Senior Morton's World Tour
Kids are done, work is done, Grand Kids…Eh… they'll be here when we get back!
The Ring of Kerry ……
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 15th, 2011Saturday 8th October
Limerick is where King John signed a Treaty in 1691 when his castle was attacked by the local lords in the Jacobite Uprising. Today you can still see the repairs made by the Jacobite canons. It must have given King John a real fright! A short time later we passed Adare Golf Course where a number of celebrity games have been held. In the town was a church built in 1230, firstly as a fortress then converted to a church as things quietened down. As we travelled, the weather closed in to heavy fog, so we couldn’t appreciate what we were told was a very beautiful place, but we could see the wild fuchsias growing prolifically along the road.
This is Daniel O ‘Connell area, where he was born and where he retired to. Most towns have an O’Connell Street in his memory. The clouds lifted for short periods and we could see the high rolling hills flowing into the Atlantic and right across the ocean lay America. It is claimed that Saint Brendan sailed to America from around here in a cowhide shell boat in the 5th Century. An adventurer recently built a replica and set off and actually reached America. Ireland has many fresh water streams and they are full of salmon and trout. You will only ever have wild salmon here! There is no aquaculture.
The weather is against us, but we meandered along narrow country roads going around the MacGillicuddy’s Reeks. These are the highest mountains in Ireland. The trip is called the Ring of Kerry and is supposed to be some of the most picturesque in Ireland. We didn’t get to see much of it, but we have postcards of what it looks like in sunshine. This is where Gaelic is the first language. As the weather was deteriorating and we couldn’t see much, our tour guide decided to head straight to where we were staying the night at Kenmore, just outside Killarney and we spent the remainder of the afternoon shopping in the local village.
In the evening we had dinner in an 18th Century farmhouse that was also a shabeen in the early days ( an illegal distillery). The owner gave us a short tour of his farm which is run as a historical replica of life in the 18th century. We had a great Irish meal in the house consisting of vegetable soup (root vegetables only), a big plate of Irish Stew and mashed potato and Apple Crumble. After this we learnt how to make soda bread, which everyone ate with their meals in the olden days and then stepped outside again to learn how to make “potcheen” – distilled from potatoes and still illegal. To finish it off we had to have a taste, so we were all given a glass, but the host had two glasses. We were not permitted to drink our “potcheen” until our host had proposed a toast and thrown one of the glasses over his right shoulder for the fairies. If you don’t include the fairies in your tasting, they will do bad things. Who in their right mind would want to tempt fate?!! The taste – it was different!
read comments (0)Galway and Limerick
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 15th, 2011Friday 7th October
A very early start after our late night last night, we set off on the new freeway to Galway. We travelled through true Irish farming country with farms and their stone fences everywhere. Fields often vary between between one acre and up to six acres. They are completely different to Australian farms. I am told Ireland is like a frypan! Flat in the middle and hilly around the edges, but wherever we go it is GREEN!! We stopped at Galway, sang some sad Irish songs on the bus, had lunch and a walk around the town. We then turned south and headed to Limerick where we stay tonight. The west side of Ireland isn’t as fertile as the east and this is where Cromwell forced the easterners off their land for not supporting him and sent them west. This is probably why the west is where Gaelic starts to dominate as the first language.
Tonight we went to a Ceildh – in a pub on the Limerick docks, where we had a typical Irish dinner. I had bacon and cabbage (delicious!). Not quite what you would imagine. A family of seven played toe tapping Irish music and a couple of the sons danced for us (like Riverdance) . It was a great night. I went to the bar and asked the barmaid for a lemonade for Jill. Red or white she asked. I looked at her blankly and she said “you want a white” . I still haven’t found out what a red lemonade is!
Dublin
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 15th, 2011Thursday 6th October
We started the day with a tour by a local guide. The city has a lot of Georgian style architecture and has the most complete Georgian streets anywhere as Ireland was neutral in World War II and therefore not bombed. I must admit the Georgian style is neat and regal and modern architects could do worse than study it. House prices in Dublin have dropped 40 per cent in the last couple of years – something that would decimate Australia were it to happen there. The country is bilingual, but on the east coast of Ireland English is the dominant language. The three Celtic countries, Scotland, Ireland and Wales all speak a type of Gaelic, but are all different, the Welsh being very different. It is a flowery and descriptive language which is why they have all produced numerous great writers.
