Seaviews, churches, more
Sunday, 14 May 2017
We missed the pre-breakfast rainbow; B&B lady said it was a complete arc. Ah well, the strand and the sea were still eye-catching.
Lots of non-car/truck activity on the road today…celebrating the lord’s day? Here’s a biker running his dog.
And a sheep “airing” her lamb.
From an Iron Age promontory fort (on a small point high above the sea), we watched the waves crashing on the rocks.
Gallarus Oratory is an early christian church, the official sign says, dating to the 7th/8th C AD. People say it’s “boat-shaped”—meaning an upside-down boat. It’s mortarless, and the craftsmanship to shape the stones and fit them with a slight slope to keep the water out is stunning.
I found the dramatic sun-brightened color of this sports-bar in Dingle marvelous.
From Dingle we angled north to cross the spine of the Dingle Peninsula. From the pass the views, both north and south, were breath-taking. This is the view north; there’s a good chunk of ocean before you hit land at another bit of Ireland.
In Abbeyfeale the traffic situation got bottlenecked with cyclists. Over 400 participated in a fundraiser for the town, and these fellows collected more €€€€/cash.
In Limerick, we toured King John’s Castle. It dates to ~1200, when the Magna Carta King John ordered it built to cement holdings gained by Anglo-Normans through violence beginning in this area in 1172. It’s on the River Shannon, which demarcated the Irish petty kingdoms to the west and Anglo-types to the east. This is the original great hall of the fort. Sometime after it was built it was knocked down and a new one was built on its rubble. Note how high the current “floor” of the castle is now. This rebuilding process effectively preserved the older architecture.
This is the view toward the River Shannon from the fortification in the top of the above photo. The wind was stiff and two fishermen and a swam were working the near shoreline.
This is a bonus-abbey…meaning we ate dinner then strolled around it a bit. Most of the massive architecture dates to the 14th and 15th Cs. The footprint of this church is larger than many we have seen. If you check out satellite photos, you can see the outlines of more structures that were part of the Quin Abbey complex (it’s here: 52.819196, -8.862977).