Stardate: 17 May 2019 - A Ferry Ride around the Cliffs of Moher (or Less)

Today's major outing was to Doolin in County Clare for a one-hour boat trip around the spectacular Cliffs of Moher.  As usual, the drive there (about 110 kms) was exhausting, even as a passenger.  The roads are dreadful, and I kept thinking the tracks, alleys and lanes we traversed today probably bear some resemblance to the Kings Highway between Canberra and Batemans Bay in about 1946.  Kudos to Mr Pants who did a sterling job as usual, not least by allowing two farmers to retrieve their livestock (a sheep and a cow) that were nonchalantly wandering down the road as we approached.

En route we saw signage to nearby Ennis, the original home of Geoff's great-great-great grandmother, Mary Neylon and also Muhammad Ali's great grandfather, Abe Grady.  Geoff and Muhammad could well be cousins and henceforth The Greatest One will be known by us as Cousin Cassius.  (Apparently the town claimed him as one of their own.)

I'm sorry to report that our Cliffs of Moher pics really are rubbish and do not do justice to their spectacular beauty.  It was hazy and they were mostly in shadow.  (I'm so embarrassed  I'm actually wearing my false moustache as I type.) 

Probably the least worst of today's pics, ⇉⇉⇉
a single apostle.

We were terribly excited when we saw that our leaflet advertising the boat trip promised we would see a puffin colony and the cave featured in the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Well, we were at least excited about the puffin colony.

And here is a gaggle of puffins...

...and here is the Harry Potter Cave.

Both of these pics were stolen from the internet.  Although our boat had a working PA system and we received clear instructions about life-jackets, life-rafts etc on boarding, there ended the commentary and it was up to passengers themselves to guess which inlet in this five-mile stretch of Atlantic coast might host a puffin colony and indeed, which cavernous hole might have starred in a Harry Potter movie.  We will never know as we saw neither.

Mr Pants descends from the poop deck. 

Note the others all searching in vain for a puffin colony.  "Is that a puffin, Hal?" 
"Well, I dunno, honey.  It could be a seagull."
(It was, in fact, a seagull.)

All in all, we thought the Cliffs of Moher lived up to the hype - they were spectacular and ruggedly beautiful.  But I'm sure we weren't alone in being disappointed at the lack of commentary on points of interest from a crew member.


All was not lost however.  En route to Doolin we saw roons!  Roons everywhere!  Well five big ones anyway.  And we decided to reward ourselves on the way home with a stop at the one set of ruins that was accessible and not halfway down a sheep paddock.  Handing over to Mr Pants now for his eye-witness report on this excellent development.

***

Before arrival in Ireland, Hortense had promised me that I'd see roons by the side of the road everywhere we went.  But I thought she meant just the odd nondescript pile of stones here and there.  But today proved she was right.  En route this morning, we thought we spied something that looked quite spectacular just west of the metropolis of Gort.  I believe the Irish say that their land is gort by sea.  

Anyway, we promised ourselves we'd have a closer look on the way back.

And so we did, only to find that it's far more impressive than our initial glance from the road would suggest.  It's called Kilmacduagh.  Our first thought is that it looked a fair bit like Clonmacnoise, that we visited two days ago.  And indeed it is. It's a monastery first founded in the 7th century but established as an Augustinian abbey in the 13th.  Most of what you see now would be from the latter period (a mere 800 years ago).

From our perspective, the main difference between Clonmacnoise and Kilmacduagh was about 1500 tourists at the time we visited (1497 at the former, and 3 at the latter).  

Probably the most notable structure is the round tower.  It's easily visible from the road and the most obvious thing that makes you want to stop and see.  The other three visitors who were there with us agreed that they knew nothing about Kilmacduagh, and only stopped when they saw the tower from the road.

It leans two feet out from the perpendicular and would have been used by the monks in the event of attack.

And in keeping with local tradition, this is a multi-function facility - historical site and grazing property.  Fortunately the local residents were quite happy to share their home with us, and didn't even ask for a fee to have their photo taken.

We are incredulous that such an extraordinary attraction is not widely mentioned in tourist brochures.  Nor does it seem to be widely featured in historical information.  It's nowhere to be found in our Time Team book, that we have regarded as our bible for this kind of thing and that we have carted half way around the world to guide us in these matters.  Never mind; our good luck.

We're now in serious training for election day tomorrow.  The count starts at 9am our time and we'll be watching.  Probably a bit early for champagne, but who knows ...!