Uffington

We had a delightfully lazy late start this morning, before sitting down to discuss what to do for the day. I had been dying to see the Uffington White horse, which is a giant neolithic chalk-drawing of a "horse" in a hill in the Somerset countryside. Mum and dad were keen to see it as well, for reasons I will get to soon - but Pip decided she'd rather stay in the gatehouse for the day, and get some schoolwork done. So three of us set out in the car about 10 o'clock.

28 years ago, in 1981, mum and dad were slumming it around Europe together. One day they set out enthusiastically in order to go and see the white horse. It hadn't occurred to them until they arrived at the site that a chalk drawing under several feet of snow would be invisible. They then tried to go and see Wayland's smithy to make up for the horse, but mum gave up in disgust after the first half k or so, once her boots had become caked in mud and doubled in weight. So - dad had once seen Wayland's smithy, and none of the three of us had ever seen the horse. We had high hopes as we drove along this morning, following the brown signs that pointed to the viewing spot.

I began to get edgy as we approached Somerset, along English backwater roads - there was a thick white fog beginning to settle on the hills above us. By the time we arrived at the start of the walk and paid the parking machine, the world seemed to have shrunk to about 50 metres in diameter. We opened the creaky gate into paddocks full of ghostly sheep, and set out along the trodden-down grass footpath that disappeared into the mist.

There was only one other man there when we arrived, and he set out in a different direction across the fields. I watched his shape become faded and indistinct, and then he disappeared into the mist. Once we passed the gate, we could have been walking through neolithic England for all we could tell from our surroundings. It was just us and the sheep, and what we hoped was the right footpath.



On we went, through another gate and further hilly paddocks. We passed a couple looking for a lost beanie, and then they too were swallowed up by the sheep-filled fog. Our footpath wandered around the spur of a hill, and then quite suddenly the ground was falling away incredibly steeply on our left, into a gully that seemed bottomless and full of grey mist. Apparently during summer the locals hold "cheese races" here. No, really - they're ever bit as silly as they sound. Someone rolls a wheel of cheese down this hellishly steep valley-side, and people throw themselves after it to try be the first to catch the cheese. They start out by running, but pretty soon everyone's rolling and falling over each other, bruising sides and breaking limbs. Is it any surprise that in the history of cheese-racing, the cheese has never been caught? This strikes me as one of the best demonstrations of why tradition ain't always a thing worth keeping.

Anyway, we rounded the top of the slope very cautiously, and came through a final gate, and suddenly - aha! Bold white lines at our feet where the grass and topsoil had been cut back from the chalk of the hill underneath. We were standing above the horse, right up close. The fog had lifted just far enough that we could make out the entirety of the horse when we stood at its middle, although with the distorted perspective it took us some time to figure out which end was its head. However, once I realised I was looking at its eye, suddenly the design "clicked".



I walked from the horse's nose right down to the tip of its tail, trying to figure out how anyone could carve something so precisely without the help of computers and satellites. Because the thing about these sinuous lines cut into the hill is that from the surrounding countryside, they resolve into the foreshortened shape of an animal that looks part-horse, part-dragon. The horse was made to be seen from a distance; its lines don't make quite so much sense up-close. The cuttings curl around a bunch of low hummocks; you can't even *see* the entirety of the horse when you're standing at the site. I was keen to see the design from the hills opposite, but that depended on the weather.

The fog still seemed very thick to me, but dad was adamant that it was beginning to lift as the sun came further up. We decided we'd put off trying the horse's lookout until later in the day, when the fog would have had the best chance to disappear.

We left the horse, and it ebbed silently into the greyness as we walked away. It was a slightly sinister feeling to turn one's back on something so ancient and obviously powerful - I got to wondering if those lines would still be there if nobody but the sheep stuck around to watch them. The valley the horse lies above is sometimes called "the manger", because of a local legend that says on moonless nights the horse wanders down the hillside to graze. I got the half-delighted creeps.

Further up the next hillside is an old hill-fort called Uffington castle. It's also neolithic, so don't be fooled by its name - all that remains is the circle of the fortification's earth wall and the deep ditch surrounding that. As we walked, groups of sheep broke away from their flock and followed us a few feet behind. Each time we turned around they'd freeze and look shifty, but if we carried on a little further there'd be faint "baaaa"s behind us and the little squelches of hooves on muddy grass. One group of sheep charged down the ditch and pelted right up the other side behind dad, baaaing victoriously once they reached the top of the wall. They lost interest in us after a while, and joined the flock of sheep grazing in the centre of the fort.



We walked back in the direction we'd come - and then up to a path leading along the ridge behind the horse and the hill fort. This was the way to Wayland's smithy, an ancient barrow or passage tomb (like Newgrange, only long and thin). The path had turned to sticky, caking mud, but mum was quite happy - she tells me it wasn't a patch on the thick mud of the first time she visited. There was a very old hedge growing on either side of the path - I'd say this was one of the few hedgerows that wasn't torn up when modern ploughing equipment became popular in England. It wasn't until farmers had demolished a lot of them that people realised hedgerows were important ecosystems for little birds and animals.

The path went rather a long way with empty fields on either side, and was above the level of the mist. Not long after we'd found the start of it, a big strung-out group of pairs of schoolchildren passed us with maps, asking us in Harry-Potter-esque accents if this was the way to the horse. I think they were in some orienteering challenge; the front few pairs were running as hard as they could through the mud in order to get somewhere, /anywhere/ first, and further down the line the boys were leaping from behind piles of soiled hay and ambushing each other with manure-pats. I overheard one redheaded boy say "blimey, there's supposed to be a CASTLE around here somewhere - we can't possibly miss that!"

After a few kilometres we reached a ramshackle little gate and a path beyond, that led to a circle of trees in the middle of a field. And in the circle... there was the dolmen, with the earth built up behind it. Surrounded by flat ground carpeted with red leaves. For those of you who had really boring bedtime stories, or didn't grow up reading Susan Cooper's books, or "Puck of Pook's Hill"... Wayland is the mythical blacksmith who could shoe any horse. His legends are older (I think) than some forms of the King Arthur legend, and he's in the same sort of vein as Herne the Hunter - wild and potentially dangerous beings who sometimes offer help to humans, but who are not at all obliged to. The legend associated with the barrow at Uffington is that some nights, Wayland would manifest there. If you left your horse tethered to the entrance stone, and left the smith the right amount of gold... you could return in the morning to find your horse shod.



Of course, the smithy is really "just" an old passage tomb that's fallen in. And the legends are terribly old and fragmentary. But I like to let my sense of wonder run away with me: there were holly and ivy planted together just by the gate - ten points if you can explain why that's significant, and 50 points *with reference*. And... I found horse prints in the mud as we were leaving. Wheeee!



We left after not-very-long, because there were a few more things we had to fit into our day yet. To hurry mum and I up, dad strode ahead of us and met us halfway back with the car. The fog had lifted a long way, so the three of us detoured via the closest Uffington horse lookout - and found that the school group had ended up triumphantly at the same spot. And there, stretched rampant on the opposite hill, was the horse-dragon! Some of the school group were cheering, while others took turns rolling down the smaller hill. I felt like cheering, too. I'd grown up seeing pictures of this place, and now I'd seen the real thing. It's not the best vantage point (the horse's head is a little hard to pick from this angle)... but I was deeply and happily satisfied.