In 1916 there was an uprising where 200 armed men took over the GPO in O’Connell Street and declared independence from England. 200 against the might of England did not turn out well for them and the leaders were executed, but Ireland did eventually get it independence, so they are all national heroes now. O’Connell Street is the main street in Dublin running from O’Connell Bridge and contains the Millenium Spire that celebrates the year 2000. This was in fact erected in 2003!! How very Irish!!
Dublin is very proud of Molly Malone, who was a fishmonger and sold cockles and mussels from her fish barrow. As she was a very pretty girl she came back at night and sold Molly. She was so well liked they made a statue of her in the city centre and have a well known song which celebrates her life.
There are two cathedrals in Dublin and with a population 90 per cent Catholic, would you believe they are both Protestant due to Henry VIII’s Reformation. They are both very old and majestic. Christchurch cathedral dates from 1038 and St Patrick’s Cathedral is several years younger.
Guinness is the national drink and I have tasted it several times and it is okay! When women give birth in the main maternity hospital they are given a pint of Guinness immediately after, for the good of the child! Also when you donate blood at the Blood Bank you are given a pint to regain your strength. Mr Guinness was a good business man. He leased 50 acres in the middle of Dublin for 40 pence a year, which may have been fair when he did it, however the term of the lease was 9,000 years! A very good deal!!
Would you believe there are no water meters in Dublin! All water is free. Due to the economic situation, that is about to change and every household will pay a fee in the next few years and this will go towards repairing or replacing the Victorian water pipes that lose 60 per cent of their water through leakage. Water meters may come in the future.
We set off for the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin along a very long and winding road through some exceptionally pretty and green areas. Johnny Cash wrote a song called Forty Shades of Green and it was based on this area. We were going to visit an area where a monk settled around 400 AD. His name has been anglicised to Kevin and he eventually died and became St Kevin. A monastery was built and lived in for six hundred years by his followers. Many of these buildings are still standing. Two amazing structures are the Chapel, completely standing and with a stone roof supporting itself on the stone Walls. The other was a tower unique to Ireland, shaped just like a rocket. It stood 100 feet high and is still in perfect condition, except the six levels of wooden floors have rotted away. When the Vikings raided them (which they did seven times) the monks would throw their valuables into the tower and climb in there themselves through a small entrance door eleven feet above ground level and wait for the Vikings to leave. Those cunning Vikings realised the structure was built like a chimney, so they removed some of the lower stones and lit a peat fire which would either burn the monks or smoke them to death. Despite these raids, the stone structure still stands. The weather closed in on us while we were there and it was very wet with a biting wind, but it was still an amazing site to visit.
Ireland was populated by Celts who came from around the area of Switzerland about 400 BC. The Vikings started arriving in the AD years. They came to raid, but stayed to trade and marry local girls. Under Viking law the eldest son inherited all of Dad’s wealth. All other sons were sent out to raid surrounding lands and create their own wealth. England, Scotland and Ireland were the main targets. It is claimed that all redheads originate from Viking blood.
I have found the reason the main street in Dublin was named O’Connell Street. Daniel O’Connell 1775 to 1845 was the first Catholic elected to British parliament. He founded the Irish Catholic Rights organisation and had these rights sanctified in Parliament. Until then, Catholics could not own anything of value or hold any position of authority – an unbelievable situation.
In the afternoon we left our local guide and toured by ourselves. We visited Trinity College which was very close to our hotel to see the famous Book of Kells, written over 1,000 years ago on parchment (which is calf skin). There was a display showing how they prepared the parchment and the different materials they used to write with. The language in the Book of Kells is Latin and they contain the Four Gospels. There were a number of these written by monks, but Viking raiders and other heathens when raiding, would remove whatever they found of value and destroy the rest. This copy Is the only known one known to exist. It was an extremely interesting exhibition. Trinity is probably one of the first universities in the world, originally established to educate Protestants by an early English monarch. It was only in the middle of last century Catholics were allowed to attend.
