We had an amusing morning and mid-afternoon. After a skimpy little continental breakfast, we packed up and set out for another day of glorious sites. First, we went to Queen Maeve Trail Knocknarea. There sits one of the nation’s most important Neolithic passage tombs. It was a sacred burial place for ancient people. You wonder why one is more important than another. And if such a thing hurts neolithic feelings.

It’s on a looped walking trail and at the summit there’s the supposed burial spot of the legendary warrior queen Connacht. She’s said to have been buried upright, and facing her enemies. Her name is said to mean “She who intoxicates.” She was described as a fair-haired wolf queen so beautiful that it robbed men of two-thirds of their valor. She was famous for a cattle raid, part of an Irish epic. She was killed by a piece of cheese. Or she was an allegory.

Anyway, we didn’t walk up there. That wasn’t the trail we were after. So we pressed on to find a unique biome that was nearby, but we couldn’t find our way down to that. So we pressed on.

We hit Raghly Harbour, once a popular trading center for lobster and crabs, but the remote location doomed it. We enjoyed the gravel walk path, reading the signs about the old coast guard station, the local sea pilots, the signal communication system, and the Preventive Waterguard which operated in this place from 1809 to 1822, trying to curb smuggling.

It was a nice little walk. Bright, warm, sunny, and perfectly empty and quiet. Didn’t see another soul until we walked back to the car, and that person was going to do something else. Remote then, remote now. But at it’s height, they had seven harbor pilots on call here, there was a fish curing factory nearby, too.

Today, its local fishing boats, sea birds, and people taking this walk.

And that takes us to Mullaghmore Head.

There’s about 130 people that live in the village here. There’s a castle, and it’s a popular swimming and surfing site. This is where the big waves come in. We stopped at the pull-out next to the big sign. There were a few cars there. And sat up next to one of them was a man and a woman sitting in two skimpy lawn chairs beside a tiny little table. There’s a very short trail by the sign, and you had to walk past the couple to get there. I said something about the view they had, and the set up they’d … set up.

The little path was about 80 feet. You walked down, and then back up. It looked like a jump ramp, down and then up, narrow, falling away on either side to the sand and rocks just a short way below. From there, you could get a little closer to the water, a little lower than the road.

My lovely bride walked down the path ahead of me. It’s a well-worn walkway. Ankle-deep grass worn down to dirt by other visitors. The grass is wet. And, somehow, one wrong footstep and she hit the ground. It was funny, too. She somehow landed sideways, across the path. She was on her back, laughing, her feet dangling on one side off the path, her head dangling off the other side. It was ludicrous, because she was laughing.

Something about how gravity had arranged her made it difficult to help her up. The man that had been sitting in that skinny little chair to help, concerned for her well being until he saw her laughing and me giggling. He pulled, she pulled, I pushed, and we got her standing. We thanked the guy, and he went back up the hill to his chair.

We continued to admire the view, and continued the laughing, which turned into my talking smack about her slipping and falling.

“At least I,” I said, “haven’t fallen. Today, anyway.”

About 30 seconds later I fell. I mean, that grass was slick.

I was facing the water, fell to my left, landed on my side and was up on my feet again I even knew it, managing to keep my phone in my hand and out of danger. It all happened in a heartbeat. I was up, I had the sensation of falling, and then I was standing, feet wide, hands on the grass, laughing.

The guy that came down to help a moment earlier stayed put this time, but they were laughing at us from above. We enjoyed the view a bit longer, swallowing our pride, and then walked back up the hill to the car. Carefully.

They were still laughing at us. I said, “I told you that you had the right idea!”

So here I am, on this trip, one pair of muddied jeans from two days ago and, now, a muddied shirt.

Just down from that nice little view was this lovely view.

And off to the side was Classiebawn Castle, built as a 19th century country house built for Henry John Temple, the 3rd Viscount Palmerston and prime minister. Only he didn’t live long enough to see it finished. It’s most famous resident was Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma. He spent his summers there, until August of 1979, when he was assassinated, not too far away from here, by a bomb in his boat.

Today, the castle is still in private hands.

We didn’t go too close to it, but we did enjoy the views. I liked the rocks down by the water. I wonder how many kids have climbed down there and explored that spot.

I wonder how the water carves those grooves into the stone like that. But, then, I’ve been thinking a lot about the patience of water. Maybe that’s because of all of the things we can see the water’s magnificent work. Wait until you see some more of what we saw today.

I attended the Sport and Discrimination conference today. It was being held on the Dublin City University campus. Today I saw presentations on Olympians who suffered abuse over social media. The authors of this study examined the accounts of 1,917 Olympians from the Paris Games and found 809 instances that were verified as abusive, and 128 of those were escalated for “additional action.” I saw another great study about the diversity (or lack of) in European sports administration and sports media. There was another fascinating presentation about athlete activism, the discussion and findings of which I am sure will work their way into a future class. I took many notes.

I also took this photo out of one of the classroom windows when the day’s presentations were done.

