breakfast. Throw in some museli and then proclaim this the best bed and breakfast ever. And maybe it is. Irish sausage, also, is better than anything we have at home.

You see a lot of old stone buildings just sitting roadside here. Some of them are important, some are just old structures. Most of them don’t even have signs or notations on a map. They just are. That’s how old the place is, a few hundred years is nothing, and it could just be the place an old angry person lived for all you know.

Today we visited the Rock of Cashel. This was where the kings of Munster ruled for 600 years, from the 4th century to 1101, when it was given to the church. This is the view as you drive up:

Inside you see St. Patrick’s Cross, built in the 12th century in the Latin style. One side has a carving meant to depict the crucifixion, the other side has an abbot, possibly St. Patrick himself. The base of the cross is hollow and is believed to have been a storage and hiding place for valuables:

Here are a few of the artifacts they’ve discovered at the Rock, and dated back to the 12th century:

There is a cemetery at the Rock, still active. The local authorities tried to close it in the early 20th century, but the community decided to have a lottery and that allowed for a few more spaces for the residents and their children. Our tour guide said there are four or five people of that generation still living.

If you look off in the distance behind her you might just notice a chunk of rock missing from the mountain on the right. Local lore is that the devil was flying over Ireland, took a bite out of that mountain and dropped it here, forming the rock upon which the church sits.

This is the north transept, and, in the top left corner, the round tower. The north transept contains late medieval tombs and grave slabs.

Here’s The Yankee outside the north transept, with that round tower in the background:

A wider shot, looking from the west. There is scaffolding covering the east side as they slowly work to renovate the structure.

We heard cows mooing in the pastures down below us:

The weather changed from cold to windy to raining to sunny to warm all while we were at the Rock. Crazy weather.

See those holes in the walls? That’s how they built the building. They’d get to a certain level and then put a large piece of wood there and build around it. Then they’d cut the wood out and remove their middle aged scaffolding.

This is inside Cormac’s Chapel, a small Romanesque church that was was consecrated in 1134 and named for King Cormac. This is looking at the archway just in front of the altar:

The frescoes in Cormac’s Chapel, such as they are, are the oldest Romanesque wall paintings in Ireland. The earliest are dated to around the church’s building, so circa 1134, and have a simple masonry pattern. The later paintings, thought to date back to between 1160-70, are narrative scenes, including the Nativity. Scholars believe outside artists, perhaps from England or France, were brought in for the work. They were covered with whitewash during the 16th century Reformation and remained hidden until the 1980s. The lime used in the whitewash wiped out the rest.

That red patina comes from only one place in the world: Afghanistan. The church was spending some money to get the ingredients shipped all the way to Ireland.

This is standing under the altar’s archway and looking back into the church. It is a small facility, thought to have been used by Benedictine monks:

Looking into the altar itself, you can’t quite make out the apse vault. But you can see more of those heads carved into the arch. The thought is that they were used to ward off evil spirits from invading the altar.

The interior and exterior views of that transept:

I like to get artsy with doorways sometimes:

Two of the markers in the cemetery:

This is a view from the east side. I’ve cropped out all of the aluminium scaffolding, which is off the left margin. The Rock of Cashel is on a rocky plateau that rises 300 feet above the surrounding plain known as the Golden Vale of Tipperary.

Just off the plateau you can see the Hore Abbey, a Cistercian monastery. This dates back to the mid-13th century:

Changing it up a bit here. I took a lot of shots in the car as we drove around today. Here are two of them. After that, you’ll see a little video montage of the rest of more.

And this is Kenmare, where we checked into Virginia’s Guesthouse.

Downtown looks like this:

We had dinner at Foley’s Restaurant. The live music in the video above is from the performers we heard tonight. If you’re interested in our route today, it looked something like this:

A lot more tomorrow!

adventures / friends / history / Ireland / photo / weekend — Comments Off
22
Jun 13

Heading out to Kilkenny

We’re driving on the left again. And you would not believe these roads.

They are of good quality. And, thankfully, empty as we are taking some scenic, rural routes. But these are narrow, one-lane strips of asphalt and the speed limits reach 100 kilometers per hour. Imagine, maybe, the width of a really wide parking space at home. Drive 60 miles per hour on something like that with brush and stone fences on either side of you.

I think this smile was forced:

But we are on the road. And by we I mean our friend Adam, who I met several years ago while writing a feature story on a World War II relative of his.

And his brand new fiance, Jessica. They just got engaged yesterday. And now she has to put up with us on a road trip she knows nothing about. This was all sprung on her. She has patience and a good sense of humor. We’ll see how long we can test those.

Fun people, fine friends. We’re glad there here.

Here’s our route today:

We’re seeing sights like these. Scroll down through the next several images. We’ll get some more words in here eventually. These are just shots I took out of the window as we drove from Enniskerry to Kilkenny today. I’m told the views only get better.

