Categories
Durham Ireland

What we didn’t get to finish

We’ve had a fantastic time here in Ireland, especially in Cork City, which we’ve both come to love. And we’ve done a lot of what we came here to do, and more: we’ve been all over the city centre and immediate outskirts, been to Blackrock Castle and Blarney Castle and Gardens and the Ring of Kerry, been to Midleton and Cobh and Kinsale and Youghal. We took advantage of living above a movie theater to see Parasite on a rainy day, and saw one film at the Cork French Film Festival. Barry found “a local” where everybody knew his name when he stopped in to watch a football match. We drank Murphy’s and Guinness and Beamish, tasted some Irish whiskies, ate fish and chips (and chips and chips…lots of chips), had a full Irish breakfast, beef and Guinness stew and seafood chowder.

We’ve also gone places and met people and done things that hadn’t been on our radar. We found a games cafe (not unlike Atomic Fern in Durham) where we enjoyed chatting with the proprietor, Chris, and playing games to while away rainy afternoons or days when we were tired from walking. We had wonderful conversations with the owner of a used bookstore. We discussed Nikola Tesla with some fellows from Serbia and Bosnia. We attended a Science Fiction meetup group, and joined their very lively and amusing discussions on WhatsApp. I discovered the details of my grandfather’s voyage from Ireland to the U.S. We watched the sunset over Cork from the Montenotte Hotel, went to two local theatre productions, visited the town of Crosshaven. We have seen more rainbows than we have ever seen before in such a short time — sometimes two or three a day!

But there’s a lot of things we set out to do that won’t be done, at least not on this trip, as we literally flee the country so that we can isolate ourselves in the comfort of our own home. Barry’s birthday trip to Paris will now be spent at home. All my hard work learning Spanish and Portuguese will go untested as we will not be traveling to those countries at all. If things had gone according to plan, we would at this moment be boarding a train to Dublin so that I could attend a meeting of the Pernicious Anaemia Society, and would have had the chance to meet our Chairman, Martyn Hooper MBE, a tireless leader for all of us who suffer from this condition. We won’t be having a cocktail at Ireland’s only tiki bar tonight, nor will we be having bagels in the Jewish Quarter tomorrow.

We won’t be doing that bus trip to West Cork. We won’t be taking short bus rides to the greenways through Blackrock/Mahon, Ballincollig, Bishopstown. We won’t be exploring the town of Macroom, which looked intriguing when we passed it on the bus to Kerry.

Maybe next time.

Tomorrow we drive in automotive isolation to Dublin, spend the night in a hotel, fly to Philadelphia and spend the night at a hotel there. We cancelled the PHL to RDU flight, figuring eight hours on an airplane is risk enough. On Monday we will drive home.

If I’m lucky, the trout lilies will still be in bloom, and the azaleas will be getting started. I’ll miss looking out at the River Lee multiple times a day, but will walk down and say hello to the Eno, being wary of the ticks that are undoubtedly starting to wake up for their spring feeding. I’ll watch some movies on Criterion and HBO, shoot some pool, sit outside if the weather is above 50 degrees. We’ll sleep in our own bed, cook in our own kitchen, drink in our own bar, and wave to the neighbors from the front porch.

We’ll wait this out in the comforts of home.

Categories
Uncategorized

Travel Restrictions Update

Following on from Trump’s announcement last night, we’ve decided that cutting our trip short and returning to the US is our best option. We are rebooking our flight home, and should be there early next week. We are saddened by this, especially missing out on Paris and Portugal, but it appears, right now, to be the wisest choice.

More updates to follow as warranted. Take care of each other out there.

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Buses Covid-19 Ireland Youghal

Youghal, and an update

The Covid-19 situation remains fluid. As of last night, there are 34 confirmed cases in Ireland (population just under 5 million), and an additional 16 in Northern Ireland (population 1.8 million). Nearly 1800 people have been tested in the Republic. Authorities are still urging calm, and saying that closing schools and public transport remains unnecessary at this time. France, our next potential destination, has around 1800 confirmed cases (population 65 million), or roughly 5 times the infection rate of Ireland. They are expected to escalate their response to Level 3, which will involve closing most public transport. At that point, we expect our trip to be canceled for us by the airline.

