Wanderung 34

Mellifont Abbey

Our number one priority for the day was getting back to Dublin Airport to return the rental car and spend the night at the Clayton Hotel so that we could catch our morning flight the next day. But we figured that we would have a spare hour or two to see something along the way, so we chose to drive a route that would take us near Mellifont Abbey and the New Grange burial mound, both of which are not too far North of Dublin.

As long as the weather held out, the drive South along a major highway was rather pleasant. We were hoping to see another castle, and that cost us time as we went off on two wild goose chases after castles indicated by signs on the major highway. The signs in Ireland do not list distances to a historic attraction and are not placed at any of the minor intersections that you go through to get there. So in the end, it is a case of trying to find many historical places "by guess and by gosh", often ending in complete failure.

So it was for us until we finally saw a castle-like building on the Main Street of Ardee and stopped to take a closer look. That was, in fact a castle, but it was surrounded by construction fencing and not open for visits. What was frustrating was that 2 blocks down the Main Street of Ardee we found Ardee Castle, which was even bigger, but it was also surrounded by construction fencing and not open for visits. Argh!

In any case we continued on our way and the weather held fine until we arrived at Mellifont Abbey, driving in past the ruins of the gatehouse to the parking lot. The Abbey was founded by Cistercians from France in the Middle Ages, and flourished right up until is dissolution by King Henry VIII of England. That was the period when he confiscated all buildings and assets of the Roman Catholic Church in England and its territories, amassing huge wealth for himself but also creating one facet of the Protestant Reformation as a by product.

After dissolution, the Abbey grounds and buildings had been owned by various nobles, and ended up being a grist mill in the 1800s. A lot of the stones had been removed to build the grist mill, but enough of the ruins remained that we could get a pretty clear idea of how the foundations went, and some idea of how nice the Abbey must have been in its heyday. We especially liked the remaining side chapel of the main church, which had relatively intact walls although the interior showed the grime of the centuries. The elegant brickwork of a hand-washing purification type of lavatory still had some of the graceful arches which had adorned that central basin back when the monks were there.

Nowadays, the site of the Abbey is very calm and peaceful, so we had our picnic lunch on a bench that overlooks the main part of the Abbey ruins. It was so quiet, that we could almost hear the echoes of the ghosts of the monks chanting some prayers.

After a restful lunch, we continued by searching for the New Grange Neolithic tomb. We used the GPS to home in on it, and eventually worked out way down to the site, BUT we had forgotten one crucial factor from our visit of 15 years ago: you have to purchase tickets to visit the site at a tourist center in a town about 15 kilometers away and then take a shuttle bus back to the tomb in order to get in. It's a crazy arrangement, but that's the way it is. As it was already well past noon, we were reluctant to spend the extra hour or two that it would cost us to go through the folderol to actually go into the tomb, so instead we took some pictures of the tomb's exterior and continued on our drive down towards our hotel near Swords, just outside the Dublin Airport.

It was just as well that we had the extra time for driving today, because I decided to take the rural roads rather than the motorway to the airport, which cost us a good hour of extra driving time, and then the GPS homed us in on the wrong location for our hotel, which cost us another half an hour or so of backtracking! But by locating the hotel in the GPS's database and homing in on that instead of entering the address listed on their web site, we were guided to the correct location in the end. We toted our stuff up to our room, rested a few minutes, and then drove over to the airport to turn the rental car back in where we had picked it up two weeks back.

That was done quickly, but we hit a roadblock with trying to sign in for our flight the follow day. We had tried to sign in on-line, but for some reason my passport number was not accepted. We wanted to talk to humans at the American Airlines ticket counter, but the counter was closed until the following morning. So leaving that problem unresolved, we took the hotel shuttle bus back, grabbed a burger and a grilled chicken sandwich from the gas station next door, and retreated to our room for our evening meal.

We hit the sack early as we had to go through US Customs already at the airport before boarding the airplane, which was another possible layer of delays. Our plane departs at 9:50, so Monika figures getting there by 7 o'clock ought to be good enough. I am less sanguine, and still wonder why my passport number is not being accepted. We shall see.