We drove back through Somerset, stopping for lunch at the Rose and Crown - the same pub that mum and dad had eaten in on their ill-fated sightseeing day 28 years ago. Rural England seems not to change at all, really. I had creamy potato soup, and my parents shared a "ploughman's lunch". The bearded man sitting at the bar had a very new puppy tethered to his stool on a leash, and he was slipping her biscuits while he sipped his pint of beer.

We drove on again, through more miles of green and hilly countryside. I saw a few more chalk-pictures in the distance as we passed; these were more recognisable as horses, but far more "tame" and modern; not so wild and fierce as Uffington's. Uffington's horse was to these, as the flesh-eating horses of Greek legend were to Thelwell's ponies.

Our road passed farmhouses, sheep, farmhouses, and then monoliths - we'd driven into Avebury stone circle. It's just like that - you drive complacently along, and then suddenly there are a ring of house-high rocks surrounding the road you're on. We drove out the other side, parked, and returned on foot to take a proper look.

Avebury is comparable to Stonehenge - just bigger, and without further rocks balanced on top. Mum says she's always thought of Avebury as being a sort of "female" counterpart to Stonehenge's "maleness" - and I see what she means, now. (Yes, my mother and I are folklore-mad hippies only a few steps away from joining the druidic cult and going skyclad. Don't let it bother you - dad and Pip never have).



Anyway, Avebury consists of a huge ring of standing stones, many of which are balanced on their pointiest ends and seem to defy any laws of physics that I'm familiar with. They're all different shapes, too - though just rough-hewn, not carved. I was enthralled; each one seemed to have a different "character" to the last. You can walk right up to the stones, even touch them if you're brave or disrespectful enough. As we wandered through and around the circle, the sun was going down and the stones were washed in pink and orange light. By the time we wandered back to the car, the stones were baleful silhouettes over our shoulders. I don't know how anyone could bring themselves to sleep soundly in the houses in the middle of that circle, at night. Rah. Where might you wake up?



We had blown our timing (though the day was worth it!), so the drive back was through the dark. It was alright at first, but then the navigation got tricky (so many roundabouts!), so I sat in the passenger seat to be "seeing-eye-Ele" again. We took a few wrong turns, so by the time we were back on the final stretch into Bath - again, that awful stretch down the hill without streetlighting - the fog had blown in again, twice as thick as the morning. We must have driven at about half the speed limit in those last miles, but we didn't care. Mum and I were both in terror-struck fugue states, I think.

We got home safely, though, and sat and wobbled for a bit until mum's nerves recovered. Pip was pleased to see us after spending the day doing homework. Dinner was pizza (which seems to have become our fallback). Mum and Pip and I stayed up late watching rather a good BBC adaptation of the Arabian Nights, while our boots dried out on the apartment's heaters. I regained feeling in my feet for the first time in several hours, which was quite a relief.

Trust my dear sister to blow the day's carefully crafted mystique, mind you. I tried to explain the Uffington horse to her by showing her my photos and sketching what the design looks like... but unfortunately my sketch looked more cute than majestic. Pip promptly named the horse in my picture "Cindy" and drew a horseblanket and scarf over the top of it, so it wouldn't look so cold in all that fog.

O tempora, o mores.

Bath

Breakfast was served at 8 in the dining room, on a table spread with beautiful crockery and every condiment known to humanity. We fell upon the fresh fruit salad like hungry wolves (vegetarian wolves, k?). After that came a plate of smoked salmon on scrambled eggs, and toast with French jam after that. I had another pot of tea all to myself; I have declared to the rest of the family that I'd like my Christmas present to be a two-cup teapot. Pip declared we'd each receive one gift agreed upon by the other three family members this year, you see.

After breakfast we packed our things ready to move to the gatehouse for our second night, as originally planned. We then set out to walk to the city centre, but went the wrong way. That meant that dad got a chance to see Bath's rowing club, though. Somewhat different to his home club! Once we realised we were in a different park to the one we thought was shown on the map, we chucked the idea in and caught the park-and-ride bus into town. The idea behind those is rather clever, actually: to save congestion in the middle of the city, there's a dirt-cheap bus service that runs from huge carparks on the outskirts of the city - commuters can park for the day and catch the bus to work instead of trying to park in town. I've seen this in quite a few English cities, now.

Anyway, we arrived in the centre, and set about trying to find a post office. We must've asked directions 4 or 5 times, but the building was incredibly elusive. Finally Pip and I saw "POST OFFICE" written in grand sandstone letters on a large building, but on closer inspection it turned out to have been turned into a department store. The girl behind the perfume counter laughed when we asked her where the "real" post office was, and with her directions we finally found it squashed into a little alleyway. Pip and I went and window-shopped while dad stood in the queue. Lots of dubious fashions on display - good for a gawk! Pip and mum were also very happy to see the streets Jane Austen wrote so much about. I'm in a little bit of disgrace here, though - I've not read any of Austen's books yet. I have the feeling Pip is going to force-feed me "Pride and Prejudice" when she's done rereading it.



Next stop was Pultney bridge, which has shops built out along either side. They're each only about 2 metres wide inside - there was a cafe, a florist, and a shop that sold tiny dolls-house furniture pieces (from almost any historical period you could ask for). We climbed down the stairs to river-level, to discover that the streets running along the river have a sort of arcade hidden beneath, flanked with columns. That's all in disrepair, now, though - I think it could be made into an attraction with shops and cafes if the local council (or whoever) were to fix the area up. It's only blocks away from the famous Abbey, which we went to walk around next.



We walked on, until we came to the Roman Baths. This is the site where the Romans discovered what they (and the locals before them) believed to be a sacred spring, and promptly built a temple and hot baths on the site. To tour the site is fascinating - Pip, mum and I all hired audioguide machines, which gave more information than most of the signs up around the place. The main hot bath was done up in the 19th century, when the Roman ruins on the site were unearthed - now it's got statues of Roman emperors lining the balconies above, and is a little over the top. Still, when you get down to the lower level, the original Roman pool remains pretty much intact - lead lining, original drainage system and all. The water's fairly scummy now (it leaves an orangey-red residue along the drainage ditches, and in the deep pool it's a tarnished green colour) - you can't bathe, but Pip and I dipped a finger in. It's as steamy as ever.





Nowadays you can see most of the rest of the Roman temple complex as well - it's below street level, so you just have to imagine it as it would have been when it was open to the air. There were some fascinating things on display, like the "curses" thrown into the sacred spring. These were a sort of "favour" asked of Minerva/Soulis, the goddess thought to be responsible for the spring - you scratched your request onto a thin sheet of lead or pewter, and threw it into the water. The translations are often very funny - someone asking help to find a lost glove, for instance. Lots and lots of people asking for thieves of their various belongings to be damned for all eternity, or to have their ears fall off. The funny part was the seriousness with which these requests for retribution were delivered, and over such petty things as a stolen cloak.