Portugal remains relatively unaffected, with 41 total infections recorded out of a population of roughly 10 million. Travel to and from Italy has been suspended pretty much everywhere, as well as travel within the country. Spain is canceling most public events and large gatherings. Our itinerary puts us in Portugal and Spain between 5 April and 22 April, so we are keeping close tabs on both of those. We have confirmed that we can pick up our rental car from Cork to Dublin at an hour’s notice (currently we’re planning on making that drive between 1 April and 4 April), and that we can change our flight back to the US at no cost. So, if we decide in the next few weeks that it’s time to get out of Dodge, and ride this out in the comfort of our own home, we can do that in basically 24 hours.

Once again, our thanks to all of you who have expressed concern over our well-being. We are somewhat stressed, possibly inconvenienced and disappointed, and likely out some money. But we think our risk of catching this virus remains relatively low (my personal assessment is that it is no greater here than in the States), and there are far many people in much worse shape than we are.

Back to our travels!

Today is the midpoint of our planned trip. Yesterday we took the bus to the coastal community of Youghal. On our 2017 trip to Ireland, we passed through this town on our way between Waterford and Cork, and spent a couple of hours walking around. It was high on our list of places to return to.

We misread the bus schedule, and thought there was only one stop in the town, so we inadvertently got off 2 km from the town center. That turned out to be fortuitous, as we found ourselves at probably the nicest beach in the Republic. It was cold and windy, but gorgeous. And at low tide, flat and sandy.

I didn’t take my shoes off, but i did dip my hands into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time this year.

While some of the beach features are clearly man-made erosion control, there are some fascinating rock formations as well.

This little memorial would be called “Brandy” if it were in the States.

The story of the Youghal lighthouse is pretty cool. There’s been a light on this site for pretty near a millenium. A couple of hundred years ago, some town leaders thought it would make sense to move the light to an island a mile or so offshore. Construction got about halfway through, when the faction arguing that the light should remain in its traditional location returned to power, and the island project was abandoned. You can see the island in the second picture above, although at blog resolution i don’t think you can make out the light. It’s now a bird sanctuary. A new lighthouse was completed on the original site in 1852.

The village green reminded of nothing so much as the Willoughby epsiode of the Twilight Zone.

At the entrance to the green is a statue memorializing 4 men killed by British troops in the town in 1798. As i’ve mentioned previously, i’ve had a couple of conversations with people here about Confederate statues back home. (All initiated by locals. I’m doing my best to avoid politics on this trip). They have all made the “history” argument that removing memorials to the Confederacy violates “history.” The responding argument, of course is simple: where are the memorials to the British governors of Ireland who ordered these executions? They don’t exist, nor should they, because although they are clearly a part of history, their actions are not those we want to commemorate. The Confederacy is the same.

We walked about the town for a while, ate a fantastic lunch at McCarthy’s, in the Old Imperial Hotel, and otherwise enjoyed the relatively benign weather. Definitely high up on the list of places we’d consider living in.

Categories
Traveling

Travels in the year of the plague

When we were in the intense planning phase of this journey — booking flights and hotels, deciding which credit cards had the best travel benefits, purchasing travel health insurance — the two events we reasonably thought might disrupt our trip were (1) one of us getting sick or injured, or (2) a loved one falling gravely ill and requiring a hasty return to the States.

Neither a pandemic or a global financial collapse were high on the list.

When we left the U.S. at the end of January, the epidemic in Wuhan was in the news, and enough of a concern that we purchased face masks and hand sanitizer, mostly because airplanes are essentially airborne petri dishes and we thought they might be prudent for all the flights we had planned. But the idea that the epidemic in China would, in 5-6 weeks, become a major source of concern to us in Ireland was remote.

Now, we wash our hands before we leave the apartment, more vigorously and attentively than usual. We take the stairs and don’t touch the banister, or if we take the elevator, use a key to press the button. But we still need to pull on a door handle to get out of the building. We arrive at our destination, and out comes the small and rapidly depleting bottle of hand sanitizer. But then, a bartender passes us a pint after having taken cash and an empty glass from another patron. We are mindful about not touching our faces until after we’ve washed our hands yet again.