Although Dublin doesn’t have many physical features that appeal compared to some other cities, it has a lot of history attached to it which made it a very interesting place to visit.
Tonight we attended a cabaret, with some lively Irish dancers, musicians and as only the Irish can do it, a comedian who had us crying with laughter. He performed his entire act without swearing once!! That is a true comedian!
Hello Wales and Ireland ……
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 15th, 2011Wednesday 5th October
We set off from Liverpool and drove under the Mersey (the river upon which Liverpool is situated) in a long tunnel, built in the 1930’s. On the other side of the tunnel we arrived at Birkenhead where Lord Lever had his soap factory. He made among other things, the well known Sunlight soap. He was a philanthropist and built a number of lovely houses with gardens and brought his staff out of the slums to live in them. He built a complete village with pub, hall etc. Then we moved on to Chester, a city that was once a Roman Diva (camp). Anything with Chester in its name is an old Roman camp. The protective wall is still standing and in good repair. We crossed over into Wales and could still see that huge Liverpool Cathedral sitting on top of a hill in the distance. Then on to Conway where we found another castle built by Edward I in 1283. It was very well preserved and a great photo opportunity. We continued travelling along the north of Wales and crossed over onto Anglesey island where Prince William is stationed at the moment and stopped off at a place with a long name -Llanfairpwllguyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch!!
After a cup of tea and some souvenir shopping we crossed on to another island namely Holy Island and then caught the ferry to Ireland at Holyhead. This ferry operated by Irish Ferries is supposedly the largest ferry in Europe, which was just as well as we were facing gale force 8 winds and several other ferries had been cancelled due to the poor weather. After a three and a half hour journey on the ferry we arrived in Dublin, offloaded and were in our hotel by 6 pm. We had a rare quiet night tonight.
Some details on Wales – the Welsh language is the oldest spoken language in Europe but it has no written format. They have a notch on the middle of a stick and notches either side and depending on how far either side you go, decides the sound it stands for. The terrain is similar to England. Green rolling hills with the occasional larger hill. Wales is well known for the number of castles it has and the beautiful voices of its choirs.
Well our touring is over!
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 14th, 2011Thursday 13th October
We have just arrived back in London, said our goodbyes and are settled back into our apartment in Earls Court.
We’ll be making every effort to bring the blog right up to date by the end of this weekend, going right back to Ireland.
See you then! Right now we need some sleep!
The blog ……
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 9th, 2011Sunday 9th October
Just to let everyone know we are in Ireland for one more day then it’s back to Wales and southern England. We are both exhausted as we tend to go out every night and don’t have any time to write the blog, but I am handwriting many notes and will transpose these on to the blog when we get a moment to ourselves. Still having a ball despite the fatigue!
Farewell Scotland!
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 6th, 2011Tuesday 4th October
A quick tour of Glascow, nothing special to report on, so we set off on the freeway M6, heading south passing through the fault line Southern Uplands, high rolling hills and with sheep grazing right to the top. The two main sheep breeds in Scotland are the Cheviot and Scottish Black Face supplying a coarse fleece for clothes and meat. We drove right past the village of Lockerbie where the Pan Am aeroplane was bombed out of the sky. Such a beautiful peaceful green farming area.
Our first stop was at Gretna Green, where people aged sixteen plus who wanted to elope could get married by any of the locals simply by having someone witnessing them saying “I marry you”. As the local blacksmith was the person working most of the time and was most available, he became the focal point. During World War II soldiers from the colonies came to the district for acclimatisation before going to war. They went down to the pub on a Friday night for a few drinks and woke up on Saturday, lying next to their brand new wife! Because of this the Government took away this old custom and now getting married is more formal. The border with England is approximately 100 metres away so we set off for Carlisle in England. Scotland was well worth a visit.
