Thursday, May 12, 2011
Two days in one. Maybe—if I don’t fall asleep first.
Well, the huge disappointment of NOT making it out to the whole Rathcroghan/Cruachan Ai area. The tour was cancelled: too new a tour, too early in the season, evidently. Going out without a guide seemed pointless, besides being moot, since a rental car was unavailable on same-day notice. Really, really grrr. Considering that had been my first motivation for basing in Galway, the first tour I’d booked, before the Cliffs. Finally consented to go on the afternoon tour out to Clonmacnoise they’d been offering as a consolation prize (with partial refund). In the spirit of How the Irish Saved Civilization.
So after walking around Galway a bit, snapping photos of the River Corrib (shortest in Europe) and its swans, at 1:30 or so I headed out of Galway (in a mini-van this time; even this isn’t the draw the famous Cliffs are—nerd tours, I tell you! (because speaking personally, it certainly wasn’t a pilgrimage of faith. Even though the decentralized form of Christianity that developed in Ireland is certainly more interesting than the extremely centralized version that was spreading from Rome)). Our guide, Fergal, a trainee guide about to be turned loose on the public, a German couple who spoke almost no English, and a—well, too abrupt, too bigoted, too ignorant Australian who’d offered to buy me a drink followed by quasi-propositioning me twice before the van left. Before it arrived.
And a very interesting contrast in guides this was. Fergal (who is, oh, in his forties? Maybe 50-ish?) has lived in the U.S. and Australia (briefly), and has a huge and comprehensive knowledge of history. Very interesting to talk to (um, yes, speaking history nerdishly, though he is not dry, but quite funny as well). But had a whole different style, which did not include stopping at little out-of-the-way views or obscure objects like Desmond, but whizzing right across the medieval bridge, past another of the (over 14,000 in that area, he said) little ancient ring-forts.
Clonmacnoise I won’t tell you all the stuff about you can read anywhere, either. (But walking down a street in Limerick today, a young mother exclaimed Ciaran! and grabbed her little boy’s hand; it all keeps coming full circle.) It was eventually sacked many times by Vikings, by Irish kings, finally utterly destroyed even before Cromwell (a bad word and a curse, in Ireland). What they were all after, in the vast ecclesiastical center Clonmacnoise had become at the literal crossroads of Ireland (the Shannon and the Esker ), the monks left behind when they climbed into their towers for safety (which didn’t always save them). Their treasures, the ones they tried always to save, were the manuscripts, the copies of ancient documents and the newer writings. For Clonmacnoise was also a center of learning in the Dark Ages and medieval period.
The backstory of the crossroads was very interesting. The Midlands of Ireland are the basin that is one vast peat bog (and we passed a couple of peat—harvesting, mining operations). The ancient roadway across it, east to west, was the Esker Riada (Highway of the Kings), a high glacial moraine. Clonmacnoise was built, quite deliberately, near where the Shannon, a great north-south means of transportation, and the Esker intersect. If there had been no ruined churches, high crosses, walls to see, the view across the Shannon and its marshes from the higher ground would have been worthwhile. As were the base of a high cross inside the visitor center (some of the most important ones have been moved indoors, replaced on the grounds by replicas, since they’re made of sandstone and are already very eroded) with a representation of Cernunnos carved into it, or the sheela-na-gig in the “Nun’s Church” a little outside the grounds. (And that’s a whole amazing “Helen of Troy” sort of story I knew nothing about, a queen whose “taking” (probably not) led eventually to the beginning of English invasions of Ireland; so that she is also a despised figure to the Irish, her building of this chapel in penance notwithstanding: Fergal told me the Gaelic name there on the sign translates more nastily to something like “Hag’s Chapel.” He’s of the opinion the sheela-na-gig was not original, but added by—someone.)
On the way back we stopped at Killeen’s Village Tavern in Shannonbridge (home to the aforementioned medieval bridge and a Napoleonic-era fort: you know, so that the French couldn’t attack England by sneaking into Ireland first), a tiny, funky local completely unspoiled by gentrification. There’s a tiny general store through a door, worn unmatched chairs, people of all ages coming and going.
After resting a bit (not that I needed it), I made myself go out to hear a little Irish music—which I found, on a Wednesday night, at Taaffe’s. The three musicians were young and played very well, I thought, though I also eventually thought their selections were a tad boring (picky, picky). The place was packed, of course—I’m sure largely with tourists. Had my half of local Hooker ale (named for the little sailboats that carried most of the trade around Galway Bay and the Aran Islands; one of the buildings of Galway Technical Institute is faced with large panels supposed to be a tribute to their sails, sort of à la Sydney Opera House. (I also loved, at the Cliffs, how inside the visitor center, a railing on an upper level was made of irregular plexiglass panels that beautifully referenced and updated the vertical slabs of limestone used as barriers outside.)
So. Anyway. Made it to Limerick in an hour and a half on the express bus—leaving the newspaper I’d bought to read on the hotel front desk at checkout; having the (rather cranky) driver point out that the woman in the station had issued me a ticket that said Galway Airport instead of Limerick (though she’d then told me the exact number of the Limerick bus—which I already knew—to look for), though he relented and let me ride if I was sure Limerick was where I wanted to go; and the backpack zipper that appeared broken as we arrived in Limerick—though I finally managed to get it to reclose, fingers crossed—aside. In the rain. (There’s an ad campaign I’ve now seen on the side of a Dublin bus and on a small billboard, I think for ice cream, that says “Feck the Rain.”)
The Railway Hotel is a historic (i.e., old) hotel directly across from the station. Which is exactly what I wanted, even though in listing it Lonely Planet said it “will remind you of a time when everyone smoked.” That it doesn’t; if my nose can’t detect tobacco in the room, it’s not there. What was there upon pushing open the front door downstairs was cabbage, in the pub/restaurant. How homey and funky can you get? The utilitarian room was freezing when I first arrived, and I couldn’t get the radiator to work (I expect it just doesn’t, in the daytime). The wi-fi doesn’t quite make it to the rooms (believe me, I’ve tried), so I went and sat at the bar for quite a while, checking email, looking up rental car places. Even with the apparent head woman there giving me dirty looks, having told me it was about to be the lunch rush. For which there was never any shortage of seating. And the young woman at the front desk had told me I could access their wi-fi in there.
Anyway . . . have a car reserved for late tomorrow morning. Because the visitor center at the Grange, the large stone circle, is not yet open, and may not be “for weeks,” despite its website saying it’s open May through August. Ireland tourism needs a little goosing. The lavish treatment given to the Cliffs of Moher, even to the Burren, never mind, say, all of Dublin, is utterly lacking at Rathcroghan and the Grange. There is literally no way at all to even get out to the Grange (and I’m using that as a shorthand for that whole area’s sites, as at Rathcroghan) except by private car. Limerick: why is someone not jumping on this and promoting the hell out of it? Even on an occasional basis, to start? Have you seen what goes on at Stonehenge?
I still have to get out to the car place, mind you; a woman at the tourist information center I stumbled across on my way to King John’s Castle and St. Mary’s Cathedral suggested the Shannon Airport bus, and just ask them to drop me off at Ennis Motors. We’ll see. If I can just survive getting out of the city, I think I’ll be fine in the countryside. What should have been a “get on one road and stay on it back across the bridge and all through Limerick” proposition is ruined by that major street being utterly torn up at the moment right downtown (I know; I had to cross it earlier). So will have to zig-zag around all that, leaving more room for error.
Lalala . . .
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