I had a brief bout of exacerbated asthma during the windier days during storms Ciara and Dennis, so I purchased a peak flow meter (the thing on the left of the photo) so that I could determine if my discomfort was an annoyance or something I actually needed to worry about. I’ve encouraged Barry to use it (with cleaning before and after, of course) to determine his baseline levels. Today, we purchased a thermometer. Just in case. It could be useful to objectively measure what’s going on should we feel poorly.

We stopped in about a dozen drug stores today. No hand sanitizer to be found. I did not look to stock up for the DIY alcohol-and-aloe-vera-gel solution, but that may be next if Boots does not get a new order in this week, as they said they would. Lloyds said it could be 2-3 weeks.

We may end up sanitizing with vodka and marmalade.

Things are not actually too bad in Ireland, at least not yet. It is one of the less affected countries in Europe. To date there are 21 COVID-19 cases, almost all of them related to people traveling to Italy for ski vacations (including a couple of school groups). But the first community-acquired infection (i.e., not traced to China, Iran, Italy or other hotspots) was here in Cork. Oddly enough, the patient was already in the hospital for something unrelated, and when he did not improve, they ran a battery of tests, including for COVID-19, which came back positive.

The situation in Italy is the worst in Europe. The concern about a bunch of people flying into Ireland from Italy was enough that they cancelled the Ireland-Italy 6 Nations rugby match, which a European friend tells me is on par with cancelling the Super Bowl (today, France v. Ireland was also cancelled).

And today, the St. Patrick’s Day parades in Dublin and Cork — the two largest cities in Ireland — were cancelled. St. Patrick’s Day is not a big deal for either of us (even though I spent 8 years in a school named for the old snake killer) — but we were truly looking forward to being here for such an essentially Irish celebration.

And yet, I was a bit relieved when it was cancelled.

France is our biggest worry. After Italy, it is the hardest hit country in Europe, and Paris is one of the cities most affected. We have a package trip to Paris booked for the weekend of Barry’s birthday, the weekend after next. France is already encouraging people to take their temperature twice a day, and avoid restaurants. It’s pretty much assumed they will reach Stage 3 epidemic precautions this week, which would include cancelling most transit.

At this point, we are hoping that the trip is cancelled on us, so that we can actually get a refund. If not? We are two 60+ individuals, both with asthma, one with hypertension, the other with a lung scarred by radiation for cancer treatment. It would be ill-advised for us to risk going to a city where people like us who fall ill may not recover.

But it’s not only the concern for our health. What if we were to go, and other countries ban flights from France as they’ve banned flights from China? What if we could return here to Ireland, but would need to stay in isolation for 14 days after — and our AirBnB lease runs out before then? Our concerns are not just medical, and financial, but logistical.

After we check out of our apartment in Cork on the morning of April 1, we have a couple of days on the road in Ireland, then a trip (planned, at least) to Portugal and Spain. Portugal, like Ireland, is one of the least-affected countries in Europe. However, the cases that they have are all in places we’re going. And we have a few days in Seville, in the Andalusia province of Spain, which is also a hotspot for the virus. It’s easy enough to cancel the Seville part of the trip and stay in Portugal.

TAP, the Portugal airline, cancelled a number of flights, but not ours. The cancelled flights were to Italy, France, and Spain.

So, we could pull our punches and cancel Portugal…there’s time to cancel the hotels but we would likely eat the cost of the airfare, or a large portion of it. Then we would need to change our flights to the U.S., which would also cost us. It’s not that we are not willing to eat the cost if it saves our lives or prevents a logistical nightmare. It’s that we don’t want to eat that cost if waiting a week means it will be cancelled for us and we’ll get a full refund.

But, seeing what the official response has been by the U.S. government, it has also occurred to us that NOT returning to the U.S. may be a better plan! On the other hand, we could “self-isolate” in our North Carolina house with the gourmet kitchen, bar, pool table, two TVs with Criterion subscriptions, an art studio, science fiction library, and pile of games… damn, as long as someone will deliver food to us, we’d pretty much be sitting pretty.

But damn, I’ll miss Cork.

Categories
Cork City Ireland Street Art

Just Walkin’ Around

It hasn’t been all gloom and doom around these parts the past few days, but mostly. Ireland so far is one of the least affected countries in Europe by Covid-19, but clearly the authorities are worried that won’t last. The two community transmitted cases in the Republic are both here in Cork. If that number doesn’t increase significantly over the next week, we’re probably in the clear. But we’re making our preparations in case it does.