We three females spent a long time wandering around looking at all the displays - Roman mosaics, tools, luxury items, headstones... and at the remains of the baths. I'd read about the Romans inventing heated floors, but to see an original example in front of me was kinda cool. Hot air was blown around stacks of clay tiles holding up the paved floor, thus:



Finally we left, for poor dad's sake - he'd found the place interesting, but hadn't wanted to read every sign like we three had (whoops). The exit to the baths takes you out through the Pump Room, of Georgian novel fame - which is now a very pricey restaurant. The interior was sumptuous, but still managed to be elegant in a distant sort of way; that seems to go for most of Georgian upper-class fashion and architecture, from what I can see. I must admit it doesn't do awfully much for me... seems too far up itself.

The Pump Room's other, err, "attraction" is that since the baths' sacred spring was rediscovered in the mid-19th century, visitors have been able to sample the site's "healing waters". The room gets its name from the pump with pushes water through a highly-decorated fountain at one side of the room. A woman stands in front of it, filling glasses and offering them to visitors. According to my audioguide around the baths, the Duke of Wellington once described the taste of the water as being "like warm flat-iron"... I have to agree. It tastes so awful, it MUST be good for you!

We left the Pump Room, and wandered around the streets of inner Bath, which are without exception built of honeycomb-coloured sandstone. We stopped for lunch at a shop that sold pasties, and we ate those sitting outside, battling the savage pigeons for the crumbs. Next it was off to the Assembly Rooms, which are another mainstay of Jane Austen's books, mum tells me. The ballroom was what impressed me - huge, very high to allow room for the chandelier, and with crisp-white plaster mouldings across the ceiling. The walls were painted eggshell-blue. I tried to dance a waltz across the room with Pip, but she wouldn't be in it. Apparently in Austen's time the dance was thought very improper. Tee hee.



The Assembly Rooms also house the Fashion Museum, which Pip had been very keen to see - a collection of outfits and accessories dating from the modern day back to the mid-1600s. Dad was mildly interested, so he took a quick look through - but we all agreed that the three of us would ring him when we were done looking, and he could go to a pub in the meantime. So that made everyone happy! The exhibits were interesting, and a lot of fun - many of the pieces were displayed out of chronological order, so that comparisons could be drawn between each piece. Pip and I went through reading each sign, and picking out our favourites. I fell in love in with one dark blue riding habit from the 19th century with a zig-zag pattern around the hems, but Pip was more interested in the evening dresses. The cabinet showing a history of women's underwear was particularly interesting, and there were replica corsets and crinolines around the corner that you could try on over your clothes. I can't believe how uncomfortable some of this getup must have been...



Eventually we came to the end of the exhibits, and met dad out on the footpath with perfect timing - no phonecall needed. We headed back for Apsley house on foot, so as to see a few last sights of the city. The "Circus", for instance, which is a ring of terrace houses that represent some of the first town-planning in the country. After seeing York, Lincoln and Sheffield, I wasn't too surprised to learn that town-planning was a relatively new idea. Each of the buildings in the Circus has a frieze running above the doorway, and each frieze contains carvings of bizarre symbols (snakes eating their tails, crossed spades and spears, all sorts of plants in bouquets) that might be coats-of-arms, and might be completely arbitrary. I wish I knew which, but there were no explanations! Our other architectural stop was the Royal Crescent, another famous arc of terrace housing for the very, VERY rich. Again, Georgian design left me feeling cold. Everything about it seems so... repressed.



We reached the local supermarket as it was getting dark, bought soup for dinner, and toiled up the hill with fairly sore feet. We moved our things into Apsley House's gatehouse, which has been turned into a self-contained apartment. Not as plush as the 5-star rooms in the house itself, but every bit as comfortable. Lovely and warm, too. We had dinner once dad figured out for us how the stove worked, and then we slept.

Chester to Bath

We had a disorganised start this morning, because I had gotten my times for breakfast mixed up and made Pip and I late. Still, we wandered out to see Chester in daylight. There is a particularly garish clock set up in the town centre, and when I had stopped to photograph it the night before, a man had stopped me and said "if you like the view, go up on the city wall tomorrow morning - there's a man who sits up there and sells his drawings of Chester". Well, I doubted I would want to spend money on views of Chester, but I thought I ought to have a look after the random recommendation. We climbed the staircase to the level of the clock, and sure enough there was a man just beyond us, hanging up his prints on the fence.



When I went up and took a good look, there was a hilarious surprise - the artists drew views of Chester, alright, as well as the surrounding countryside, and various famous English landmarks. But he put a spin on each picture, by inserting Dr Who characters into each scene. The idea is tacky, I'll admit - but I am a huge fan of Dr Who, and the drawings were well-done, and it seemed kinda pop-arty. I struck up conversation with the artist (name of John), who grinned sheepishly and admitted that he'd "sorta made a living from Dr Who pictures". By this stage mum and Pip had joined me, and when he discovered we were Australians, he grinned again and asked us to hold on one moment. With a flourish he produced two pictures from his portfolio folder - the first one of Daleks at the Sydney Opera House, and the second of Cybermen climbing the Harbour Bridge. I was so taken by the first one that I bought a print. I love the weirdness of blending English pop culture with somewhere so close to home. Pip bought a view of the Chester clock, with Tom Baker and David Tennant raising their eyebrows at one another in front.

We strolled on, going further than we had the night before. We took a look at the site of the Roman amphitheatre (Chester's a Roman town originally) - it was interesting, but not very well-preserved. There's a road straight through the middle, for instance.

Back in the town, Pip bought herself a scarf at a little street stall. When we started retracing our steps so as to be off and driving again before midday, it suddenly became apparent that Pip had dropped the scarf somewhere behind us by accident. Argh! She and I rushed back towards town, with mum and dad following more slowly behind us.

Unfotunately we couldn't find the scarf - someone must have picked it up quite quickly. Pippo was upset, but dad took her back to the stall to buy another (happily it hadn't been an expensive thing to lose). Mum and I decided to wait at the point where we'd all caught up again, on the upper level of the shops. But something had been lost in translation in the rush, and after half an hour there was still no sign of dad or Pip. We had both the working phones, as well. Eventually mum and I began walking back to our B & B out of desperation; we were getting later and later, and we had wanted to be in Bath before dark. Happily the other two had come the same way, and were waiting for us on the bridge out of town. We bundled into the car, and finally drove out of Chester, into Shropshire.



Mum was excited to be driving through the area, because A. E. Houseman is one of her very favourite poets, and he wrote mostly about the area where he'd grown up ("A Shropshire Lad"). Unfortunately in the scramble she had ended up as the driver, and there was nowhere to pull over and swap. Yet another bungle on our part - we seemed cursed today. The final straw came when my blood sugar levels went belly-up and I started feeling carsick. We stopped at the first roadside pub we came to, in a place called Lembotswood, and I wobbled around the carpark until my stomach had settled. Judging by the historical photographs in "The Pound"'s loos, Lembotswood has remained exactly the same for the last hundred years - it's just gained cars. The pub's roof is thatched, complete with birds made of straw above each gable. We went in and had a drink each, and watched the tallest of the waiters expertly navigate the low ceilings. I thought one of them was going to knock himself senseless several times, but he'd mastered the quick duck under each roof beam, even when carrying drinks.