We checked into our Bed & Breakfast in Kilkenny, which is a town of about 24,000 people when you count the outlying folks. The name derives from the Irish meaning “church of Cainnech.” And Cainnech is Saint Cainnech, of Aghaboe, a 6th century Gaelic abbot, priest and missionary also known as Kenneth or Kenny two or three other names, depending on where you were standing. He is considered one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.

Kilkenny was originally the name of the church and the surrounding area later took on the name. The story goes — and it is one of those tales of the time that has a lot of telling and re-telling, so it might not be the most completely accurate, but close nevertheless — that in 597, Cainnech led a Christian army here to wipe out the last of the Druids. This was one of the last parts of Ireland to be converted to Christianity.

A tour was full. A music tour had ceased operation. We were really just winging it tonight anyway.

We ate here this evening, a family-owned joint since 1904. There was a sign of live music, but no actual live music. What to do?

“Get drunk with us,” said the bartender, overhearing our conversation. That wasn’t really on the agenda.

We did eat there. Here was the Irish stew I ordered for dinner. And while there isn’t normally a lot of food on this site — because food photographs just aren’t as interesting as the photographer thinks — I just wanted to tell you how delicious Irish stew is:

Do these look like the faces of two people who just got engaged?

There. That’s better. Our friends are funny, and they’re always blaming one another, in jest, for whatever the most immediate transgression happens to be. It is amusing to sort out the real story. Usually I pick the person who says the least.

We went down the street a way to Kyteler’s Inn, to hear some music. This was the house of Dame Alice Kyteler, a member of a prominent local banking family. She was charged with witchcraft, heresy and suspected in poisoning a few of her husbands in 1323. She’s believed to be the subject of the earliest witchcraft accusations in Ireland. She skipped town, fleeing presumably to England, where she disappeared from history. One of her servants was not so lucky; she was flogged and burned at the stake in 1324.

Happier days today, though. I saw this sign and note it here only to point out that I’m going to look them up, tell them I’m back and demand my cut of the empire. Never mind that I’m not Irish.

We met some nice guys tonight. They were from the outlying areas and had come to town for a bachelor party. Here’s the most normal of the bunch.

This guy has a counterpart in every bar and pub in the world, I’d bet. In your personal space, flirting with the ladies, starting out funny stories that somehow lose their oomph midway through.

But he introduced us to all these guys, including this one, who seemed a bit out of place.

And this guy. He was the priest. He was also coordinating the night’s entertainment. That’s what we were told. We learned he wasn’t a priest, but the story is better that way. It allowed one of the other guys to say “Welcome to Ireland.”

And right about then a guy in a bikini showed up. Presumably the night’s entertainment. Thankfully the music was starting so …

I did not know there were Carnegie Libraries in other parts of the world. Also, I took this photograph at 9:30 at night. We still had an hour of daylight left.

adventures / history / links / photo — Comments Off
20
Jun 13

Church choirs and rock shows

The Yankee did some work. She presented some of her research and it was, easily, the best presentation I saw at the entire conference:

We also went to St. Paul’s Cathedral. This church is the seat of the Bishop of London and head church of the Diocese of London. It sits atop the highest point in the City of London. The original church here dates back to 604.

This church dates to the late 17th century, designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. Services and tours were going on while we were there. You get the sense that the place never stops humming.

And it is a beautiful place. I’ve been fortunate to see some of the world’s oldest and most beautiful churches. To me, this one is one of the ones you have to see.

And they all have this certain sound, in those soaring ceilings, to the point that you think all of the ancient architects had a similar opinion about what angels singing might sound like, and how they could maybe try to emulate it.

A young choir from Singapore was performing, for about a half hour, when we were there. I don’t want to overstate it, but their voices were singing up and the ceiling was singing down. There was the slightest, most imperceptible delay that held notes and changed the songs. I don’t know what angels in your mind, but that’s what they’d sound like to me. (I tried to record it, but it was all a bit fuzzy because of other ambient noises.)

The vaulting ceilings here have what the tour says are millions of pieces of glass in elaborate mosaics. I wonder who had the job of counting the glass pieces.

Fish and chips! And mushy peas. You can just see them in the corner of the shot. That’s another British staple. They’re good if you like peas. I like peas.

The fish is supposed to come in a newspaper, and so to be authentic this place uses a fake newspaper. It is probably more sanitary, but more expensive. This paper is mimicking a 1940s London paper. There is copy about military governors divvying up Germany.

She plans great trips, and this has been another wonderful one. We’re riding on the Underground here:

We went to see Rock of Ages on the West End. They break the fourth wall. They ad lib. They use jazz hands. It is a rock show, but a love story.

The narrator makes a Waffle House joke. This being London I am the only person in the entire theater that got it. I laughed. No one else laughed. I laughed harder.

It is bawdy. It makes fun of hair bands, rock ‘n’ roll and the 1980s.

Great, funny show.