On the other hand, the trip to Paris on 20 March – 22 March is almost certainly off. We’re just waiting for French authorities to elevate their restrictions to Level 3, which should happen in a few days, before canceling. Portugal in early April is still on, but again, that’s a full 3 weeks away before we leave, and nobody has any idea what the situation will be then.

Meanwhile, we’re dodging raindrops, staying warm, and, when the sun actually comes out, enjoying the longer daylight hours. And washing our hands. A lot of washing our hands. So much washing of the hands. Here’s some random pictures of walking the streets of Cork over the past few days.

300+ year old rock house directly across the river from our apartment. It’s on the market, too, for €145K, cash only. If the stock markets had gone up 15% over the past 3 weeks, instead of down that amount, we might consider it.
From the Rock House, looking back to our apartment, highlighted in yellow.

A few random street snaps from over the weekend.

Oliver Plunkett St.
St. Patrick’s St.
Castle St. (left) and N. Main St. (right) walking back to our apartment

We dodged squalls walking back to west end of the island and beyond, along the river greenway west of the city on Sunday. It’s quiet there, when it’s not hailing. We ended up in the lobby of the fancy-pants Kingsley Hotel on the way out, and the way back, sheltering from the rain.

Siblings getting in their hurling practice
Adam and Eve, by Edward Delaney

I wrote a little about this building very early in our stay, but i thought it looked dramatic against the storm coming in. Probably a mistake to spend so much time in the street trying to get a decent shot in those circumstances, though.

This abandoned building is not on the market yet, as far as I could tell. Love the little fence on top of the wall, though

Capped off the night on Sunday catching the jazz trio over at the Franciscan Well. If you’ve seen the commercials for Jameson Caskmates whiskeys, this is the brewery they’re swapping barrels with.

Categories
Buses Ireland Kinsale Traveling

Kinsale

We took the bus down to Kinsale the other day. It’s a picturesque port town near the mouth of the River Bandon, accessible via a 45 minute bus ride from downtown Cork. It probably caters a little more to the tourist trade than either Cobh or Midleton, despite not having a major specific draw like the distillery or the Heritage Center. Even so, enough of the restaurants and coffee shops were open, to make a full day of it. And it turned out to be a pretty nice day for taking pictures, so I did a lot of that.

We started with coffee and pastries at The Poet’s Corner bookshop and cafe. And, seriously, their scones were the best I’ve had on this visit. And I’ve had more than my share the past 5 weeks.

I’m going to divide the pictures up into waterfront, and town, and mostly post them without comment.

Lobster boat
Kinsale harbor from The Ramparts

We had fantastic skies most of the day.

Like most Irish towns, Kinsale has old churches and castles, not to mention some old pubs. Not all of them were opened on our visit, though.

St. Multose, Church of Ireland
Some people think that’s the best kind
Your basic 330 year old pub, sadly, not open for business this early in the day

Houses and house names in Kinsale seemed to me to exhibit more of a sense of humor than some of the others I’ve seen.

I understand you need a special invitation to spend the night here
Nobody knows what goes on behind this one

And just an amazing little street that we happened to turn up on our walk.

I’m hoping we’ll get another opportunity to go back and spend some more time in Kinsale before the month is out.

Categories
Buses Ireland Ring of Kerry Traveling

Ring of Kerry

We’ve been busy again for the past week. Blarney, Crosshaven, the Ring of Kerry, and Kinsale on alternating days. Fewer than 4 weeks remain until we leave Cork, and make our way to Portugal and Spain. We’ll spend one of those weekends in Dublin, and another in Paris, external conditions allowing.

Although most of our time here is spent on quotidian affairs, we’re not averse to being tourists when the occasion warrants. Earlier this week we hopped a tour bus and went round the Ring of Kerry. The bus departs about 6 blocks from our apartment, and this guy saw us off.

Passed through a couple of small towns on the way from Cork to Killarney, where we picked up a couple of additional passengers. Of those, I thought Macroom might be worth a standalone visit in the next couple of weeks.

