portengaround: Ireland: Mizen Head Peninsula, Skibbereen, and Baltimore

Trip Date: August 2, 2011

I woke up early the next morning - my first in Ireland - and while everyone was still sleeping, I put my shoes on and took a little walk along the road which went up the hill behind our cottage. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't yet hot, either, even though the sun was already high in the sky. I'm not entirely sure about the rest of the Irish year, but it sure seemed like we picked the right time to go because the flowers were all in bloom and just amazing!

Foxglove

Spear Thistle

Fuchsia

A little bit of everything

I walked only for about half an hour before returning to Agma, our cottage, and began making noise to get everyone else up. Once everyone was up, washed, and breakfasted, we packed into our two cars for our first day-trip. That's what my family does on vacation: we find somewhere to make our base camp and then we take day-trips to all sorts of locations rather than constantly being on the road. Well, Britta had been to this region of Ireland before and one of the things they did was drive out to the end of the most southwestern of all the Irish peninsulas jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean.

It was a little bit grey as we made the drive to the end of the Mizen Peninsula, but we stopped a few times for some photo ops, but by the time we got to our destination, the light station at the end of the peninsula, Mizen Head, the sun was back out. The Mizen Head station has a neat museum in the visitor center (which you do not need tickets to see, even though they sell tickets before the museum entrance) and explains some of the shipping, geology, and ecological histories of the Irish coast. I was mostly interested in the geology, since we saw so many rocks alongside the roads.

Roughly 400 million years ago, a mountainous region in what is now northwestern Ireland was slowly eroding and rivers were depositing numerous sedimentary sequences into a warm shallow sea. Then, about 100 million years later, Europe and Africa collided, causing a shortening of 50% of the Earth's crust. All that material had to go somewhere, and typically when two continents collide, material ends up moving upward, so the Irish landscape suddenly became extremely mountainous once again as the older sedimentary sequences deformed. Over time, this very large mountain belt wore down until there was more sediment than river systems could carry. Then, about 150 million years ago, the land was flooded by rising seas again, and shells from dead organisms created a new layer of limestone. Glaciations began to inundate Ireland about 120,000 years ago from the north and a smaller ice cap over the southwest corner of Ireland. A rigorously eroded landscape emerged from under the ice nearly 10,000 years ago and since then has become soaked with rain, allowing for the wet, green landscape Ireland is famous for today.

A brief walk from the museum takes you out to the end of the peninsula where there is a walking bridge that carries you over a deep cove to a large rocky island where the light station is located. Only once you get to that light station do you actually need to show anyone a ticket, and for the few exhibits out in the buildings there, it's not really worth it. The views along the walkways and to different viewing points on the way out to the light station are the real draw! But the little exhibits about all the different ships that became victim to the ocean's ravaging waves and submerged shoals, and how ships communicated to each other using flags, and the various whales in the area, and how Marconi set up his famous wireless telegraph system were mildly educational. Again, though, it's the scenery you want to see out here!

My brother Ryan, my Dad, my sister Lizzie, and me on the Mizen Peninsula

At Mizen Head this was a demonstration of how the foundations for the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse were constructed. Each granite block is individually carved and notched such that every single block is interconnected with every other block around it. Once everything is loaded into place, it is impossible to move the block foundation in any direction other than up. This makes the foundation design ideal for lighthouses that are constantly being bombarded horizontally by brutal ocean waves!

Walking bridge out to the Mizen Head light station

Looking back on the Mizen Peninsula

View of the rocky cove walls at Mizen Head

Me at the Mizen Head light. This isn't really a lighthouse, per se, but it does help ships figure out where they are!

THIS is the lighthouse on Fastnet Rock where the keepers would stay for months on end during all sorts of weather

Mizen Bridge from above.

Looking north along the rocky shoreline from Mizen Head.

Sea arch carved into the rocks at Mizen head.

Bell heather

From Mizen Head, we drove back inland and stopped in the town of Skibbereen where Irish Independence leader, Michael Collins, had his last pint before being ambushed and assassinated near Bandon in County Cork. It is also famous for being hardest hit by the infamous Irish Potato Famine (1845-1850). We ate dinner at a great Irish restaurant/pub/cafe called Annie May's before continuing through to the coastal town of Baltimore. Britta suggested Baltimore because you could watch the sunset while sipping down a pint at the harbor, and though we did not have enough time, you can also take a quick ferry ride out to Sherkin Island and explore a monastery in ruins. With a pint down, and the sun beginning its descent, we left Baltimore and headed back to Bantry while there was still light to drive by (you don't want to be on Irish country roads at night! They are poorly lit, narrow, and windy!). Going back through Skibbereen, though, we stopped at a cemetery just to the west of town and visited a mass burial site for victims of the Potato Famine.