The last few miles into Bath, I swapped seats with dad. He can't see well in the dark, and someone had to help navigate by reading signs in the falling dusk. Well, the trip was fairly scary and horrible in the dark - we were following very good directions provided by our hosts for the night, but the roads into Bath are windy and narrow, and have no streetlighting. We descended the last steep hill into Bath, and inched around the edge of the hospital. Finally the sign for Apsley House came into view. We prised poor mum's hands off the steering wheel, and went inside to check in.

Here came the crowning mini-crisis of the day - mum had accidentally booked the wrong night, and our hosts were expecting us to be staying in the gatehouse the night after. Thankfully they soon figured out what had happened, and generously offered us rooms for the night in the main house, and at the cheaper rate - even though it really hadn't been their fault. Poor mum only asks a travel agent to help book flights, because she likes to organise car hire and accommodation herself. She had been juggling so many different things on our long and complicated itinerary that it was little wonder a changed date had slipped through the cracks. She was embarrassed, but I'm just impressed that she makes so many other things WORK, without making mistakes...

No harm done in the end, though, and a serendipitous result. The rooms we had been given for the night were sumptuous - mum and dad had a four-post bed, and Pip and I had an enormous suite of rooms to ourselves. This is probably the first and last time I'll ever stay in 5-star accommodation, and it was kinda fun. Pip and I made sure to sample all the exotic soaps and shampoos that were arrayed in our gigantic bathroom. She got the double bed, and I slept in a little side-chamber of my own. You should've seen the embroidery on the fabric of the curtains. Whee...



At the suggestion of our host, we went out for dinner at an Indian BYO restaurant not far down the hill, named "The Desh". I had chicken Biryani, but each of us shared our meals around the table. I'm afraid I got tipsy on wine, and we headed back for bed soon after we'd eaten. Good grief, those beds were comfortable!

Back to England

We were up early and left for the ferry wharf at 7. Our taxi driver was very jolly, and told us all about how he and his wife had loved Torquay so much they'd bought a holiday house there. It took us a while to figure out he meant Turkey, the country - NOT a place in England. And here we were, thinking we'd had a handle on the Irish accent!

With no Nigel, the ferry trip back wasn't very eventful (unfortunately there's nothing but open sea to see on the way). I was so heavily doped up on "Kwells" travel sickness pills that I slept mostof the way. We picked up a new hire car at Holyhead, and set out through Wales once more. The Irish sea was on our left this time, and I had much better views of the Snowdon mountains. The area near where we were driving is a national park, and if the mountains are anything to go by, it must be beautiful. Alas, the walls of the motorway obscured most of the view I might have had.



We did stop in Conwy, however, because dad had heard of castle ruins there. Conwy is just inside the Welsh border, and the castle "ruins" dad had heard of turned out to be a near-complete English keep (yes, English - a medieval attempt to keep the Welsh in line). It was spectacular! Almost everything is still standing, though the roofs and floors between levels have disappeared. It was a fascinating experience, because the place gives you such a complete picture of what it would have been like to live in a castle. I don't mean that they have tacky reconstructions, either - nothing at all but signs. It's the mere fact that you can wander up the towers, into the king's chambers, the chapel... around the walls, into the cellar of the great hall to see the huge fireplace on the wall above you. I had a ball trying to picture each room as it might have been, filled with people. There were good views of Conwy and its bay from the tops of the walls, too. I could see fishing boats pulled up on the shore.





Lunch was a hurried trip to a bakery before our parking ticket ran out. Afterwards, we drove out of Wales and into England once more. By early evening we had reached Chester, our stop for the night. Our guesthouse (named "Homeleigh", god help it) took a bit of finding, but we finally arrived and trekked up two sets of very narrow stairs to deposit our luggage in our rooms. The rooms, incidentally, were very comfortable. The bathroom door stuck a little, and to Pip's delight I managed to get stuck in there after taking my bath.

She rescued me, though, and the lot of us set out to explore Chester and find food. The interesting thing about the heart of Chester is that the shops are on split levels - one row lines the footpath, with a walkway at roof-height to service shops above. The buildings themselves are lovely, and fairly old - most of them seemed to be 17th century and half-timbered. I would guess any new developments in Chester are heavily restricted to make the structures conform. The Christmas lights had been strung out, and even though they were twee, I found the inner streets charming.



Mum and I were accosted by a woman handing out pamphlets, but it turned out the papers offered discounts at a nearby restaurant, provided you ate before 7pm. We decided it was too good a deal to waste, and walked into "Grille".

Well... when we were greeted at the door like long-lost friends, and a man took our jackets, we realised we were in the sort of restaurant we normally avoid, in order to refrain from going bankrupt. Still, true to their pamphlets, they served us food from the cheap menu, and treated us as though we were were paying hundreds each. I asked for the fish of the day, and... ohhhh. YUM. Monkfish wrapped in bacon, on spinach an potato mash, with tomato and lemon sauce. One of the best meals I've ever eaten. Dessert was choc-truffle torte (not something as base as "cake", y'see...).



We waddled "home", somehow managed the stairs, and retired to our rooms to digest. I spoke briefly with Pat on the phone, before sleep.

Cashel to Dublin

Breakfast at 8 o'clock was one glorious banana, lashings of smoked salmon on scrambled eggs, and a veritable bucket of tea which I managed to spill on Laura's nice tablecloth. Butterfingers...

We all packed, and Pip and I had a last-minute scramble when we thought we'd lost the key. It turned up underneath her suitcase, however, so we returned it and set off to see the sights of Cashel. Laura had recommended the Bishop's palace, and Cashel castle, the "Rock of Cashel".

We walked through the gardens of the Bishop's palace, which were splendid even in winter. Winding pathways took us through immaculately-kept lawns, spotted with piles of raked leaves. We reached the back wall only to find that the gate to the Rock had been locked. We tried at a few breaches in the stonework, but failed to scale the wall.



That forced us back into the township, though, which made for a nice walk through some of Cashel's houses and shops. We were amused to see the way "tourism" still works in parts of Ireland - this sign was next to the gate of a ruined cathedral:



We climbed up the road to the Rock of Cashel, which was spectacular. Alas, no time to go in - but we got a good look at the outside. You must be able to see for miles and miles from the tops of the walls and towers.



We strolled back to Ashmore house again, stopping to look in more shop windows, and being greeted by cats. Back at the house we said our goodbyes to Laura and Brendan (talkative people, and lovely), and we set out in the car yet again. No hardship, though, because the roads were much easier. We stopped halfway back to Dublin to walk along a canal covered by houseboats, every one with its own little idiosyncrasies. Potplants, for instance:



Mum and I decided the best colour for any dream-houseboat was shiny red, though she thought she'd like gold edging along hers as well. It was cold (for us), so we crossed over to the Bridgewater hotel and had hot chocolate and a bowl of wedges to share. Then it was back into the car for the last stretch to Dublin.