Killarney was picturesque in theme park kind of way. The scone i had there was disappointing, though. Bland and bready. (Don’t worry, the one I had later in the week at the Poet’s Corner in Kinsale made up for it.) But on the way, we passed the far-famed Cork and Kerry Mountains, where once upon a time a young highwayman robbed the English Captain Farrell, and all whack for the daddyo broke out.

I like the sight of snow, off in the distance.

The advantage of touring the Ring in early March is that we were virtually the only tour bus on the road. I hear that during the summer months it can be bumper to bumper with them. So not only are the roads more pleasant to be on, but the stops are empty as well, which means more time to enjoy them.

Irish coffee at the Red Fox.

Glenbeigh is the first, strictly photo opportunity stop of the tour. I took advantage.

We also stopped for lunch in Waterville, where Charlie Chaplin had a house for much of his life. It’s now owned by one of the local golf clubs, and for a super premium price, you and your group can stay there for a couple of nights while you play some of the local courses. They also honor Chaplin with a film festival and look-alike contest. Our bus driver told us that towards the end of his life, Chaplin entered the contest, and placed 12th. I have my doubts.

More art in Waterville

We also had a pretty nice lunch at The Lobster, which was one of the few restaurants open on a weekday this time of year. I’m finding the Irish know how to smoke a salmon.

After lunch, we had another photo opportunity in Castlecove. I took advantage again.

Our next stop was in the charmingly named village of Sneem, where I’m sure that J.R.R. Tolkien must have spent at least one night of his life. We bought some post cards, which gives me the chance to remind you that if you’d like a postcard from us on our travels, you can email me your postal address at corkspringblog at gmail dot com, and I’ll get one out to you.

We were detoured on our return to Killarney by a road closure, so we didn’t get an opportunity to pass through Killarney National Park, nor to see the Torc Waterfall. We did get to stop for a bit at the road closure, and chat with some of the locals, who were curious about us since they don’t seem to get many visitors.

The markings, according to our unreliable narrator of a driver, are to indicate which herd the sheep belong to. I believed him on this one.

And then we were home. Next post – Kinsale.

Categories
Blarney

Blarney Gardens…oh, and there’s a castle there, too

When we toured Ireland in 2017, our favorite city was Cork. One of the reasons we liked it so much is that it’s not really much of a tourist town. It’s scenic and there’s lots to do, and there are a few shops where you can buy souvenirs, but doesn’t have that Tourist Trap feel of summer in downtown Galway or parts of Dublin.

Outside of town, though, there’s Blarney Castle, site of the famed Blarney Stone, one of the biggest tourist destinations in Ireland. Fortunately for us, (1) it’s a short ride on public transit, so less than €2 each way, and (2) it’s way off-season, so it wasn’t crowded at all.

This sign was a fair distance from the castle, indicating how long the lines can be in the summer. We did not wait on any lines.

The real surprise of the trip was how large and lovely the gardens are. We didn’t even walk all the paths, as there are some that extend outward through the fields and forests and along the river, and around a lake that we didn’t even see. Even so, we spent more time walking through the gardens than we did in the castle itself.

Daffodils and crocuses at the base of the castle.
We followed this trail along the river to the Fern Garden, but we could have continued on a nearly 2-hour hike through the forest and around a lake.
The waterfall in the Fern Garden.
The path through the fern garden.
An unexpected find, and an unidentified flower.
A tiki troll under a bridge

There are also a number of impressive trees throughout the arboreteums. I thought they some looked familiar, and indeed, they were not native, but were cedars from Northern California.

In addition to the castle, there is a much newer (1874) building on the property, a mansion that was currently closed for renovations. That is one downside to touring in the off-season…sometimes things are simply closed.

There are a cluster of gardens on the other side of the castle with whimsical names — Wishing Steps, Witches Kitchen, Druids Circle. They all sort of blend together though, in fact, we got a bit lost trying to figure out what was where. Is that the Sacrificial Altar? Or just a tree stump? Is that big tree the Irish Tree of the Year, or some other big tree?

It was this big tree.

There was also a “Pinetum”, essentially an arboretum focusing on pine trees, that struck me more like a rock garden. Also, another waterfall, and a pond.

Then there was the Fairy Glade. I wish our grandkids had been with us, because I’m sure they would have had better luck spotting the fairies than we did!

