The Black Lung Gets Prehistoric, Part 5: It's Literally Ancient History

The morning after our trip to the Cliffs of Moher, we headed north. We were planning on exclusively sleeping in Ireland proper, but we did have a few things planned in that country (I guess? I have heard the explanation about the UK being separate countries united into one country before, but that doesn't seem quite right for Northern Ireland. The political situation there is still pretty weird and messed up. Not like we have much room to talk). So we decided to go north and do things in Northern Ireland and in the north of Ireland as a combo. Not gonna lie, I'm not entirely clear on what thing were where, but I'll do my best. Fun fact-not all of the north of the island is part of Northern Ireland-it's basically the northeast corner. The northwest is part of regular Ireland. Thus endeth the lesson.

Anywho, I don't remember exactly how we heard about the place we went next. I think maybe a tour guide somewhere mentioned it? Or maybe we saw a sign? It's hard to say. In any case, our first stop of the day was the Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery. The tombs date from about 4000-3500 BC, when farmers first settled in the area. I guess before that, when the people were more nomadic, they didn't really have burial traditions that we know about. Carrowmore is a group of passage tombs (basically a burial chamber or chambers covered by rocks and/or dirt with a stone passage leading to the inside. I think the idea is that many people could be buried in one tomb) in various stages of disrepair. Some of the tombs, especially the big one in the middle, have been reconstructed to what archeologists think they would have been like, others are still just ruins, and still others were basically destroyed by farmers stealing the rocks for fences and stuff thousands of years after the original burials, probably in the 1800s. The site itself is actually right in the middle of a bunch of farms. Probably the best preserved tomb that we saw was actually in the middle of a cow pasture.  There are apparently about 30 tombs in this site, although there definitely aren't that many visible. There are also at least 3 other major sites for passage tombs, but Carrowmore is considered the main one. It was really interesting, but definitely the kind of place that would have benefited from a tour guide. We spent a lot of time looking at our map and trying to figure out if these rocks on the ground were part of a tomb, and if so, which one? And I'm not completely convinced that I understand all the significance of the site. Plus, I like tour guides! Still, it was worth a visit. 

One of the tombs. This one was pretty well preserved in that it still had a lot of rocks. Some of them were only like 1 rock sticking out of the ground.

This tomb is, as you can see, in a cow pasture. It's not technically part of the historic site, but according to the info we got, this is one of the best preserved of the tombs. Kind of weird that it's just on a farm.

The main tomb on the site, which has been restored by archeologists to what they think it would have looked like then. Pretty different from the other ruins, but this one is also significantly bigger than the other tombs. 

At the entrance of the main tomb, called Listoghil. As you can see, it's really big, and when it was excavated, they found bones of a lot of people and animals. 

Knocknarea Mountain, which overlooks Carrowmore. Apparently, there's a large mound at the summit of the mountain named for Queen Maeve. It's not excavated, but they're pretty sure it's another passage tomb. We didn't get to go up, alas.

After we left Carrowmore, we crossed over into Northern Ireland for our trip to Belleek Pottery. Niki and I went there on our trip, but little did we realize, you can't take the tour on weekends. So Leah and I made sure our trip would be on a day that we could do the tour. It was actually some sort of bank holiday, so there were only a few workers, but it was still a really neat tour. One thing that's really neat about Belleek vs. somewhere like Waterford is that all of the pieces you can buy are actually made on site, whereas at Waterford, most of the non-specialized stuff is made elsewhere in Europe. So when you buy something from their store, you know that it was made only a few feet away. Pretty much everything is done by hand, including all of the painting. The pieces like vases and stuff are done in molds, of course, to keep them uniform. Belleek is very famous for their shamrock pottery as well as their woven baskets. The baskets are entirely handmade. We saw workers doing the weaving and making the tiny decorations. Very impressive, and it explains why the stuff is so expensive! If you ever go, definitely check the website in advance to make sure you can take the tour. 

Belleek! The showroom and restaurant are in the front, and there's a museum and the factory out back. 

Some of the different pottery pieces in an early stage. These are made with molds, but each is checked and smoothed by hand before they go through the painting and glazing process.

The beginnings of a basket and a bunch of decorative pieces. These are all done by hand. 

Here you can see one of the artists building a basket piece by piece. 

One of the artists adding shamrocks to the pieces. 