Once we arrived we returned our faithful hire care, and caught a taxi across the city to Barry's hotel for another night. Dad and I formed a delegation to the laundromat soon after we arrived, and then I set out alone to explore the streets of Dublin for myself. It's a big, lively city, and hard not to like. I wandered for 5 or 6 kilometres by my best guess, taking detours down alleys full of Christmas shoppers, and strolling along the shops near the Liffey. The only shop I actually went into was a sort of "alternative" bookshop. You know you've not walked into a particularly commercial venture when you're greeted by walls of poetry, Irish mythology, philosophy and the edgier classics... and when the "popular fiction" is hidden down the back and contemptuously marked "3 for the price of 1". The philosophy section was marked only by a label that said "Big Ideas". This was my kind of bookshop. I wanted to buy a rather large book that said it was a sympathetic history of the Fenians, but it was outside my budget. Hell, I wanted to work in the place! I bought a birthday present for my friend C, and hurried out before I saw anything else too wonderful to pass up.

Down the street from the bookshop I flirted briefly with the temptations of the Dublin Wool Mill (beautiful cloaks! Ultra-snuggly jumpers! ...Exorbitant prices!) before hurrying away again. By now it was dark and most of the shops were closing, and I had strayed into slightly shadier backstreets. I consulted my map and returned to our hotel.

Soon after everyone got back (dad from the laundromat, and the others from an internet cafe), we went out for dinner on O'Connell Street at Murray's Bar, where the others had eaten the night I was sick. I ordered delicious Limerick ham, and this time managed an entire pint of Guinness on my own. Sadly, I have developed a taste for it - sad, because everybody (except the breweries) agrees Guinness outside Ireland isn't worth the effort. Once we had toddled back to the hotel, Pip made me walk in a straight line along her scarf to prove I wasn't tipsy...

...And the cow had laid down her scarf in a curve!

County Tipperary and Cashel

Pip and I slept in this morning (sinful when on holidays, but we were exhausted). While we dozed, mum and dad drove out along the peninsula to look at the Blasket islands across the water - they're both very interested in the history of the area. The Blaskets were almost completely isolated from contemporary "modern" life on the mainland, right up until the islands were evacuated sometime in the 1950s; no electricity, no "entertainment" as other people would have understood the term then. People on the Blaskets would visit others' houses of an evening to play music and tell stories - with no need for memory-corrupting writing, the oral history of the place had practically gone centuries undisturbed when anthropologists first got interested. (Yeah, I shouldn't have slept in, should I?)

The parents arrived back about 10, which Mrs O'Huiggins said was the ideal time to serve breakfast - she'd been to Mass that morning, along with probably every other non-tourist inhabitant of Dingle. We ate, and then packed. Mrs O'Huiggins' ginger cat came in to help Pip and I in a catty sort of way, by sitting on every item of clothing we needed to put away.



We said our goodbyes to Mrs O'Huiggins, who had expressed appalled surprise at the idea of anyone wanting to visit Tipperary county, which was our next destination. Nigel had simply laughed when we told him, and other people had made "hmmm" noises. Somehow, I get the impression Tipperary has a bad reputation... we were going, though, largely because mum and I wanted to see the place where such a lot of our family history had originated. (Trust our ancestors to pick a place like that, hey?)

The roads were even windier than the day before, with lots of blind corners. Our fellow drivers paid no heed, however, overtaking with metres to spare. A couple of times we had to pull out around oncoming tractors that were trimming the hedges. Meanwhile, it was pouring with fine, misty rain. We arrived in Ballyporeen unscathed, however, and strolled around the churchyard (no relevant headstones. Looks like our family were too poor to afford anything but a grave. I'm only assuming they were buried in the churchyard...). Ballyporeen's main street was sadly uninspiring on a grey, rainy Sunday, but perhaps it's always been that way. We know that part of the family moved to England within a few generations to escape the potato famine - they turn up in census records in some of the most notorious slums in London a few years later. I imagine even that was preferable to the alternatives back home, though. Seeing the historic "workhouses" in Ireland had been chilling.



We set off again, looking for somewhere to stay the night. There was a loo-dash in Micheltown that was nearly doomed to disaster when the public auto-loo turned out to be closed, but the local supermarket took pity on us, and we bought biscuits in gratitude. We stopped in a place called Cahir, because one of the places in the main street promised rooms with a view of the city's castle ruins, but the woman in the shop below was prickly and the prices were too high for us. Again we set out, and drove to Cashel. Dusk was settling, and we were getting a little desperate after driving down so many one-way streets offering fleeting glimpses of bed and breakfast rooms in the wrong direction. At last mum stopped the car and sent dad and I to ask at the first B & B we came to, which turned out to be Ashmore House. We knocked on the sunny yellow door, and were let into a hallway with the most amazing collection of tourist paraphernalia I have ever seen. The stuffed squirrel caught my eye first; see if you can spot it in tomorrow's photo. The first price the woman offered us was again too high, but remembering what Nigel had said ("always, always haggle!"), dad made his face fall expertly, and we moved as if to apologise and leave. Instant price-cut! We were shown the proposed rooms, and it was a deal. Nigel, wherever you are - you are brilliantly evil.



Ashmore house turns out to have been Cashel's priests' house, and was built in 1730. It's a wonderful building, with creaky stairs and big bay-windows. The owners Laura and Brendan have done the interior up to match, but with the strange addition of all their thousands of souvenirs - Brendan used to be a merchant sailor, and has been all over the world. There are the tackiest sort of Japanese ceramics and plastic boomerangs all over the walls, along with stuffed death-adders and garishly-painted Indonesian carvings. Needless to say, it was a fascinating place to stay. And found by mistake, not design!

After we'd dumped our stuff I sat downstairs and checked my email, to discover to my horror that an old friend is having fairly major brain surgery in January, while I'm still away. There was other news as well, but that piece dominated in a hideous way. The four of us set out for a rather subdued dinner at a too-modern Irish pub, Kearny's gate hotel. The food was delicious, but my mind was on other things. It's awful to be utterly powerless to do anything for someone in that position until after the fact. The soonest I can see her is a couple of weeks into the recovery period. Arrrrgh.

I spent the rest of the night chatting with Pat over the internet, the both of us trying to tease out the details of his new idea about joining the police force. End result was that I got to bed very late, but much reassured about at least ONE piece of news from back home...

County Kerry and Dingle

Breakfast this morning involved the first fresh fruit we'd seen for quite some time, and we fell upon it ravenously.

Just before breakfast, I'd received a text from Pat, asking in true-to-form suddenness whether I'd object to him joining the police force. My gut reaction was one of horror (but more on that later). Of course, rely upon my... angelic sister to lighten the mood. Her first response was "Ooh, you'll have a man in uniform!!" *Chuckles*...

Just as we were saying our thank-yous to our hosts and piling into the car, Pip accidentally crashed the bag she was carrying against the side of the car door, smashing her present to her friend Tess - a decorated piggy-bank. I picked up all the bits and showed a horrified Pip that the pieces can be glued near-exactly, but it meant there was an unhappiness to our departure. Silence reigned in the car, so I looked more steadfastly out the window than usual, at the impressive scenery. We were leaving the more built-up parts of Ireland as we headed south down the western coast.