At Carlisle we turned off the freeway and took a winding country road through the middle of the Lakes District stopping at Grasmere for lunch. This is where William Wordsworth lived and is buried with his wife Mary and six of his children. The village was quite quaint and all the buildings and fences were made from stone. This is also where Peter Rabbit lives with all of his friends and his mate Beatrix Potter was a farmer just up the road. The Lakes District is the wettest place in England and is very green. It would be possible to set up camp here and visit the many surrounding sites. We headed south past Windemere and rejoined the M6 motorway, passed Preston and headed to our destination Liverpool. It is strange that the breed of sheep that is most common now that we are in England is the Leicester. The area we covered in England varied from some flat land to rolling hills with very big wide valleys.
Liverpool has a lot of famous features, one being the number of people who emigrated through this busy port. During World War II it was heavily bombed with over seventy raids and consequently old Georgian buildings stand next to new buildings where an area was bombed. We went on a tour of the city with a local guide. There is a massive Protestant Cathedral here, supposedly the largest in the world. It was built between 1904 and 1978 and was designed by a local 21 year old architectural student. It is built in the Gothic style but without any pews, so it can be used for many non religious activities – a true community cathedral.
There is a large university here with 60,000 students who also play a large part in the city. There is also a very old, large Chinese community here.
The city is known for several musical achievements, probably the oldest was of a young captain of a slave ship that was nearly wrecked in a storm. He limped back to Liverpool, resigned his commission, then studied to become a priest. He started writing religious songs, his best known being “Amazing Grace”. A band made up of local lads had some success a little later – they were known as the Beatles. We went down into a mock up of the catacombs named the Cavern where they used to play in the early days before they had success. It was quite claustrophobic and was only partly full at the time. We must be getting old!!
The Protestant Cathedral here was designed by a catholic and the Catholic Cathedral was designed by a Protestant! Religion can be so interesting.
Goodbye Skye
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 6th, 2011Monday 3rd October
We left Portree and retraced our steps crossing the bridge joining the island to the mainland, past the Eilean Donan Castle again which belongs to the McCrae clan. The Chief had a dream that he would restore the dilapidated castle but no-one could find the original plans so he renovated it as he saw it in his dream. Many years later the plans were found and the renovated castle was built exactly in accordance with those original plans. We continued back tracking for some time but we were getting a different vista of the hills we drove through and passed the day before. There was a heavy mist and rain with high winds, but the views were spectacular. This part of the world is well worth a visit by everyone, I cannot say just how impressive it was. We passed Glencoe, where another massacre took place between clans. I can’t believe that these people live together now after all the blood they have spilt over the years.
We left Glencoe and travelled through the moors until we got into the Loch Lomond area. We were supposed to take a boat trip on Loch Lomond, but cancelled that due to the poor weather. Loch Lomond is the largest fresh water lake in Britain. At the bottom of these Lochs there live “kelpies” – fairies, but not nice fairies and locals will not swim in these waters as these bad fairies will get them!
Our destination today was Glascow. As we entered we passed Dumbarton where the Cutty Sark was built. Then we passed Clydebank where the Queen Mary ship was built. The River Clyde was a major shipbuilding place. Glascow doesn’t have a lot of outstanding features, though as our Tour Guide and Driver both come from Glascow there was a hard sell! It soon became obvious though that many great people have originated from this city.
Tonight we went out to the Wetherspoon pub with some American and Canadian fellow travellers and had a very nice meal and chat. We were the only Aussies among the eight of us and it was interesting listening to their points of view about various things.
