Ireland: Michael Collins, Blarney Castle, Cobh, Timoleague, and Drombeg

Trip Date: August 3, 2011

When I'm sleeping at home, I usually don't wake up until 10-11am, but for some reason on this trip I was the first one up every morning, which was okay because it meant I had time to make coffee, eat my breakfast, and read on my iPad in peace. Again, it was a late morning but we eventually all got up, breakfasted and into the cars. Today's weather was already rainy - not the pouring down rain, but the drizzly, misting type that makes Ireland famous.

Our two cars, on the arrival day at Agma, the cottage we stayed at, my Dad's car took one route while Ryan's car took another. My Dad's car stopped at the assassination site of the Irish Independence leader, Michael Collins, on his way and my brother (and the rest of us) were interested in stopping there once more.

Roadside memorial at the site of Michael Collins's assassination

A fighter for Irish independence, even his name on this memorial is written in Irish Gaelic

Our first destination of the morning was to the ever-talked-about Blarney Castle, just north of Cork, so Rob and Sarah could get the gift of gab by kissing the Blarney Stone. The rest of the family had already been here once before on our last trip to Ireland in 2001, but we all paid the over-pricey fee and got access to the castle grounds. Many guide books will tell you that the Blarney Castle is not famous for anything of importance, is not kept in good condition, and not worth the money to see. While I thought the ticket price was a little high for what you get, it's worth the stop because the castle grounds and gardens are beautiful and the castle is in fine condition...for being totally in ruins. But we did it - at least Lizzie, Rob, Ryan, Sarah, and I did while Dad, Britta, and Carl explored the rest of the grounds.

To get to the Blarney Stone, you have to get into the castle (don't follow the lines to the dungeons!) and then wait in line as you go up an ever-narrowing spiral stairway to the roof. There are lots of really neat little rooms off the stairway with plaques that describe what that room was used for, but you have to be careful because you don't want to lose your spot in line, and the people in that line are viscious! This was the first location (okay, second to the Cliffs of Moher), where we saw a lot of American tourists, who are funny creatures in Ireland as they ride around in over-sized motor coaches and complain about not being able to see everything they wanted to - but you know that if they were driving themselves, they would be complaining about that, too. It was tiresome, really, but as we were getting ready to go up into the castle, I heard a woman in a very New York-ian accent mention something like, "I can't believe I'm going to do this. You know I'm going to have a panic attack." As they passed, I saw a few more tourists coming, and couldn't waste the opportunity to watch this woman suffer (I'm terrible, I know), so I jumped in line behind the New Yorkers. Climbing up the stairs we heard a lot of, "Oh God, how much higher do these stairs go?" and, "Oh God, it's getting narrower!" and finally at the top, with one final little stairway to go, the woman made it up to the top, white-knuckled and everything, but it wasn't quite the show I was hoping for...

Blarney Castle

Lizzie, Sarah, Ryan, and Rob waiting in line to kiss the Blarney Stone

Me kissing the stone. I thought it was weird that the guy who holds you didn't wipe the stone off after every person slathers their saliva over the stone, so I went off to the side where I figured not too many other people had gone.

Lizzie kissing the stone

Rob kissing the stone

Ryan kissing the stone

Kissing the stone is pretty uneventful, to be truthful, but at least when you return home and people say, "Oh, you went to Ireland? Did you kiss the Blarney Stone?" you can give them an answer. The rest of the castle grounds are pretty beautiful and I only wish I was there on a sunnier day...

Woman walking in the gardens

Not sure what type of flower this is

Wildflowers in the garden

In the Rock Garden there is a Dolmen, or neolithic burial tomb - but you can see hundreds of these for free alongside the road.

More flowers. Big red poppy, I think

It was getting to be lunch time and we thought we would drive into the city of Cork, the Republic of Ireland's second largest city, for lunch. But after circling around the Church of St. Anne and the Cork Butter Museum, the only thing we managed to do was get ourselves stuck in traffic for the next 45 minutes. It was really a mess there, and I think we were all just fed up with Cork so we left as quickly as we could and drove east to the city of Cobh (pronounced like "Cove"), famous for it's soaring cathedral and the final port of call for the Titanic before it headed out to the Atlantic. Rather than driving all the way down the steep road to the small town below, we parked in the cathedral parking lot and quickly stepped into the church to get out of the rain. The Cathedral is a beautiful construction of carved granite and wrought-iron and the stained-glass windows depict Christ's parables and his miracles. I can only imagine that on a sunny day the sanctuary is filled with colored light.

Front façade of Cathedral of St. Colman

Rose window and pipe organ from inside

One of the many stained glass windows

Nave at St. Colman's

 

Outside views of the rose window and the transcept

Cobh is such a cool little town. It's not one many tourists get to, either, so if you do come here, chances are you will have it to yourself for the most part! We had a little lunch at a cafe down near the harbor, across the street from a memorial to the victims of the Lusitania, which was torpedoed by a German u-boat off the coast of Ireland. Some of the survivors were brought to Cobh as well as many of the victims to be buried. After lunch we walked over to the Cobh Heritage Center in the old train station where the final passengers to board Titanic arrived. There is a little food court and gift shop in the lobby of the Center, but then, for a reasonable price, you can also get into a museum depicting the history of oceanic shipping from the shipping of prisoners to Australia, to the inception of steam-liners, to historic ocean-liners such as the Titanic, Oceanic, Brittainnic, etc. It's an easy walk-through type of museum that I thought was well worth the cost!