The roads became curlier as they became more scenic. At one point we drove a set of 5 hairpin bend squiggles on a steep gradient, and popped out at the top into an incredible spot with panoramic views down the valley, to Galway Bay in the distance. Sheep grazed on all the hills in the foreground, on hilly fields that seemed to be infinite shades of rich green.

Mid-morning the land was becoming bleaker, and the animals scrawnier. Rocks showed above the grass in the fields, and we rounded a corner to find the enormous carpark that services the Cliffs of Mohr visitors centre. I could see it was windy even before getting out of the car; huge black crows hung on the blustery air, buffeted by gusts; or shot bullet-like over peoples' heads. We got out, cautiously, and donned two jackets each - plus every scarf, glove and beanie we could lay our hands on.

Across the road, hills rose on either side, and past them the world seemed to end. Once we got closer (battling the wind, which was literally threatening to blow Pip over), it became apparent why Nigel had recommended this spot so vehemently. Once you get to the railings, you can see the black cliffs on either side plunge at least a hundred metres straight down into the Atlantic ocean. They are craggy, and uncompromising, and wildly beautiful. The sea was rough and seal-skin blue to match the overcast sky. Towers of spray were shooting up at the bases of the cliffs, and white foam washed into the sea-caves far beneath us. There were seagulls suspended above the waves, somehow managing not to be dashed against the cliffs each time a gust of wind howled our way. They seem to roost mainly in one spot where the cliffs form a huge amphitheatre shape, and from above you can only make them out as white dots sprinkled down the cliff-face. Apparently brave people used to climb down to collect the gulls' eggs for food. Let me tell you - there is NO way those eggs can have tasted good enough to warrant such a climb.



After a good look, and a slow, wind-battered walk around the tops, we headed back for the car. For lunch we stopped at a little one-stop-shop in the middle of nowhere in county Kerry (or at least, as far from "nowhere" as it's possible to be in so small a country) and ordered pies and "Taytos" chips, because Nigel had recommended them to Pip. The girl behind the counter seemed appalled to be confronted by us (perhaps it was the accents?), but brightened up when Pip asked her what the sign saying "faílte" meant. "Welcome", apparently - we'd been seeing it in a lot of places, including on bars of handsoap. The other interesting thing about this shop was that they were selling bars of compressed peat for people's fireplaces, in place of wood.

We rattled on in the car, along typically Irish roads. Next time you drive along the freeway, take notice of how many hills have been cut in half to let you pass, and then consider what the road would be like if it instead followed the curve of every hill and bump along the way - that's what Irish country roads are like. I was practicing extreme pie-eating in the back as Mozart's Dies Irae played in the background (nearly ended up face-first in the filling several times - Pip found it hilarious).The advantage to these sorts of road is that the landscape around remains beautiful to look at, as you wind through it. Eventually we came to Shannon, and boarded the car ferry there - it saves a trip around the bay which would have added another half-day's drive or so.

By around 3.30, we had made it to the town of Dingle, where we'd booked rooms in Mrs O'Huiggins' bed and breakfast. She greeted us with delight, tea, and biscuits, in that order - all served in her living room - which, sure enough, was warmed by a peat fire. Before dusk fell, mum and dad and I set out to explore the streets of Dingle. It's a more traditional Irish town than Dublin or Galway, being untouched by skyscrapers and the like. In fact, in the summer it apparently becomes a sort of artists' colony, so many of the shops are devoted to arts and crafts. What I loved most about it, though, were the buildings lining each street: they were all painted in different bright colours. There were purple houses next to aqua ones, next to canary yellow and salmon pink shops. I even saw a pub that was fire-engine red. The effect wasn't garish, surprisingly... just cheerful and friendly.



There were several other sights, including a hotel built spanning a small river. Close by was a large sculpture of a crucifixion scene, that turned out not at all to be a world war memorial like we had guessed - but instead a war of Irish independence memorial. Those wounds obviously still run very, very deep, especially here in the west country.

The three of us wandered quite a long way in the light drizzle, down the hill and around to the docks. It being winter, many of the fishing boats were drydocked, but there were still a few in the marina (I suppose even in off-season there are still different types of fish to catch). All the orange and green fishing nets had been thrown in piles on the wharf, as well - though if that was so they could dry out, then it was a triumph of optimism.



Mum then split from us to go and find a bookshop - she was after a copy of a famous oral history she'd been keen to read, all about life growing up on the Blaskets - islands just off the Dingle peninsula. Dad and I scurried back to the main street, hoping to find a wool shop before everything closed - I was thinking that lovely Irish woolen scarves or jumpers would make nice presents for family and friends. Well, we found the shop I'd seen, and the things on sale were beautifully snuggly and well-made... but at 75 euros a scarf I decided I'd better think up other ideas. Meep!

By 5, dad and I had decided we'd better walk back down to near the docks to find mum. It turned out she'd gone back up the hill to our b & b, so dad and I got tricky and decided we'd find a shortcut.

About 8 shortcuts later we were hopelessly confused, and retraced our steps right back the way we had come - a gigantic dogleg in the dark. Dad was making consoling comments about the map not being to scale, but I wasn't bothered overly much - I'm just so used to being lost...



We returned at about 6.30, to find mum and pip writing postcards. After a desultory attempt to dry our clothes off a little, we set out once again down the hill to the waterfront... but this time taking the approved shortcut, which mum had actually managed to find earlier in the day. We had dinner at John Benny's waterside pub, which involved lots of chips and carnivorous stuff, and was extremely yummy. I noticed almost every local made their order in Gaelic, not English.

Dad took Pip back up the hill soon after dinner, because she was falling asleep. Mum and I, on the other hand, had decided we weren't going to leave Ireland without having heard some traditional pub music first! The band didn't arrive until 9.30, so we set out in search of an internet cafe in which to spend the in-between time. Dingle possess two internet cafes, signs of modern times creeping in - but of course they resolutely shut early on a Saturday night, ready for the Sabbath the next day! Instead we bought more postcards and stamps, and located the nearest postbox.

Back to John Benny's we went, and by the time we;d written postcards, and mum had ordered us each a half pint of Guinness, the band had started arriving. The guitarist was the first to arrive, and I was a little dubious as to how "traditional" this music was going to be. However, not long after he'd skulled half his Guinness and tuned his instrument, another man turned up and unpacked an accordion. The two of them started to play - wonderful! The notes came very fast, and followed the same sort of repeated patterns I'm used to from Irish fiddle music - but these two varied their rhythm and their little trills each time they repeated. At a wink from the accordion player, they would embark upon a new piece, grafted straight onto the old one, without missing a beat. Mum and I were sitting in a corner just across from them, and the music was infectious - I couldn't help but keep time with one foot.

About 15 minutes into their set, another man arrived with a mysteriously-shaped case. I guessed fiddle, and was very excited at the thought. But, even better: when he produced his instrument, it turned out to be a set of the Irish bagpipes! I'd seen them, but never heard them played. He settled down with the other two mid-song, and joined in. The Irish bagpipes aren't blown into, like Scottish ones; they seem to work instead by way of a pair of bellows that the player keeps tucked under his arm, which powers the "flute" appendage. The bagpipes player seemed to be the most experienced of the three (maybe that's why he got away with turning up late?), but the other two were very good as well. The guitarist seemed a little nervous before each key change, but I don't remember him ever slipping up. I also noticed that whereas the other two spent their time grinning and winking at the people seated around them, the accordion player stared steadfastly at the ceiling, with a look of utmost concentration.