This was a two-day conference, and it was paired with the IACS conference. The timing worked out for both groups, and there’s a fair amount of crossover in the scholars and the scholarship. I registered for, and enjoyed attending the sessions in Sport and Discrimination today, but I’m presenting twice in the next conference. One of them is a piece I’ve worked on with my lovely bride. She is also the rock star that is the executive director of the organization, so she’s running the thing. The International Association for Communication and Sport’s summit began unofficially tonight, with a mixer.

We took a trip, in two buses, almost 200 people, to the Guinness brewery or museum, or both. It wasn’t clear to me. It’s a tourist attraction, basically, opened at the turn of the century. This is not the sort of trip I would take, but everyone seemed excited about the prospect, and I heard a few people saying this one thing off of their trip’s checklist, and there we were, having dinner. (Which was small and light, but incredibly tasty.) Before dinner, we got a tour.

But before the journey began we saw the actual original lease, which is mounted in the floor.

It is dated 1750, and Arthur Guinness agreed to pay £45 per year for 9,000 years. Eventually this becomes the largest brewery in the country, and then in the world. Today it is remains the largest brewer of stout. But in between the company purchased the property, so this is just an artifact at this point, and many of the buildings in the area. Making the drink was an intensive process. They had their own power plant.

Today, the museum is a well curated walked display. A lot of polished things to see, not a lot of places to linger, which is good for a walking tour. You’ll pass this cool display.

The characters are made of falling …

Water is a big deal here. Beer has the four ingredients and you can’t make it without water. We learned that once it took 11 pints of water to make one pint of Guinness. At some point that came to sound ridiculous. Our guide told us the process is nwo down to three pints of water to make one pint of the stout. They are targeting a 1:1 relationship in the near future.

You can see some of the old equipment. This mill dates to 1906 and the Ganz people, based in Budapest, made their first mills. The last mill they bought was acquired in 1916. Inside it, malt, roast and barley were milled and dropped into a kieve below. From there, it was mixed with water and sent to the second stages of the brewing process.

Here’s a side view of the mill, because moving parts are interesting and not at all a workplace hazard.

You don’t want to be the brew man getting your sleeve or tie snatched up in this machinery.

Nearby was the triple ram pump of 1958. The sign tells us that it circulated yeast through the coolers and other vessels in the storehouse.

Behind it you see the rest of the gear. Steam kept the stainless steel cylinders, valves, pistons and chambers clean.
All of this was made by David Brown & Sons. By that time I believe it was the son. The firm is still in operation, and they’re works are all over the UK, fancy buildings, tractors in fields, you name it.

Steele’s masher was created by a man named William Steele, and it mixed milled barley and water together. This one which dates back to 1880 or so, worked in brewhouse 1, which no longer exists. Not sure when that was razed.

The sign says this is “Manway door from No. 3 copper, Park Royal Brewery. This copper lid was installed in the Guinness Park Royal Brewery on opening in 1936.” The door was made by Robert Morton & Company, in Burton on Trent, which was founded in 1840, but was acquired by another concern in 2023.

They do professional taste testing for quality control every morning, hence this clock. Apparently this is a serious part of the business. You are doing the work at 10 a.m., but you can’t have eaten anything or drank certain things, you can’t have showered beforehand, and so on. You wonder how much of that is necessary and how much is historically traditional

Here’s their first advertisement. You can tell because the ad copy itself says so. It’s from a 1929 national newspaper.

And that was both their first ad, and the first one displayed in a tidy little section. Our tour guide seemed to suggest that not all of the advertisements were grounded in truth.

But it is a toucan, and toucans are always a marketing win.

Whereas this one also seems farfetched.

What you don’t see enough of in advertising are seals. (Or sea lions. Let’s not quibble the art.) Gilroy knew it.

Gilroy was John Thomas Young Gilroy. He was studying at Durham University when the Great War took him from the books and sent him into the Royal Field Artillery. After the war he went back to school at the Royal College of Art in London. He later taught there and another arts school. By 1925 he was in advertising, and that’s how he came to Guinness, his style features in a lot of the mid-century English advertising, though. He also created cover designs for the Radio Times, painted portraits and national propaganda during WW2.

It’s not clear how much time he spent in farm country though, this is all wrong.

He knew something about professionals, though. But, from our perspective decades hence, this reads different.

Opening time means you’ve had a bad day, or have a big problem. Go home, toucan, you’re already drunk.

Everyone seemed to think the highlight of the Guinness experience was the opportunity to learn how to pour a proper Guinness. There’s a process. Fortunately, they offered a good teacher. Hilariously, all of the professors found this to be intimidating.

You take a bunch of people who like to learn and feel the need to perform at a high level and then ask them to do it in public, and in front of one another … it gets stressful, I guess. That guy talked everyone through it, though. You hold the glass just so, 45-degree angle, and pour until the black liquid reaches the golden harp. Then you put it on the part and let the chemistry do it’s part. Bubbles of nitrogen rise and that forms the iconic head of the drink. After that’s done it’s work then you go back to the spout and top it off. Despite their nerves, people were getting it right. They earned themselves a fancy certificate. I’m sure some of them will be displayed in offices soon.

OK, now I have to go finish up my notes for tomorrow’s presentation.