Our last stop of the day were the Sliabh Liag cliffs (I could not swear to the pronunciation of that, but I want to say is the bh makes a v sound). Technically Sliabh Liag is about 3 times higher than the Cliffs of Moher, although it's not nearly as famous. I'd say probably because the landscape is very different, more mountain than sheer cliffs, although it's still really impressive. We parked at the bottom of this trail and hiked up, mostly because it seemed like you weren't supposed to drive (a common theme of our trip). I'm glad we did hike, because it was a beautiful day, and we got to see the scenery a lot better on foot than we could have from the car. But apparently it was a weird choice, because more than one car that passed us on the way down offered us a ride. I don't remember how long we walked (maybe an hour each way?) but at the point were we stopped to turn around, there was another trail leading up into the mountains. If you are a keen hiker, this would be an excellent place to visit. If it hadn't been getting late in the evening, we might have gone further ourselves.

On the hike up Sliabh Liag. It was very windy and a little wet, but that's perfect hiking weather in my opinion.

When we finally reached the part of the hike that's on the edge of the cliff. 

That small square sticking up off the edge of the cliff is a signal tower. It's one of many that were built along the coast in about 1800 to warn if Napoleon was trying to invade. 

In between the two weirdos here are some stairs leading further up the mountain. We were imagining how tired we would be if we kept going.

It may not have quite the dramatic coastline that The Cliffs of Moher do, but tis still a spectacular view. 

If I recall correctly, and I might not, since it's been an actual year since this trip, the next two nights of our trip we stayed at a place that was pretty much impossible to find. We almost despaired before we figured out the directions. And then it said there was a regular bed and a pull out couch, but there was not room for the couch to pull out! So we just gave in and shared. There were chocolate bars there for us, though. So that was nice. 

The next day, we were back into Northern Ireland. First stop, Giant's Causeway! This was another place I had previously been, but seriously, I don't care how many times you go to Ireland, you have to go to Giant's Causeway. It's amazing. And the weather could not have been more different. When Niki and I went, it was pouring rain, so we stayed on the main path and were just wet. But this day was beautiful, so Leah and I were able to hike around and see a bunch of cool stuff. Giant's Causeway is a real geological marvel. It truly doesn't look like something nature could make on its own, which is probably why there are many legends about how it was formed by actual giants messing around in the sea between Ireland and Scotland. There's a corresponding site in Scotland, which I have not been to, but the one in Ireland is home to Fionn mac Cumhaill (English-Finn MacCool), and a lot of the cool features are part of his house/his camel/his grandma, etc. The actual geology has to do with volcanic activity forming basalt columns, but that's not as fun. One of the great things about the Causeway is the audio tour you can get at the visitor's center. Technically, you can go to the site for free, but if you enter through the center for a totally reasonable fee, you get the tour with tons of cool info about the legends, the geology, and the history of people who used to work and live there. 

The pillars here really look manmade. Science and nature are wonderful!

I cannot remember what this is called, but it's some sort of Giant's doorway or something.

The worst part about going on a day when the weather was nice were the huge amounts of people. When Niki and I went in the heavy rain, there were hardly any people. All of those little specks in the background are other tourists, ruining our pictures.

The Giant's Organ over to the left. Supposedly you can hear it playing on Christmas morning. You can also see the path that we hiked leading up to it and to the top of the cliff.

At the organ. You can see how ginormous it really is now that I'm right next to it.

The path dead-ends beyond that doorway, and then you have to backtrack to go up to the top. I believe those little spires are the Giant's Chimney.

We went past the doorway because we could, but we had to turn back almost immediately.

But we did have this nice view of someone sailing!

We made it to the top! There were some extremely steep stairs on the path to get up there.

Obviously near the end of our hike when I am very sweaty. You can see the whole Causeway behind me, including the chimney. The part sticking out to the left is where the Scottish giant, Benandonner, broke up the causeway between the two countries when he fled back across the sea because he was so scared of Fionn.

When we left Giant's Causeway, we headed for Carrick-a-Rede, also in Northern Ireland, and a place that Leah really wanted to go. Me, not so much, so for the first and only time on our trip, we split up a bit. Carrick-a-Rede is a small island off the coast that used to be home to salmon fishermen, although it's really too small for people to live there permanently. Instead, the fishermen, who normally lived on the mainland, would stay on the island for part of the year while catching the fish and taking them to the mainland. Due to the geography, it was a lot easier and more efficient for the people to cross back and forth along a rope bridge. The historical rope bridge was a ladder that the people would string between the two pieces of land, along with one rope for a hand rail. Only one hand rail, because they needed their other hand free to carry all the fish back over. And truly, it was a ladder, so not wide at all. They would take it down every winter and store it, and presumably give it some maintenance, but still. Absolutely terrifying. After my experience with the tower at St. Canice's, I decided that I wasn't going to cross the bridge, but instead would just hang out on the mainland while Leah went. She did pay extra for a tour guide, and he very kindly invited me to go along with and learn about the area, since he doesn't cross the bridge either. I'm glad I went, it was super interesting. According to him, there's a good chance that none of the fishermen knew how to swim at all, but also, as he said, if they fell off the bridge, they probably would have just died, even if they knew how, so it didn't really matter. The bridge now, is much more sturdy, much to Leah's dismay, I think. She wanted it to sway a bunch. Based on what she said when she got back, I might have even been OK. 