The old city of "Cove" changed its name to "Queenstown" after Queen Victoria visited Cove in 1849. So the Titanic actually set out from Queenstown, and not Cobh - but that's a technicality, really. Then, in 1921, after Ireland gained its independence, the town's name was changed back to its former name, but in the traditional Irish spelling of "Cobh"

Reconstructed cross section of a penal ship headed to Australia

Only 123 passengers boarded the Titanic in Queenstown: 3 first-class passengers, 7 second-class passengers, and 113 third-class passengers. But it is difficult to say whether the the ship's manifest was 100% correct as there were so many last minute ticket switches, sales, and purchases, it is impossible to know who really was on the boat

Statue memorializing Annie Moore, the first immigrant to be processed at Ellis Island in New York City

I was the only one to go through the museum and when I came out, I learned that Ryan, Sarah, Lizzie, and Rob left and were headed back to Cork for dinner and then back to Bantry. So Dad, Britta, Carl and I headed back to the car, but not before checking out the memorial plaque to the Titanic right near the main square in Cobh.

Plaque outside the old White Star Line office

Doors to the old White Star Line office

Lusitania Memorial

Titanic Memorial

Row houses in Cobh (note the palm tree)

Parting shot of the Cobh Skyline. Doesn't get much better than this!

I don't think it could have been much later than 3pm, and though we had a little ways yet to go to get back to Bantry, Dad, Britta, Carl and I decided to check out a few other off-the-map sites we had heard about. So we drove back into Cork, only to drive south to the town of Kinsale, where we considered stopping at the best preserved British Star-fort, but we decided to pass on through and drove through cleverly named towns such as Knockabinny and Ballinspittle until we arrived in Timoleague where the ruins of an old Franciscan Friary built around 1300 and remained a center of philosophy and religion until the early 1600s when it was caught right in the middle of early Irish/British skirmishes and eventually burned down by Cromwellian forces in 1642.

Timoleague Friary

Moss-covered inside of the entrance to the chapel

Grave plots at the Timoleague Friary

  

It's a cool ruin site because the cemetery has become so large they've started digging plots in all of the different rooms of the Friary, something I've never seen done at any other castle or church ruins. Very cool to walk around and I actually got lost a few times!

 

I forget how we learned where to go next, but we found out we were very close to the birthplace and childhood home of the Irish Independence leader, Michael Collins. So after a few tries, we finally figured out where it was (head west through Lisavaird and look for the sparely placed brown signposts). Though a Nationally protected site, you would think the house would be better marked and that it would be a huge tourism site. But no. The home is back in the countryside on the typical windy, narrow Irish road. And it's probably better for it since you can go and just learn and enjoy its significance in your own way.

This was Michael Collins's home when he was born. There are two rooms, which you can see, and then one room in the back. Very humble beginnings for someone who won Ireland its much-deserved independence from Brittain

Bust of Michael Collins at the birthplace site. He only was minimally educated in the Irish National Schools, where the curriculum was heavily influenced with traditional Irish Culture and Language. But then he went to London and worked for the British Savings Bank before returning to Ireland to help lead the charge for independence.

British loyalists eventually came to the site and burned down the new house, which was built for Michael Collins's mother, and the house in which he was raised. Only the foundations and the chimney top-stone remain.

The evening was setting in and we still weren't really close to Bantry, and we had one more site on our list. Not far from the Michael Collins birthplace is a residence much much older (thousands of years, in fact!). The Drombeg Stone Circle is one of the best preserved in Ireland, or at least one of the most impressive! Situated on a flat hilltop, nestled between other rolling hills, and in clear view of the ocean, is this fairly large stone-age dwelling and stone circle. No one really knows or understands the purpose of stone circles like this, but the amazing thing about these rings is that they are remarkably accurate solar calendars! On the winter solstice, December 21, the sun sets directly in line with the axial stone (a wider, flat stone) and the portal stones directly opposite the axial stone. This site is also unique in that two dwelling places are also preserved, which would have supported a few families. Amazingly, the cooking hut has a trough that was used to cook meat, which was done by filling the trough with water and bringing it to a boil by rolling stones through the water that had been heated up in a fire. A researcher showed that using this process, all 70 gallons of water in the trough could be brought to a boil in 18 minutes, and kept warm for another 3 hours!

The Drombeg Stone Circle site

Foundations for the living dwellings. The hole in the middle of the bottom one is the water trough used to cook meat

The Drombeg Stone Circle. The two front and center stones are the Portal Stones and the Axial Stone is the one directly behind and between them.

Someone's pagan offering to the Stone Circle

And a giant slug/snail(?)

So with all of those sites under our belt, we decided to call it a day. The only thing left in our way was the drive home, which Dad wanted to finish before it got totally dark out. We made it back to Bantry and had a quick "fast-food" dinner in downtown Bantry at a kebab shop and returned home, exhausted, but with a lot of great pictures and stories to tell!