Mum and I spent an enthralled hour and a half drinking and listening, before quite suddenly becoming aware of the fact that we were beginning to sink face-first towards the table with sleepiness. We left not long after I had my first victory over a half-pint. Back up the hill we went at 11 and were nearly locked out, but we were rescued by Mrs O'Huiggins just before she went to bed.

Galway

This morning we left Barry's Hotel by taxi, and were driven by a man who claimed once to have been a getaway driver. I think I believed him, too...

He dropped us off at a car hire place, and in next to no time we'd been set up with another vehicle. We set out from Dublin, bound west for Galway. One of the most delightful things I found when travelling around Ireland was that place names from the folk music I play back home crop up everywhere. "Galway Tom" was one of the first I ever played...

Recalling one of Nigel's suggestions to dad, we stopped in Tullamore to see the Tullamore Dew distillery. The whiskey is made elsewhere now, so the old building has been converted into a rather quirky museum - not just displaying the whiskey-making process, but also giving snippets of the history of Tullamore (like the time the pub was burned down in a fire started by a hot air balloon... I kid you not at all). The distillery seems to have formed the backbone of the town's economy, and there were wonderful newspaper cuttings recounting the day the distillery owner drove Tullamore's first motor car through the town. There was also a fascinating video of a master cooper at work; making a milk churn rather than a barrel. To get a watertight seal simply from heat-moulded bits of wood is an impressive piece of mastery.

The "bonus feature" of the tickets to the distillery museum is that when you're done with the display, you can sample Tullamore whiskey or liquor (except for poor Pippo, of course, who's under the drinking age). Oh gawd. I went for the whiskey, and really oughtn't have. It's... errr... "nice"... but in the same way that pouring battery acid down your throat might be "nice", if it tasted good. That stuff burrrrns. Mum asked for the liquor, which I also tried... less harsh, but sicky-sweet. I think I'll be avoiding whiskey from now on. The aftertaste (more like aftershock) made me lightheaded - like sniffing petrol. Pip, of course, thought this was riotously funny. (It probably was...)

We stopped at a bakery for lunch, which we ate in the car - sitting in a park would have been nicer, but it was too cold. On we went...

We reached the outskirts of Galway around 3 pm, and settled upon the first open-for-winter B & B we came to. Turned out we were not actually on the outskirts of Galway itself, but a little commuter town close by - Oranmore. The B & B was, however, very comfortable, so we stayed put.

Around 3 we set out to take a look at Galway, and explore in the hour or so before darkness set in. We ended up in a network of streets aimed squarely at Christmas shoppers; lit with Christmas lights on each side. I stopped in a music shop at one point to buy a book on Irish fiddle technique; it's one thing to have lots of music, but you can't interpret technique just from sheet music. Around the shop I noticed there were cases and cases of tin whistles, and lots of posters advertising bodhran lessons in the town.

We wandered around a bit further; at one point ending up in a string of fairly seedy back alleys, which were an interesting contrast to the "prettified" streets only a few blocks away. We didn't spend long, though - it was chilly and dark, and we were all tired. Quite soon after evening fell we drove back to Oranmore for dinner in Keane's pub, where I managed a quarter of a pint of Guinness. Dad was very happy to finish the glass when I suddenly realised I couldn't.

We pottered home to write more travel diary, and I sat beside a stuffed pheasant in the sitting room to make a phone call to Pat that I probably oughtn't have. Emotionally it was worth it, if not financially. And then, after such a long day yesterday, bed was a welcome prospect!

Dublin 2

Today was perhaps the most massive yet. I'm astonished by how much we packed in. Here goes a recount...

The morning began in a flurry for Pip and I, because I'd set our alarm for pm, not am. We wolfed down breakfast before the whole family dashed (or hobbled, in mum's blistered case) to the bus station several blocks away to see if the Newgrange bus tour was going ahead that morning.

Thing is, my family and I get travel-snobby about bus tours, and tend to avoid them completely. This is to do with the fact that they're pricey, you get a little over 5 minutes at each stop before you're whisked back onto the coach for another half hour of driving, and you're not left free to choose all the places you go (history-lovers inevitably get roped into shopping trips, for example).

However, in this case we'd agonised a bit because the benefit of taking a bus to see the various prehistoric monuments nearby was that we wouldn't waste time getting lost, and would be able to fit more into our day. We'd asked about a bunch of different tours in the Dublin tourist office the night before, only to be told that most of them don't run in the off-season; that one of them didn't include Newgrange; and that our final hope was that at least six other people would turn up in time for the next morning's Bus Eireann tour.

Well, we got to the bus depot and asked, and were told that the verdict would come at 10 am. It was looking very uncertain, because only 8 people out of a minimum of 10 had shown up.


While we killed time waiting, dad and I wandered over the road to stroll alongside docklands of the Liffey, Dublin's river. Not many boats around, but there were hoardes of seagulls cavorting around us. There's a sculpture set up not far from the bus station, dedicated to victims of the potato famine; it shows a group of exaggerated, skeletal figures trudging towards the port. A man walking his dog had stopped to take a look at the same time we were there, and the animal was sniffing the emaciated statue-dog at the back of the group, as if to introduce itself. An odd tableau. Dad and I wandered back to the depot.

Miraculously, one more person had appeared for our tour, and the driver decided (very kindly) that he'd set out with just 9 of us. We boarded the bus together with an American man and his exchange-student daughter, a German man, and a Japanese girl travelling with her Irish host. Our driver paused "Enya's Greatest Hits" long enough to introduce himself as John, and to welcome us in Gaelic, and we were off. I must admit I was dubious.

The first place we stopped was called Monasterboice, and its claim to fame are two of the best-preserved ancient Celtic crosses in the country, along with an ancient round bell-tower. These are all situated in the middle of an old church yard, though there's no church left. Rather, there's no single, complete church left - the outline walls of several are left half-standing, and new graves have been dug in the middle of them. "Recycling" of space, with a vengeance.

The crosses were cryptically beautiful. John explained briefly what a few of the scenes carved onto each face represented; scenes of the garden of Eden, Cain and Abel... together with older designs of men with intertwined beards in Celtic knotwork designs. You can see a Celtic interpretation of the crucifixion in my photo below. The older of the two crosses was the more obscure, and I couldn't recognise any of the Biblical scenes on it. Back in the coach, however, and seeing that I'd shown an interest, John lent me two guidebooks, one of which explained the carvings at length (the children in the fiery furnace, for example, which had gone over my head). This was the point where I started to realise that this bus tour might not have to fit the stereotype, depending on which questions we asked...


