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Wanderung 9

Idly Eyeing an Idyllic Emerald Isle.

April 2005

April 21, 2005 - Driving around the lowest Peninsula and on to Kinsale.

We had breakfast with our genial host one last time and departed to the south in order to tour the last of the peninsulas in southwest Ireland.

The first leg of the day's journey was up and over the Cahar Mountains on the Beara Peninsula to Glengariff on Bantry Bay. Once again we had a sunny day and wonderful views of the mountains as we wound our way across the gap, which even had a tunnel in the middle!

In Glengariff we parked the car and took a 15-minute boat ride to Garinish Island where we visited a large area of formal gardens. Altho short, the boat ride out gave us good views of the harbor area and a great look at a bunch of sleepy-looking harbor seals sunning themselves on the rocks.

Since we were quite early in the season, meteorologically as well as touristically speaking, and I had worried about there being nothing to see in the gardens. But as it turned out a lot of flowers were already in bloom, presumably once again due to the climatic influence of the Gulf Stream. Once on the island, we first turned right on the main loop path to visit the Italian Gardens section of the complex. That turned out to consist of a reflecting pool with Italianate porticos at each end, plus associated beds of plants on the sides. That section was very pretty in a formal garden way.

A bit further on we also found a Greek temple-like structure built on a natural overlook. The views of the bay to the west and the hills beyond were fantastic. At a Martello tower on the south side of the island we had more great views of the bay to the south, east, and north.

Despite my fears of being too early we ran across lots of flowering plants everywhere we looked. We had pretty much expected to see purple rhododendrons and azaleas in bloom, but we were surprised at the variety of other blooming plants. We saw camellias, bluebells and a number of other flowers we could not identify like a bush with sprays of small, white, bell-shaped flowers hanging down.


 

But even stranger than the flowers was the variety of trees and bushes planted in the gardens. Some I knew, but most I did not. In particular, there was a pine tree from Tasmania, I think, that looked for all the world like a weeping willow and nothing at all like a U.S. pine tree. One bush had pink-colored leaves while another sported green leaves, but in an "X" cross-sectional shape that I had never seen before. I just had to wonder what evolutionary quirk of fate had resulted in that. Finally, in the small "jungle" section we found tree ferns from New Zealand, I think, that stood 6-10 feet high and had 4-foot fronds branching out from a central crown. It really looked like a scene from Jurassic Park. As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, "Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"


 

Returning to the mainland, we had lunch at the "Brick Oven" in Bantry, where the portions were so large that I could just barely finish my lasagna much less poach from the plates of Monika or Lois as I am want to do. We continued south a ways and then turned west to sample a bit of the southernmost peninsula. We drove out as far as Toomore and then curled back east. Along the way we saw ruined churches with their graveyards, and other partial ruins that might have been the remains of old forts, but we only stopped briefly to take pictures. Altho we didn't sample this peninsula as thoroughly as the others, it seemed to have gentler grades and less traffic. We thought it might be very nice for a bicycle trip some day.

As we left the peninsula and entered the more densely settled areas to the east, the roads improved quite a bit. We took the National 71 road part of the way and that allowed me to keep the pace, which in turn gave us enough time to drive all the way to Kinsale, our next definite stop, by around 5:30 p.m. As we approached Kinsale, we saw a long beach with surf pounding into it, and out in the surf were sailboarders zipping along. Closer inshore we saw folks using large, semicircular kites to pull themselves along on a small surfboard of some sort. It looked like a whale of a lot of fun, but I did see one guy do a head-over-heels flip off his board into the surf, so it's not for the faint hearted.

I was getting pretty tired of driving by the time we reached Kinsale, and unfortunately the worst was yet to come. They were rebuilding a key intersection in the middle of town, with the result that all traffic was squeezed into the two-lane road right along the harbor. Since this was Ireland, cars were parked every which way and the road was effectively narrowed even further, so I had to keep and extremely close eye on my side clearances and an even closer eye on miscellaneous pedestrians as we crept thru town.

Not wanting to be caught in that kind of traffic mess more than once, we waited until we were headed back out of town before looking for a B&B for the night. Fortunately we found a set of them at the first left turn out of town, and the Hilltop B&B (on top of the hill, as you might guess) had rooms available. Better yet, there turned out to be a pedestrian walkway right down the hill onto the main street, so we could leave the car parked and walk into the center of town in about 5 minutes (That was downhill, of course. The uphill time was more like 10 minutes!)

Happy to be able to stay at one place again for 2-3 nights, we unpacked and set up our rooms. While Monika arranged our clothes, I unplugged our water heater and set up our various electrical chargers for the camera battery, the AA cells for the GPS, and for Baby. Since everything we had was dual 120-240 volt compatible, I only had to use the 3-prong outlet to 2-prong U.S. receptacle adapter. Had I known it would go so easily, I would have brought along two of the adapters and left the actual 240-to-120-volt transformer, which was bulky and heavy, back at home! Since this is exactly what happened to us in Germany during Wanderung 5, I really should have known better, but sometimes I am a slow learner.

We had not yet had our evening meal, so afterwards we wandered down to the center of town to find a meal. At the Muddy Maher Pub, Lois and I had soup with brown bread, which turned out to be really thick, creamy tomato soup that was very good. Monika had the fried potato skins, and they had been stuffed with cheese, meat, and onions to make a respectable meal for folks who eat only a light evening meal, as we tended to do.

Lois even remembered eating at Patsy's Place on her first visit to Kinsale about 17 years ago, but it seemed to serve only breakfast and lunch and was closed for the evening. I was amazed at the raft of small sailboats tied up out in the harbor. I wondered when that had developed and why in Kinsale since I had not seen them in any of the harbors out on the peninsulas we had visited. It seemed to me that there were a sufficient number of the yachts to significantly help in keeping the local economy of Kinsale humming along. After dinner we stopped off at a grocery store for some water, cookies, and chocolate (a balanced diet?) and repaired to the sunroom at our B&B for the evening.

As we sat in the sunroom we had a wonderful view of the harbor and the west side of Kinsale. Watching dusk settle quietly over harbor and munching on cookies. I updated the journal on Baby, Lois read "A Place of Stones" by Deirdre Purcell, and Monika read "Der Wunschbaum" by Sandra Paretti. It was a very low-key, some might even say comatose, way to spend the evening, but it fit the three of us pretty well. The only thing we all regretted was that live music was being played in the pubs down the hill and we were missing it. The main problem was that the live music inevitably started around 9:30 at night, which was exactly the time we were preparing to go to bed!

Copyright 2005 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog
Map
April 2005
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Epilog

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