Month: June 2019

Today marks 365 days that we’ve been in Europe. And still running toward new adventures!

Here we are in northern Ireland. Entering the UK — our final country before we head home — feels important. (Except that it kind of seems like Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England should kind of be counted separately.)

The farm we’ve been staying at has been so pleasant (despite the persistent cow odor), that we’ve spent several days and half days just hanging around.

But we did get out to the Giant’s Causeway to see the columnar basalt from our geology textbooks.

It was a bit more confined than we expected. Pictures makes it seem massively sprawling, but it’s actually just a patch of beach where bus-loads of people take turns photographing each other. Thank goodness we got there early! We found some trails sparsely touristed, though, and got to see columns still part of the cliffs.

We also drove to Belfast to visit the Titanic museum. Standing on the dock where she was built and experiencing some of the massive scale of her construction was impressive.

The highlight of the day, though, was probably the cafe next door which doesn’t charge fixed prices; you pay what you want or can. We talked to someone on the board, and she said they operate on the philosophy of “spend tomorrow what we earned today.” All the furniture is donated, occupying the basement space is basically a tax write-off for the building owner, and the staff is mainly volunteers or job-trainees. Really cool.

And we went to Londonderry for a day to walk their walls. (The Netflix series Derry Girls is apparently pretty accurate to life here.) Theirs is the only completely intact walled city in Ireland, having withstood a seige during the Jacobite uprising of the 17th century.

We also took advantage of a bigger city for the cinema. First movie theater since Prague last July! (In Prague you get assigned seats, just like in a theater theater. In Ireland you leave your tray with trash at your seat and the staff clean it all up after the movie.) What fun to see a good movie (Toy Story IV) in English!

But mostly we’ve been hanging around our stone house wandering their fields and playing with their toys and feeling recuperated (I can almost walk without a limp now!).

Ireland has been the friendliest place we’ve visited, hands down. We will be sad tomorrow to leave all the kind and welcoming folks here. However, it will be a bit of a relief to get rid of a car and stop driving again for awhile. Trains and feet, here we come!

To Scotland!

(or a little give)

We spent an entire day weaving from little farm route to little farm route through little farm routes, from the bottom right corner of the country top the top left. The geometric patchwork of neatly hedged fields gradually gave way to stone-walled higgledy-piggledy enclosures in increasingly craggy, jagged, dare we say mountainous, environs.

Trails and rocks perfect for adventurous day hikes and impromptu scamperings and…

Oops. I stepped on a rock hiding in the tall grasses and sprained a ligament in my foot. So…

We found beaches where people could explore (including one with a 30% grade road down to it — never seen that sign before!).

(Like, immense beaches. Immense.)

And a castle (still intact) shrouded in scandals and mysteries and beauty. With gorgeous sprawling gardens and a cozy tea room for the rainy afternoon.

And a lake where people have been skipping rocks for hundreds of years (which is why I presume there weren’t any left for us).

Some convalescence also gave us a good excuse to try out a local establishment for some Guinness, orange squashes, and pub food over a World Cup game (the US won this match 13-0).

It wasn’t the trip we had planned for this week. But, gee, we made do. And my foot is getting better every day!

Now to Northern Ireland to begin our trip through the UK (our last country to visit!).

What do you think of when you hear “Ireland”? Rain rolling over distant fields of green dotted with white spots of sheep? Chimney smoke curling from whitewashed cottages with thatched roofs? Cheerful rosy-complexioned people offering tips about cooking potatoes? Crumbling stone castles standing sentinel on the horizon?

That’s exactly what we’ve found here. And, of course, much more.

We’ve started our time here in the southeast corner, an agricultural area sparsely towned and generously cowed and sheeped. Our little cottage (once the stables) has a coal-burning fireplace, a one-lane windy overgrown driveway, creaky floorboards, and a horseshoe above the front door. A haven.

It’s been a very different travel experience for us, having a car to drive and take care of. That one-lane driveway? The roads are not much different. (Why have 2 lanes if 50% of the time there’s only 1 car on the road?) We tried walking to Tintern Abbey from home one day and gave up within 5 minutes of tractors compelling us onto the “shoulder” of stinging nettle. So we’ve done day trips in the car to fascinating places.

First up, the seaside. Of course not everyone goes on holiday to Ireland for the beaches. But we did! We’ve had several days of simply playing in the sand, collecting shells, skipping rocks, and wandering along the ocean.

We also found the oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the world at Hook Head. The current structure was built 800 years ago, and has remained intact since that time. The walls are immensely thick, containing the spiraling steps that go up all 3 stories from one vaulted room to another. The last keeper lived there until 1996 when it became automated; guess I missed being hired at my dream job.

Afterward we went down to the ocean looking for seals (we spotted one from the lighthouse) and rock-hopped until the rain drove us inland. We didn’t find seals, but lots of barnacles and seaweed and fossils and caves and slimy red pillowy thingies (sea life is weird).

And we went to a 12th century Cistercian abbey to get lost in their hedge maze. (Really, it was quite difficult to navigate. It took us 30 minutes to get to the middle, and the grownups weren’t taking it easy on the kids, either.)

Talk about an evocative setting. You can just feel centuries of life stories oozing from the cracks.

We also spent a day at an Irish cultural center which took us through different periods of the country’s history. We walked from site to site, on a personal tour (no one else showed up!) learning about how people lived from first inhabitants, to early Christian monks, to the Vikings, to the Normans. I’ve decided I want to live on a crannog, a man-made island with no access except by boat or secret submerged stepping stones.

Plus we went on a “hike.” It was only forest service roads with very little in the way of views, or topography, or wildlife, or anything else interesting. But we did manage to find a windswept rock outcropping to make ourselves feel like it was worth it!

Thus has begun our Irish adventure. More is yet to come!