Back onto the coach we went, after the obligatory toilet stop, and we set off once more - passing at one point, mystifyingly, a peacock farm. For milliners' use, apparently. This stretch of the drive was quite long, but John had lightened up considerably and kept up a steady stream of stories as we passed through the Irish countryside. Interesting to see one particular individual's views of life in Ireland; for instance, at one point he mentioned how "fortunate" it was that the church was beginning to lose a lot of its authority over the government. Having been told time and again how fiercely religious the Irish are, the comment was a surprise to me. (Gee, Ele - could people sometimes not fit the stereotype you expect? *Rolls eyes*...)

We disembarked at Newgrange visitor centre. Newgrange, I ought to explain, is Ireland's most famous megalithic passage tomb. There are others like Knowth (which is more highly decorated with carvings), but I think Newgrange is the only one visitors can actually enter. To describe it; imagine a stone tunnel ending in a domed vault - and the whole thing covered under a mound of earth. We know cremated remains of humans were "buried" in passage tombs, and we don't know a hell of a lot else about them except that they held some sort of important religious significance to the people who built them... probably.


The Newgrange visitors' centre is accordingly interpretation-rich, and evidence-poor. It's a tricky balance for the curators to strike - between making up a lovely fiction about the site, and being too cautious to offer up any guesses at all. The compromise seems to be to teach what is known about the people who lived around the area at the time (their tools, what they ate, how they might possibly have built their houses).

Anyhow, we walked through the displays and reconstructed scenarios, and then Pip and I grabbed some sugar-hit food to sustain us (no time for lunch!). Everyone in the centre boarded a shuttlebus which took some 20 of us out to the site for a guided tour. Paul was our guide's name, and he showed us the spiral-carved entrance-stone that was unearthed when workmen were trying to build a road on the site in the 19th century. I can hardly imagine how eerie it must have been to discover a buried tomb passageway,and to pull the stone away from the entrance... (yes, I got caught up in the atmosphere at this point). Most of the entrance has been "revamped" by the archaeologists of the 19th century, but take a look at that entrance stone:


We climbed the stairs of the reconstructed entry-way, and walked into the passage itself. It's very narrow in parts, and you have to duck your head to fit under the modern-day concrete supports. After about 5 metres or so of passageway, the rock walls open out into a vault, just big enough to fit the group of 20 or so. The vault is incredible, considering that it must be roughly four metres high... and despite being constructed thousands of years ago, using only overlapping stones without mortar, no reconstruction or reinforcement has been needed at all. That is what is meant by "monumental" building.

Around the end-chamber are three niches - those, plus the entry passage, radiate like the arms of a cross. The niches contain intricate carvings, as well as large "basin stones": function unknown but happily guessed-at - they might have held offerings; they might have held water or sacrificial blood; they might even have been places used to birth Irish kings. I was cheeky about that last idea, and asked if there was any evidence to support the interpretation at all... that got a grin from our guide, and an admission that it was just a good story he liked to tell. Legend has it that the Irish hero Cuchulain was conceived in the passage tomb at Newgrange... all I can say is, it seems like an extremely uncomfortable place for it. >.>

I noticed a lot of graffiti and names carved on the walls inside, with dates like 1874 scratched out of the rock. Paul explained that for a while after the tomb's rediscovery there was full public access. Interesting thought occurred to me - at what age or what point does it stop being vandalism, and become "history" instead?

The tomb is spectacular in a lot of ways, but particularly for its engineering. It's designed so that at Winter Solstice each year, the sun shines straight up the passageway and into the niche opposite. There's a lightbulb triggered during each tour that simulates this effect, but it only gives you a vague impression. Our guide, who had been lucky enough to see the actual event, says the sun illuminates the entire chamber in a golden light. The spectacle is so sought-after that the authorities have set up a lottery; the only way you can ever get to see Newgrange at winter solstice is by being an employee; the Irish prime minister; or by winning a place in the lottery. You see, the chamber isn't big enough to fit the 28 000 people who put their names down each year.

After an hour or so it was back on the shuttlebus, and back on our own bus. Our final stop was the hill of Tara, which is the legendary seat of the Irish high kings, and has more history and mystical significance than you could poke several sticks at. As the bus approached the hill, which is visible from a great distance, John explained to us that an argument of epic proportions is going on over the M3 motorway being built nearby. A lot of people (even Seamus Heaney) are angry about the road going so "close" to the hill, saying it'll desecrate a sacred site. I remember our friend Claire, who heads the World Archaeological Conference, telling us about trying to keep the peace about the issue at this year's conference in Ireland... tricky. Anyhow, John told us in no uncertain terms that he believes these people are "a bunch of crazies", and that the road works don't go anywhere near the hill. On that last point, I'm inclined to agree with him. They're a long way away from anything on the hill, and lots of residences are built closer...


Once we got up the hill and parked, John led us into this tiny little stone building, which houses a second-hand bookshop run by a man named Michael Slavin. John had been referring all morning to taking us to see an "audiovisual presentation with a difference", and each time with an amused little smirk. I had imagined we'd be shown something produced by John's "crazies".

Instead, we were greeted inside the bookshop by Michael with his old slide projector, propped up on a pile of the thicker books, who proceeded to give us a illustrated potted history of Tara and some of its myths. He also sang us an old folk song about the hill. It was a fantastic introduction to the site, from a man who when Googled turns out to be a respected historian... as well as a retired show-jumping commentator, so he can spin a story very well. Each time he talked about the stone "of destiny", his voice dropped about two octaves on the last words.

Then it was out onto the hill in the wind and cold. You have to walk through an old churchyard before getting out onto the hill, and in doing so you pass a statue of St Patrick. I couldn't help but think he looked a little lost and sulky, standing alone on the outskirts of a place so heavily associated with paganism. Poor St Pat. He looked cold, too.

We paid our respects to the ancient Sheela Na Gig carving in the churchyard, then John sent us out through a little gate and onto the hillside (he didn't want to get his shoes muddy, so he went back to talk to Michael in the bookshop). The site is littered with ancient monuments, including the mound of the savages, the site of the artefacts which Pip and I had been looking at in the archaeology museum the day before. There were double-circle mounds, the remains of a hill fort, and the "dining hall" (which was probably actually something like a ceremonial avenue, but it's another great story). The stone of destiny failed to roar to declare any of us king of Ireland, and the sheep took little interest in the latest batch of tourists to trample over their field.

We also stopped at the holy well, further down the hill. A lot of people have tied coloured ribbon on the bars of the grate that covers the waterhole, I suppose as "offerings". Someone had even tied a pair of pink shoelaces on. Alas, it was too dark to show you any unblurry photos.

Back to the bus we went as dusk fell, with a brief stop in the "fairy shoppe" to buy postcards. On the trip home I was left wishing again that I knew more about Irish history; the day had been absolutely fascinating, a complicated mix of history and mythology. I hadn't expected the bus tour to be as wonderful as it was; John had really opened up by the end, after realising that he had a bus full of people who were interested in what he was saying, not just in "photographing the sights". To think the tour had been our last resort!

The bus trip back to Dublin left me woozy with motion sickness, so by the time we got back mum had to steer me down the road again to our hotel. I had a splitting headache, so I went straight to bed while the rest of my family gallantly ventred out again to find a laundromat. I owe them bigtime for that...