So after several hours touring the gardens, we finally went up to the castle.

Unlike other castles we’ve seen, which have essentially been military fortresses, people actually lived here. But it was also a fortress. So, instead of having a coat rack in the front hall so you could hang up guests’ coats, there was a “murder hole” so you could pouring boiling oil on their heads.
Some parts are in better repair than others. There was also a tower similar to the one on the right that was surrounded by scaffolding as repairs were being made.

There were a few other people around, but really, we had the place almost to ourselves. The rooms are cold and mostly dark, and except for the main hall, small, with claustrophobia-inducing doorways and stairwells. You could really get a sense of how bleak life must have felt even for those who could afford the fancy real estate of the time. I don’t think you would really be able to get a good sense of the space crammed in hundreds of people, cranky from being on line for over an hour, just wanting to kiss the damn stone and get back to the bus to the cruise ship.

No, the ceiling isn’t that high…the floor is missing. There would have been another floor, so the fireplace would be in a normal position, not halfway up the wall. It did allow for a nice shot looking down at the entryway, though.
It’s a long walk up a very winding staircase to get to the top. In some places the ceiling is quite low. Once at the top, though, you’re rewarded by fresh air and a lovely view.
The castle grounds, and the village of Blarney.

We had the ramparts to ourselves except for two very bored looking workers who are there specifically to help lower people down to kiss the Blarney Stone. I was glad to see they had a bottle of disinfectant spray nearby. There are some odd traditions in this world, but this one strikes me as one of the dumbest. Even if there weren’t a pandemic going on, no way am I going to kiss some stupid rock.

After this we poked around in some shops, but most of the restaurants were closed, so we caught the bus back into town.

Categories
Buses Cork City Crosshaven Ireland The Lough

Exploring the south side of Cork

Barry has been better than I about keeping up with our travels. I have some catching up to do! Be sure to check out his posts as well. He takes better photos with a better camera!

Here are a few of our travels on the south side of Cork, and beyond.

One of our first walks south of city centre we discovered the Elizabeth Fort, which Barry describes fully in his post. I used the opportunity to take a few shots of the surrounding neighborhood.

Looking west and north from Elizabeth Fort; River Lee

That large construction project with the crane is at the opposite end of Main Street from our apartment. It’s walled off from the street, so you can’t see much of what’s going on inside. On the wall, they list the architect, builders, etc., and I was interested to see that they also have an archaeologist on the project.

The site was in the news today, when a “treasure trove” of documents from the 1790‘s were found in an old safe. Apparently at the heart of the construction is an old Beamish brewery, that from the photos appears similar to the Tudor style building below. The documents are related to that and to properties all around the city.

Looking down from Elizabeth Fort at the immediate neighborhood; St. Fin Barre’s cathedral grounds is the greenery to the left.

We also walked around St. Fin Barre’s cathedral a bit. There was a service going on so we did not go inside. The architecture was quite stunning — especially the gargoyles.

St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral

My favorite part of this trip, though, was discovering the labyrinth, which was lovely to walk. I may return.

So peaceful!

We found ourselves back in this part of town recently, and decided to venture a little further out to The Lough, a small urban lake.

A nice place to sit and enjoy the view, except that it rained earlier and the bench was wet. I’m guessing that’s a frequent issue.
There were two walkways, one right next to the water, the other a little further out. Lots of waterfowl, although they seem to be mostly hiding in this picture.

We took another impromptu walk recently to Blackrock Pier. We’d run an errand on that side of town, decided to have brunch there, and then just kept walking. We’d been out that way before, to Blackrock Castle, but this time, we walked along the river.

Before we reached the river, we walked through one of the more industrial neighborhoods than we’d seen to date. We were surprised that the sidewalk was so much wider and better paved than in most of the city, where a lot of the sidewalks are quite old. There were tons of joggers for a neighborhood that didn’t seem to generate a lot of pedestrian traffic. But that road connected to the greenway along the river, than in turn intersects with a greenway that goes a considerable way south of the city (which we hope to visit this month!) So the sidewalk was truly as much a greenway as a sidewalk.