You can see how small the actual island is. There's one small cottage on it, which is the white spot you can sort of see near the middle of the picture. And there's the bridge!

Leah crossing the bridge! She's the one in the white jacket.

The view from the bridge. Look how crazy clear the water is.

Crossing the bridge. Maybe I was wrong. This looks terrifying! This is Leah, btw. I stayed on the mainland!

Other things our guide told us on the way-fishing is no longer allowed in the area. In peak times, they would catch about 300 salmon a day around the island, but in 2002, the last year fishing was allowed, they only caught 300 fish the whole year. So now fishing isn't allowed anymore in the hopes that the salmon population will eventually recover. Of course, them fishing isn't the only thing that hurt the salmon, so who knows. We also learned about the mining that took place in the area. If I recall correctly, there were two different kinds of mining done in the area-one was stopped during WWI, since all of the Welsh miners left to go to war. The other kind was abandoned during The Troubles due to safety concerns and never started up again. It was interesting and sobering to hear about The Troubles from someone who had lived through them. Something else we learned-a bunch of stuff from Game of Thrones was filmed here! Apparently the show really made a lot of people interested in the site, and now it's a popular tourist destination, whereas before, it was not a well known site at all. 

Look at that water. Can you imagine what it must have looked like when huge schools of salmon were swarming around the coast every year?

The parking lot, but also where some important GoT scenes were filmed. Our rental is the blue car about six cars down.

Also a GoT filming site, although inside. I think this was some sort of mine building? I don't remember.

I think also at this site (although Leah will correct me if she remembers differently), we learned some about the potato famine. If you don't really know anything about it, it's a really dark, horrible chapter of history, in which rich land owners and the British government let Irish people starve because the only crops they were allowed to keep was potatoes, and the potatoes were dying. I think we hear more about the famine as "They only grew potatoes, and they failed," but that's definitely not true. Ireland was exporting huge amounts of food during the famine. We had a view of a pretty large island further off the coast that lost almost all of its population during the famine due to death and immigration. People now estimate that about 1 million people died from the famine and another million immigrated, which means that the country lost almost 1/4 of its population. Some places, including this island that we saw, have never recovered to their pre-famine populations. 

Unless I'm totally mistaken, that island in the distance is the one our guide told us about that lost most of its population during the famine.

My view as I hiked away from Carrick-a-Rede to explore on my own.

Looking back towards the rope bridge. I think it's in the upper right hand corner of the picture. 

With the rope bridge and island in the background. It was an amazingly beautiful place, even without crossing the bridge. 

As you can see, the tour was really educational! He even told us stuff about local farming practices. This is why it's a good idea to get a tour guide when you can. I left Leah at the bridge, and she went to explore the tiny island, while I hiked back and looked around on the mainland. I had a great time and saw some really wonderful views, even without having to cross the scary bridge. So I think it was the right decision for me. If you don't have a fear of heights, I'd recommend the bridge, though. 

Next time, on The Black Lung: We eat some chocolate (yay!) and have to go home (boo!).

The Black Lung Gets the Seal of Approval, Part 4: Retreading Ground is Fun if you are in Ireland

If you are an avid reader of The Black Lung, you may recall that I visited Dingle with my friend Niki about 7 years ago, and it was great. So when Leah asked if there was anything in particular I wanted to do in Ireland, I brought up Dingle immediately. To get there, we got to drive through some more picturesque countryside, a thing Ireland has in abundance. We stopped at Inch Beach, which is apparently a place where many people surf. I do not see the appeal of surfing, plus it was kind of cold, in spite of being August, so we didn't go in the water at all, but we did hang out, which was nice.

Inch Beach! Believe it on not, we did see people in the water.

 

The remains of a random tower house that we found by following road signs for a castle. There were no trespassing signs all over this, and for reals it looked unsafe but picturesque.

 

The tower house beach.
 
The colors were breathtaking. We went at a good time of year for everything to look super great.

When we got to Dingle, we discovered that our AirbNb was seriously centrally located in the town. And also a very strange little house. The whole bathroom is basically the shower. There's a drain in the floor, but no door or curtain or even raised lip of tub or anything to separate it from the rest of the bathroom. It was actually kind of neat, but I did worry about my clothes getting wet. Thankfully, they did not.