The isle of Skye
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 4th, 2011Sunday 2nd October
Off again bright and early this morning to visit a place of huge historical significance called Culloden where Bonnie Prince Charlie in April 1746 fought a battle with the English soldiers in a futile effort to reclaim the crown. Over one thousand Jacobite followers were slaughtered in one hour and the positions where they fell and the graves where they were buried were all marked and the place is now revered by the Scots. This was the final claim on the crown of England. We then travelled on to Inverness, passing through some beautiful countryside. We turned south at Inverness and headed along Loch Ness, 23 miles long and up to 1,000 feet deep. The weather is very ordinary today but we managed to stop several times though unfortunately “Nessie” was not showing herself. As we turned away from Loch Ness the road meandered through the most amazing terrain (sorry for the amazings, but there isn’t another word suitable! While travelling I saw a field next to a forest and a flock of about a hundred partridges running out of the forest and into a field, probably because it is hunting season now. It is extremely hilly and it seemed as though every few miles the Highlanders had a battle and slaughtered one another. They had a belief that any dispute could be sorted out with a sword). The next stop was just before going onto the Isle of Skye at a place called Eilean Donan Castle which has been used as a backdrop in over twenty films. From there we travelled up to a small place called Portree. Here we picked up a local guide who took us for a tour up the west coast to Uig, a Norse word for shelter. We travelled on the narrowest winding roads you could imagine and he showed, us the crofters, small landholders who were jacks of all trades. There were approximately 60,000 of these all over the island who paid a tax to the chieftains who early in the 18th century realised they could make more money by grazing sheep on this land, so they simply evicted these subsistence farmers who had no alternate options and so they were forced to emigrate all around the world and now there are only about 6,000 left. This is called the time of the clearance. We ended our tour back at Portree where we stayed the night in a two star hotel. There is no internet on the Isle and not a lot of phone facility but it was a beautiful and fascinating place to visit. I was extremely glad we had an opportunity to see this place.
Heading into the Highlands
Posted by laurie and jill in Adventures on 10 4th, 2011Saturday 1st October
We finished off our stay in Edinburgh with a fantastic night out where we saw beautiful Scottish dancing girls, heard the three Tenors of Scotland, a bagpipe player and two piano accordion players. They all put on a fantastic show for us. After our dessert, they piped in a haggis, then they addressed the haggis as is the custom reciting Robbie Burns Gaelic poem and then they toasted the haggis. After that we got to sample it -haggis on taties (potato mash and turnip mash). And would you believe it I actually love it! Jill wasn’t that keen however.
We set out early today and crossed the Firth of Forth and travelled on a narrow country road through Kirkcaldy and other interesting towns and saw the famous golf course at St Andrews where they say golf originated and where Hugh Baiocchi has played several times. We thought of you Hugh and Joan as the Dunhill Cup was in progress at the time and it was a very cold and wet day. Very bleak! This is also well known as a University town and is where Prince William went to University and met that young lady Kate. This is also the town where John Scott started the Presbyterian church, a Carmelite church governed by committee rather than an Episcopalian which is ruled by bishops. There are the ruins of a very important cathedral not far from the golf course which obviously was huge in its day and is now a place of pilgrimage for many people.
Then we headed north to Dundee after crossing Firth of Tay, passing through it and turning west we headed to Perth and passed the outskirts of the city of Perth. The weather closed in and we were bathed in Haag (mist!) eventually reaching Pitlochry where we stopped for morning tea and I had the best cup of tea I had ever tasted at Hettie’s Tearoom and where Jill left her handbag behind for about 10 minutes before retrieving it. After lunch we visited Blair Castle where the Duke of Athol (who actually lives in South Africa) reigns with the only private army in Europe which is over 600 years old. This is a “pretty” white castle surrounded by the most beautiful gardens, woods and farmland. They had Highland cows, hairy beasts with large horns grazing. Leaving Pitlochry we headed onto the moors – grasslands for grazing, then came to the Grampian mountains, not so much mountains at 3,000 feet as very high hills. They were gorgeous even though the heather had already died off with little or no colour left. This is where the Romans defeated the Pitts 2,000 years ago. The ‘haag’ sat on top of the hills and gave a fantastic outlook with thousands of streams flowing down the hills into trout filled rivers in the valleys.
Dalwhinnie was the next village, with the most isolated distillery in the world. There is no grain grown for miles but the water is brushed clean by the heather, making it possible to brew a drop of god’s own nectar. We finished up at Aviemore in the Cairngorms, a huge mountainous area. Tonight we had a lovely meal after being piped into the room by the bagpipes. We started with a haggis after the traditional toast and salute and finished with a true Scottish meal. We’re really in the Highlands now as opposed to the Lowlands yesterday. This is where the terrain is rather similar to that in Switzerland and where many battles were fought between the different clans.