Barry, not jogging on the greenway.
One view across to the north side of the river. I love this row of houses.
The greenway also ran alongside a park surrounding this small lake. Daffodils have been in bloom everywhere we’ve been, all month long.
Some port activity on the river. If you look to the right of the ship, you can see Blackrock Castle. We had a beer in an inn at the pier, and watched them unload the shipping containers, which was oddly mesmerizing.
I’m not sure why they call this little village Blackrock Pier, since there is no docks or marina and very few boats. There was this little enclosed oval of water, surrounded by a walkway and benches, but judging by how it looks at low tide, I can’t imagine many boats docking here!

I wrote earlier about our walk out to the village/neighborhood of Douglas. It was one of our longer walks, but we managed it without hopping a bus either way. This week we decided to go even further south, though, to the harbor village of Crosshaven. Be sure to look at Barry’s photos from this trip, the one of the sailboats and the wind turbine is spectacular!

This was our first trip that was long enough that we had to take the bus both there and back. The bus ride was about 40-45 minutes long. We quickly discovered that the best seats for curious tourists are the front seats on the top of the double decker.

Some of the countryside south of Cork, between Douglas and Carragaline.
Carragaline had a lovely old town with a river running through it, but it was also our first look at U.S.-style suburban sprawl.
The village of Crosshaven.
The Owenabue River empties into Cork Harbour at Crosshaven. You really need to look at Barry’s post to see his photo of this scene!

This was the first place we saw actual pleasure boats. I’ve been surprised that in the Lee River and Cork Harbour in other places, all the boats have been industrial, with nary a marina to be seen. This was the first place we saw sailboats, and there were lots of them! There appeared to be three different sailing classes going on, as pods of white, red/blue/white, and translucent/red boats went around in circles, or proceeded downwind into the harbor.

There wasn’t a greenway here, but there was a “scenic walk”, a one-lane residential road that went up the hill along the harbor to Camden Fort Meagher.

I am sure this edifice at Camden Fort Meagher has profound historical significance, but I really didn’t pay attention. It was much more pleasurable to watch the sailboats in the harbor.

There were other roads and paths that went further, or that cut across the peninsula to the ocean, but this wasn’t a day we were up for a big walk, so we went back into the village for lunch at a lovely pub.

I am becoming spoiled by having Guinness, Murphy’s, and Beamish on tap absolutely everywhere we go. We’ve both discovered that Murphy’s is our favorite.
I love my traveling companion!

We’ll be heading south again today on the 10:05 bus to Kinsale.

Categories
Buses Crosshaven Ireland

Crosshaven

Days slip past easily in Cork. We’re exploring something new almost daily, and, when we’re not, we’re recovering from our explorations. Sunday, mostly on the recommendation of some folks we’ve met here, we took the bus down to Crosshaven. Tuesday we put on our tourist hats and took a bus around the ring of Kerry. Today’s been a successful day of errands, including repairing a camera lens, printing out some travel documents, tracking down hard to find vitamins, and topping up our mobile plan.

Here’s a little bit from our Sunday trip. Crosshaven was our longest ride on Bus Eirann so far, about 45 minutes from town. We passed the first 1960s syle car based suburb of the trip, outside of Carrigaline. As a friend back home pointed out, it’s still got narrow lanes, bike lanes, and sidewalks, but it’s also not a convenient bus ride or walk to shopping. As a result, the roads get pretty congested, especially during rush hours. Old town Carrigaline, on the other hand, was charming, but congested. Of course, i made the expected joke about catching the 220 bus on our next trip. Whatever it takes.

But, you go to Crosshaven for the harbor views, and they are worth the trip.

I assume the outdoor section of the arcade/amusement park is operational in season, but there’s something about on in the off-season that fascinates me. Occasionally, we visit the Jefferson Pools, in Bath County, Virginia. Across the road, is the Warm Springs Inn. The Inn was run, and may still be, it’s been a few years since we’ve been there as the Pools have been closed for renovations for a while, by a couple who have traveled with various carnivals. They kept some rides and stuff behind the inn, and I loved walking around back there.

We climbed to the top of the hill behind the town, where Camden Fort Meagher sits adjacent to the GAA fields. It was closed for the season as well. We’d been told that the far side of the peninsula, Church Bay, was the really pretty part. Sadly, we weren’t up to the extra mile or so of trekking, as it would have meant a long hike back up the hill. Maybe next time.

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