When you go to Dingle, the one thing that absolutely everyone does is go out into the bay to see Fungie the Dolphin. He has lived in Dingle Bay since 1983, and the tourist industry in the town is very centered on him. Frankly, he was an old dolphin 7 years ago when I saw him, and now he's a very old dolphin. A lot of people wonder what the town will do when he inevitably shuffles off this mortal coil. It will be very sad, that's for sure. But if you go there and he's still around, you should see him. We checked out different options at the harbor and decided to go for the boat tour to the Great Blasket Island. Also you may remember that Niki and I went to a museum about that island and it's native inhabitants, and I became somewhat fascinated with them, so I was excited to go although a bit nervous about becoming seasick, especially because we would be on the boat for at least 2 hours of our trip. Leah was not worried about being seasick, because the same things that make me want to barf make her feel alive. Bodies are very strange.

Fungie! He doesn't jump around anymore, but he was still very visible and present.

 

To get to the Great Blasket Island, you have to sail out of Dingle Bay and start around the penninsula. Niki and I drove around it on Slea Head Drive (which I recommend if you don't go out on a boat). While we were still in the bay, we sailed around a bit until we saw Fungie himself! He's still very cool. Once we left the bay, the sea became extremely rough. The waves were huge and horrible, we got splashed all to heck, and my fear of seasickness was fully realized. It was both scary and stomach churning. Leah had a really great time. I can see that it would be pretty fun if you didn't feel like you were about to throw up.

 

One of our views as we sailed to the island. You can't tell how choppy the water was, but you can see that the sky was both cloudy and menacing.

Smiling through the pain! Except Leah, who was thrilled.

 

After about an hour, we finally reached the Great Blasket Island. It's actually the largest in a small group of Islands called the Blaskets. There are six main islands, and people have lived on at least 3 of them at some time or other. The main settlement was on the Great Blasket Island, though. The last people left the island in the 1950s. The remains of their village is still there, as well as a little cafe and airbnb. The only people who live there now are people who run the business, and I'm pretty sure they are not considered permanent residents. Around the time we got to the island, the weather cleared up, so we had a good opportunity to explore. We were taken over to the dock on a rubber dinghy in groups, then given about an hour and a half to explore the island. I would have loved to spend more time there. The ruins are neat, the cafe had snacks and sold books (the island, despite being very small, had a robust literary tradition), and the views are unreal. There are still sheep on the island, I assume from some mainland shepherds, and we also saw jackrabbits. The island used to be a huge home to different seabird colonies, including puffins, but those populations still haven't totally returned since they were pretty heavily hunted by the inhabitants, especially during hard times like the potato famine. Hopefully they'll come back eventually though. We hiked all around and didn't fall into any random cracks in the earth or off any cliffs, so that was a relief. We did see some people arrive at the island to camp on the beach, which does not sound fun to me because camping. A few months after we were there, there was a call for people to apply to live there for a while and run the cafe and the airbnb, and that was tempting, I tell you what.

Approaching the Island. The white buildings you can see are the cafe, the AirbNb, and I think where the employees live. Everything else is ruins.

  

The docks, with our boat in the background.

  

Heading up the steep path to the top.

  

The path through the ruins. It's amazing to think that people lived in such small cottages as recently as the 1950s. 

  

Leah was also there!

  

View towards the mainland.

  

Everything was so beautiful. I imagine it was sad for the islanders to leave, even though their way of life was so hard.

  

View from the cafe. You can see our tiny little boat on the right hand side of the picture.

  

Be careful where you step! These unexpected drops were all over the island.

 

A closer view of ruins. I wondered how everything had fallen apart so quickly, but in my reading of The Islander, I learned that they had to redo the roofs of their houses every year, so I guess it's not surprising.

  

One of the many amazing views we saw as we hiked around. We didn't even make it halfway around the island. So I know there were many more amazing views that we didn't have time to see.

 

We took a picture when we had to turn around-look how much more island there was to explore!

 When our time was up, we went back to the boat and sailed around the end of the island and saw seals! Many, many seals! That's one kind of wildlife that hasn't been scared away by humans. They were neat and also very loud. We also saw some seabirds that I can't identify. Then we sailed back to Dingle. Thankfully, the weather was a lot more pleasant on the way back than on the way out. The sun was out and the sea was a lot calmer. And we saw Fungie again when we were in the bay!

Seals! Those dark spots in the water are their little heads sticking up.

 

If you enlarge this picture, you can see some kind of seabirds on this tiny rocky island.

