Nora's England/Ireland Travels 2002
Galway, June 19, 2002
After a late start, and with the weather looking promising, we decide to drive west to the O'Flaherty's great stronghold of Aughnanure. This rather fierce family had manage to hold on to the castle pretty much straight through its history, due to inventive fortification, positioning, brutal battling, reputation, treachery and whatever it took until they turned it over to the Irish government in the last century. Much of the original structures are intact, and there's been careful restoration as well.
You have to walk down a long path, over a natural arch stone bridge to get there. On the way we see a family and a little girl they're encouraging to pet the pretty buckskin mare who's got her head over the stone fence. Katie's desperate to pet the horse, and her grandmother rips up some long grass for her to offer. She does, but each time the mare turns her head to take the grass, Katie clutches and yanks it back.
The fortress is on the river, and at one time the river came right up to the door. The original walls surrounding it remain as do some of the inner defensive walls. And the enormous keep is six stories. There's a separate banquet hall--party time for the O'Flaherty's and their guests, but half of it fell, behind undermined by the river. There remains wonderful carvings on the windows, and the original stone floor.
It has every defense I've ever seen in the keep including murder holes, trip stairs, slot windows, trap doors and secret rooms. Battlements--Irish style--that afford full length protection for soldiers so they could rain rocks or pour boiling oil or pitch--a favorite of the O'Flaherty's we're told--on invaders.
In the great hall is a fireplace so big you truly could have roasted an ox in it. They've rebuilt the balcony in the chieftain's chambers above, where the visiting bards would play. The reasoning for the balcony, we're told, is as bards traveled widely, staying with many families or settlements, they might've carried diseases and were separated from the chieftain so they couldn't infect him. The secret room here is just off the main chamber, in back of a thick door. It's really just a very deep hole where they'd toss captured invaders and let them starve to death. The clan wasn't known for its compassion. The chieftain also had his own privy, in addition to the main one on the floor below. An early master suite.
There's a squat round tower across from the keep, built in such a way that if the munitions inside blew, it would hold rather than explode outwards. An amazing and ingenious beehive shape with thickly layered stone.
The great Grace O'Malley married one of the sons at 16, and the pirate queen outlived him to marry twice more.
While I'm wandering about a bit on my own a little spaniel puppy comes up. Oh God, cute puppy! I have to play with him, and he with me. He trots off, stops, looks back at me. Sits and waits. So I have to go over and pet him again. He repeats this, and BW joins us on our way out. At the gate I have to urge him to go back--the puppy that is--and his boy shows up and calls him. We stop along the path to admire the mare again, and the puppy gambols up to me. I walk him back to his boy.
We're going to take the western loop of the lake, up into Connemara, maybe stop at a couple more sites. The weather's holding up pretty well, a couple of sprinkles only. Dark clouds layered over pretty white ones, blue sky in patches, and all of it sailing in the brisk wind. Lough Corrib is such a sight, with its little nubby islands floating on it, the water shining blue or going silver depending on the clouds.
As we head west, fields go to moors and moors to bogs where I see stacks of cut turf piled among the high hillocks of rough grass. The wind, I know, dries the bricks of peat, and the farmer will turn them regularly until they're cured. The sun strikes through the clouds and the light takes on that indescribable glow that turns the green to something beyond color. It's this quality of light and landscape that doesn't just dazzle the eye, but the heart as well.
And there, ahead in the distance are the magical misted silhouettes of The Twelve Bens. Clouds smoke across them, then move on to leave them standing against the sky.
They go up and up, dominating the landscape with their high rounded peaks and long dips. And seem to go on forever. The sheep grazing on the bases look like white dots.
We follow the Joyce Country road, and miss a turn, ramble up, then back the skinny roads lined with high hedgerows of fuschia with tall purple foxglove growing around and through them.
At Cong we stop to look at an old abbey and cemetery--more Sweeneys here. Wonderful carved arches, and intact steps you can climb up. It starts to rain a bit, so it's back to the car, and we wind our way home. Quiet Man business here, the bridge is near and I see the thatched roof cottage used in the film. I also see shorn sheep for the first time, and at first glance take them for oddly shaped pigs. They look so strange and vulnerable when they're naked.
It's been a long day, so we decide to stay in, have room service. We both go for the enormous, and delicious burger and have a bottle of champagne to go with it while we watch the pretty pathetic golfers on the little course between us and the lake. They're still playing at ten, with the light holding. The days are long here, with a soft, subtle twilight coming late and leading to utter dark.
Today we'll get another late start--total vacation mode now--and have no idea what we might do.
Nora
ADWOFF > Nora's Travelogues > England/Ireland 2002 > Galway, June 19, 2002
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