April 15, 2005 - Along the lower Shannon River

Reluctantly we packed up to leave, had another great breakfast, and drove off through Limerick to follow the southern bank of the Shannon River westward. I wanted to take in a museum dedicated to the flying boats of yesteryear and we all thought it would be fun to drive along the river for a while. We stopped off at the small town of Askeaton along the way and saw the ruins of Desmond castle nestled in a curve of the River Deel. Both the castle and the town struck us as very picturesque, but in quite different ways. The castle was rugged, gloomy, and awe-inspiring whereas the buildings in the town were cute, colorful, and inviting.

We saw quite a number of the small towns in Ireland where the buildings were painted in different colorful pastels, reminding us a bit of the French towns in Quebec that we toured a long time ago. Lois read that these pastel colors had become popular after the "Tidy Town" awards were created by the Irish government about 30 years ago. We did notice the proud "Tidy Town award" plaques usually placed at the town boundaries. The chosen towns were not only tidy in the literal sense, being uniformly quite litter free, but also in the aesthetic sense, so it was a real pleasure to walk around in them.

Another short hop in the car brought us to the flying boat museum in Foynes. If you are an aviation nut like I am, this museum is interesting because it represents an intriguing era in aviation history. It is, however, quite small and easily done in an hour or less. For about 15-20 minutes we watched archival footage from old newsreel films about various stages in the development of the flying boat service between Foynes, Ireland, and New York City. There were more false starts and difficulties with the range of the Short flying boats used by the British and the Sikorsky flying boats used by the Americans than I had ever imagined. Apparently a large percentage of the east-to-west crossings had to turn back if they encountered heavy headwinds and ran low of fuel before the "point of no return".

By 1939 the new Boeing 341 Clippers had the range, so the period of reliable trans-Atlantic flying boat service was from 1939 to 1945 when land-based long-range aircraft like the DC4 took over the route from Shannon airport across the river. But the big flying boats were unique in that they had a huge amount of space per passenger. Flying in our current generation of crowded, cramped aircraft, I often have an unreasonable envy of the folks who flew with real bunk beds and ate at tables with real silverware and dishes. That's silly, of course, since the flight back then took 3-4 times as long as it does today, but haven't you ever had a yen to be able to travel with the speed of a modern jet aircraft and yet have the space and amenities of, say, first-class train travel?

To the credit of the whole flying boat operation, only one aircraft was lost in an accident during the entire 6-year period of active service. Given the less than stellar reliability of the piston-engine aircraft of that period, the crude navigation, and the equally crude weather forecasting plus the vulnerability of the low-flying aircraft to the weather, that safety record was quite an accomplishment. The museum had, in fact, some of the huge tube radios used to communicate with the aircraft, as well as some of the wreckage of the one plane that flew into a nearby mountain in the fog. Surprisingly, many of the passengers and crew survived that crash, due in part I would expect to the low speed of impact as well as the strength of the flying boat hull.

I was surprised to learn from the exhibits that Ireland stayed neutral during World War II, so transatlantic service continued using the Foynes facility during the war. I would be interested in the type of arguments used in Ireland and other neutral countries like Switzerland and Sweden to justify staying out of the war. I expect, however, that it is as easy for politicians to concoct compelling justifications for doing what is in the country's self interest as it is for each of us to concoct justifications for doing what is in our own self interest. It's doing what is directly against our self interest that is so difficult.

Continuing on our journey, we stopped for lunch at a cute little restaurant in Tarbert, another one of the charming Irish small towns. This restaurant was in an old store that fronted directly on the main street. One problem in Ireland is that since parking lots are extremely rare and almost never attached to the restaurants, we couldn't judge the quality of the food by the number of cars parked out in front like we do in the U.S. But when we opened the door and saw the restaurant was filled with local folks, we immediately knew that we had come to the right place. Despite the fact that the restaurant was only lit from a large front window, there was plenty of light and a very cheerful ambiance. We had, in fact, another great meal and it carried us through the rest of the day sufficiently well that we just had a light snack for dinner later that evening.

Continuing westward after lunch, we finally fetched up in Ballybunion, a seaside resort with some big sand beaches guarded by rocky headlands. I had read about a walking path along the cliff there, and once we found it down by the beach, we parked the car to stretch our legs a bit.

The beach in Ballybunion is actually split into two sections by a small rocky promontory with the ruins of an old castle jutting up from it. The old castle played a role in one of the Irish revolutions against the English and was destroyed as a result. But one wall of it still points skyward as if in continued defiance of the English.

I expect that in the summer, the beaches are chock a block with people on vacation. However, we were, as usual, way out of season so we were alone on the beach except for one family and a person taking a couple of dogs out for a romp.

The cliff top trail led us past a trailer park, the first of the kind that we had seen in Ireland, and then entered a golf course. There we encountered the "proceed at your own risk" signs, and in fact the trail looked a bit dicey so we decided to turn around and walk back along the beach. Since it was apparently low tide, we had a nice, broad stretch of water-packed sand to walk on and that made it very nice. The other advantage of walking on the Ballybunion beach at low tide was that we had a chance to investigate the caves low down in the cliffs that would have been awash at high tide.

Having seen the Atlantic coast once again, we turned back eastward to drive through Tralee to Castlemaine where we wanted to spend the next few nights. Our strategic plan was to use the B&B as a base while we drove around the Dingle and Kerry peninsulas. After a couple of false starts where we either failed to find a B&B or no one was home, we ended up at an old B&B right in the middle of the Castlemaine, which was a very small town. The middle-aged gentleman who let us in, we were later told, had been born in the house, and his parents were already running a B&B there when he was young!

After stowing our bags we all congregated in our room to have sandwiches made from the bread, meat, and cheese we had purchased at a Lidl just outside of Tralee. The Lidl store reminded me of our stay in Germany the previous year, and they had bicycle accessories on sale (see Wanderung 5). Just like in Germany, the prices were really good, so I had picked up a special belt for carrying a cell phone and camera while biking that I later took back to the U.S. Seeing the sun start to set over the Dingle peninsula, we took another brief walk to enjoy the views a see a bit of the town. The town was small enough that after walking less than a block we already were in the cow (sheep?) pastures and the trail became rather muddy. We had to turned back along the roadway, but we did get some nice pictures of the sunset.

The rest of the evening was spent in the downstairs sitting room in front of a warm peat fire. Surprisingly, the peat did not seem to give off much smoke, less in fact than I would have expected from a wood fire. Our landlady told us that folks held title to certain areas of the peat bogs and would either cut the "turf" themselves or have someone else do it for them. The peat itself was quite light, less than half the weight of a similar volume of wood or coal in my estimation. In any case, the fire kept us warm as I brought the journal up to date while Monika and Lois played tag team with some crossword puzzles, but we all gave up and trundled off to bed around 10 p.m.