 

Farewell to the Great Blasket Island! I hope I can go back someday.

  

Look how different our view was on the way back to Dingle! What a difference some clouds make.

 

That evening, we met up with Leah's friends who were also randomly in Ireland at the same time as us and they took us to dinner! It was really nice of them, and they were fun to hang out with. We learned a funny thing, which is that pretty much everything at the restaurant we went to came with fries. For instance, I had a chicken curry, and it totally came with fries. I also got some sticky toffee pudding, which made me happy.

 

It's traditional to get your picture taken with the Fungie statue when you're in Dingle. 

 The library in Dingle! Alas, it was not open.

The next morning, we went around Dingle and did some shopping for a while. This is a great place to buy souvenirs for people. And it's an amazingly cute town, even with all the touristy things. On the way out of Dingle, we took a scenic mountain road recommended by Leah's friends. It was amazingly beautiful and also amazingly scary. It was a very skinny road! And very high up! Since we didn't die, I'd say the views were totally worth it. We were headed to our next destination, another place I had been before, The Cliffs of Moher! The Cliffs are very famous, but it's for a good reason! They're neat. You may recognize them from such movies as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Princess Bride. Since going to the cliffs was our only plan for the day, we decided to live a little and check out any sort of fun stuff along the way. So when we saw a sign for a castle, we followed it into town, which turned out to be Newcastle West (also known as plain old Newcastle, but that's also the name of other towns, including one in Northern Ireland, which is a little confusing.) The castle there is Desmond Hall and Castle, and it's actually the remains of a much bigger castle complex that was originally built in the 1200s, then destroyed and rebuilt over the years. What's currently there is from the 1400s. Of the original giant complex, there's still a small visitor's center, some ruins, part of a wall, and a small actual castle. Best thing about it-the tour was free! Huzzah! We learned quite a bit about the history of the town and the castle, but frankly, I procrastinated writing this and have forgotten much. It was neat though. And after we left and ran to Subway in the rain to get lunch, our tour guide was also there getting her lunch.

 

Your eyes do not deceive you-this is a one lane road with rock walls on the side. At one point, we had to back up to a slight shoulder to let someone pass. Stressful!

 

But look at this amazing view! You can't get all the good views without a little danger. 

 

We stopped along the scary road at one wide section to get a better look at the amazing views.

  

The castle! The little statue there in front has no reins, which signified something about the Normans, I think, but I don't remember what.

Me being confused about why he has no reins.

 For some reason, they let us climb up to the top of the castle. Scary stuff. Leah liked it, of course. To be fair, not nearly as horrible as the Round Tower at St. Canice's Cathedral.

 The view that overlooks the town square. Apparently this is a very English looking square, probably because of the Norman guy with no reins.

 We are the chairpeople of the castle!

A closeup so you can see how cute we are.

After lunch, we were really on our way! If I'm recalling correctly, this was one of our longest driving days, but luckily, most of the views were beautiful and excellent, which really helps a drive seem not too bad.When we got to the cliffs, the weather was not great, which is to say, it was very rainy. This was kind of nice actually, because it meant a lot of people left and things weren't super crowded. But it was also sad because we got very wet.  A lot of fog rolled in, too, which made things both very hard to see and very awesome looking at the same time. I know it's a total tourist destination (according to the website, it's the top tourist attraction in the country), but if you go to Ireland, you really should check it out. You'll be able to see the strange but true unisex bathrooms! You can walk along cliffs that are so high you will feel uncomfortable! You may be able to see puffins! I did not see them either time I went, but I live in hope. We did hike around in the rain, trying to see as much as we possibly could while also not slipping in mud and falling to our doom. It was great.

The Cliffs of Insanity! I am 99% positive I made the same joke on my last blog about visiting the Cliffs of Moher. 

It was full on raining in this picture. Observe the water droplets.

I tried to follow the instructions, but it seems like a bad idea.

More seabirds! All those white specks are birds. This is supposedly where you can sometimes see puffins, but it was probably the wrong time of year and definitely too foggy.

The fog has started to roll in.

It's getting more intense.

Fog has overtaken everything. Squint really hard and you can make the cliffs out. This is about when we gave up.

And then we were off to our next airbnb. This one was hard to find-they didn't live in a town, but kind of in the middle of nowhere, so we couldn't just follow GPS. We didn't get too lost though, and the views from their house were amazing. And they had a sweet dog who let me pet her. Also, not gonna lie, the breakfast the lady made us the next morning was next level delicious. Why don't I ever have fresh mozzarella at breakfast? Why am I limiting my life so much???

Next Time, on The Black Lung: We venture into another country and have some issues with speed limits.