Day 15, 25 May 2012

The 25th was our last full day in Ireland.  We went out with a bang.  Our plan was a simple trip around the Burran, an area of limestone escarpment with a lot to see in a small space.  Well, that pretty much describes all of Ireland.

Corkscrew Mountain.

Our drive was the usual, crowded in the car, crowded on the road, amazing scenery.  Our first stop was to be a cave.  When we got there they were working on the road at the entrance but had, kindly, set up a detour through a couple of fields.  We parked and entered the visitor center, carrying jackets in the 80 degree heat.

Visitor center and cave entrance.

 We paid for our tickets, toured the gift shop and grabbed a coffee.  It was all, helpfully co-located in one room.  We bought a couple of presents and the boys, as always found a bunch of stuff they wanted.

Rhys, Mr Mischief.

The wait for the tour was not overly long, we had to chug our coffee to make the tour.  The cave had been, extensively, rehabed to make it easy for tourists to go through.  Nana and Granddad were cavers back in the day and Nana was up front with the guide.  Once he realized that she knew what she was talking about he treated us to a higher level tour than, I'm guessing, is normal.

Rocks, in a cave, who'd have thunk it?

Lights and a concrete path.  Very accessible.

A stone waterfall.

Cave gunk growing where one of the lights is always on.

The entire thing took about an hour.  The boys were thrilled by the whole thing, and then ready to move on to the next thing, as normal.  Also as normal, there was a giant plastic ice cream cone outside, advertising their wares to the non-reading demographic.  The boys saw this and started the pitch for ice cream.  As we were strictly using that treat as a bribe for good behavior, and they had already behaved, they were out of luck.

Dry, less vegetation.

Leaving the Aillwee Cave we continued on and rose up onto the Burran.  It was, markedly, dryer and less vegetated than the surrounding areas.  The soil looked as rocky as Inis Oirr, just a lot more of it.  Our first stop was another Dolman, the Poulnabrone Portal Tomb, though this one was the most impressive one that we saw.  There were the usual tour buses and some school groups, as well as free range tourists like us.

Obviously, the only thing to be done is to see how many people you can get on top of this thing.

Read and enjoy.

Tomb activity, back in the day, which was a Wednesday.

There were a pair of OPW employees there, waiting for the school group.  In conversation with them Granddad learned of some of the reprehensible behavior seen at the site.  This included people chipping pieces off of the rocks, putting up to twenty people on top of it and painting on them or carving their names on it.  I suppose it's nice to know that Americans are not the only people who act like that.

Owyn was having a great time jumping from rock to rock.  Paths are for wusses.

Mama and Rhys stayed at the car.  We had packed a lunch so Rhys ate half of his PB&J sandwich.  Owyn went with me and had a grand time jumping from rock to rock and, generally, getting in some free range time.  As we were headed back to the van I saw a tour group getting ready to head back to the bus.  Since we didn't want to get caught behind a bus driving at 20km, we jumped in and, tried, to head out.  Another bus was disgorging its cargo of cow like idiots.  They stood in the middle of the road and stared at us, trying to figure out why a car was trying to drive on the road they had chosen to stand on.

Just down the road, less than five minutes we came to the XXX ring fort.  This is a well preserved ring fort, lived in for hundreds of years.  There was quite a bit of it still there and extensive and continuing archeological examination.

Model of the ring fort.

The wall of an actual ring fort.  There's one per km in this area.

Somewhat less amazing inside, however.

Leaving this site we continued on down the road to the Burran Center.  This is a museum dedicated to the Burran and all of it's history, both human and natural.  There was a fifteen minute film and then several nice exhibits.  Upon exiting we found ourselves in the gift shop, as usual.  I grabbed the boys and took them back to the car, and their lunches.  They ate while sitting on a stone wall.

We just happened to drive by this place on the way, not realizing what we were seeing until we got to the museum.

We drove by this place.  There are awesome ruins like this everywhere you turn.

Hill fort model in the Burran Center.

That's some awesome bling.

Granddad found us another church to look at so we went down to it and poked around and took some pictures of old stuff.  Honestly, by now old churches had pretty much lost their charm.  We were all getting hungry, and sort of grumpy, so we decided to go back to the house and have lunch and relax a bit.

Information on the High Crosses.

The glass covers some old grave stones.  Weird.

The area under the glass.

I suppose this is worth preserving, if you're really into old stuff.

You can see why they put the glass up.  

Inside the active part of the church.  You know it's old when it looks like something I could have drawn in sixth grade.

Our lunch was most of the left over food, served as Tapas.  Granddad and I had just sat down when Martin, the owner came by to see how things were going.  That turned into a three hour conversation.  He doesn't think much of gypsies, by the way.

Tracy and the boys stayed home, the boys to sleep and Tracy to pack.  Nana and Granddad and I headed down to the pubs to listen to some music.  We got there about 2100 and managed to find a table next to the band.  We talked to the couple who had the table and invited some others to join us.  As people came and went we added to the group, talking to them all.  We had the Irish couple, a German Dr and her mother and an American couple from Chicago.

The music was great, the beer was Guinness and the company was interesting.  About 2300 we went back to the house, getting lost since we were driving, for the first time all trip, in the dark.  Once back there was some quick packing and off to bed.