Sunday, 20 August 2000
9;45 a.m. -- on the bus to Tralee. I change there for the bus to Dingle. Had breakfast at Sheila's,- coffee, o.j. and a basket of toast. Talked to a local who hhikes and guides hikers. He had just come back from guiding a group of hikers in France. He advises (to prevent blisters) putting vasaline on any "hot spots" for the first week or so till the skin toughens. And mail souvenirs, don't lug them.
I have a "book-ahead," a reservation, from Sheila's to Ballintaggart's in Dingle.
We're riding through a light fog, visibility a quarter of a mile. Rolling hills with oats, sugar beets, hay and cow fields. Where ever grains have been harvested, crows are gleaning the fields. I think of Van Gogh.
Farmhouses just west of Cork are built on terraces cut into the hillsides, leaving the flat land free for crops. Just passed a cement plant built cheek-by-jowl with a medieval ruin covered with vines. Contrast!
Woodlots, "tree plantations," on these steep hills are usually planted to conifers. Watercourses are rimmed with willows. Some hedges have beeches and "pasture" oaks in them. Occasionally, there is a cluster of beehives under a tree north of a hedge.
10 a.m. -- Just passed the turnoff to Blarney Castle and the bus paused to pick up passengers in Blarney village. This bus station's north wall of fieldstone has a mossy Alpine garden growing in it's crevices (all volunteer plants, not an intentional cultivation, just a marvellous mild climate). Most plants are 2 inches tall or less; a few are up to 1 foot, "specimen" plants. The wall can't seem to support more than 2 taller plants every 2 to 3 feet, all quite green and cheery. The building itself is quite old, and looks as if it might have started life as some sort of warehouse. It is the sort of building you see in etchings illustrating old editions of Charles Dickens' books,- a great awkward rectangle with charming trim at the doors and windows.
10:30 Caught a couple shots of pastures with ruins in 'em, and a store in a village. It had two abandoned cars beside it. One was used to store potting soil and had two substantial bushes growing out of it!
I was briefly paired (seatwise) with an elderly lady all in tweed, who smelled pleasantly of sheep. She was coming from her hamlet to the next village for Mass at a small church in the Kerry diocese. The hills are getting higher and fields are getting rougher and more scruffy. Some are full of swamp reeds. These may be peat deposits,- 1/2 to 4 acres, tightly enclosed by hedges and fencing.
11 a.m. Took photos of mountains outside Killarny. Everywhere I've gone, I've been amazed by the number of slate roofs. Pat Treacy said that 20 to 30 years ago [and until recently], the government paid a subsidy for people to re-roof their homes with slate or tiles to fireproof them (and they last about 100 years, proving to be much more economical than our "asphalt" shingles). Now, the gov't is subsidising thatch, to prevent the disappearance of thatched cottages, and also are trying to develop ways to fireproof thatch. Thatched cottages are far warmer in winter and cooler in summer, without the need for additional insulation.
Pulled into Tralee bus station at 11:55 a.m.
Whish!!
12:05 -- on the Dingle bus, leaving Tralee. I had just time to take my pack out of the baggage bin, take one turn around the Tralee bus/rail station, and pop it into the baggage bin of the Dingle bus.
Tralee (what I'm seeing of it), is about the size of Biddeford/Saco. I just can't get used to these medieval walls popping out of a row of townhouses that look to be Georgian era. The gov't puts "preservation oorders" on anything pretty or quaint. The Buseras in Dublin has one and it was built in 1953 (but, it won a prize for excellence in architecture).
South of Tralee, headed into the dark mountains. The flats look tidal, salt-hay meadows with muddy rills winding through, like the Wells salt-marsh at home. There are NO trees on the mountains near town. There is a fjord-like bay. We keep coming up behind horse-drawn caravans ["Slattery's"]. The wagons look like mini-Conestogas. The bus driver grumbles. They are strung out so that we come up behind one every mile or so. We pass the fourth one in a deluge of rain that is over before we see the next, in a very curvy place. We crept along at a hoorse's walking place until the driver resorted to the horn to encourage the wagonnier to use one of the frequent turn-outs. This is the first bus I've seen with seat-belts in it. I'm belted! We're whalloping up and down an incredibly narrow two-direction road,- young driver, too. At a bridge, the car coming had to back up to a turn-out to let us by.
Some turf-cutting lines on the mountains' sides look like inscrutable hieroglyphs. Sad to say, some have erosion gullies running down like crooked tears. There are lots of daylilies with tiny two-tone red and orange flowers growing out of the road shoulders,- dock and juniper, too. Also a plant I've seen potted as an accent plant in Dublin and Cork grows wild and rampant in the hedges here. It has a red drooping trumpet, a purple band, then its "sexual parts" hang out of the purple band in red and pink stalks with gold pollen. I'll try to get a pic; it's not something you can press and bring home to identify.
1:05 p.m. -- Pulled into Dingle. Now it's 1:25 and no sight of a lift to Ballintaggart, though another hostel's driver did say they'd be here soon. Dingle is sorta like Camden, lots of artsy-craftsy shops, although it is also a working harbour. The bare sheep pasture hills around the town have some new cottages on terraces cut into the hillside. Here in Dingle is the first time I've seen a shingle-sided building, though it has the standard slate roof. It appears to be full of apartments over shops.
7 p.m. -- Ballintaggart is an old stone mansion with stuccoed front, unpainted,- weathered dark grey with orange-yellow lichens spattered across it. All the trees around it lean to the east, due to the nearly constant wind,- sorta likke California coast trees. Many are sycamores,- pale grey bark, some have burls on them.
The view from this hill is beyond words, but I'll try. The house faces south, looking down the coast and out to sea. Massive cliffs. There's a peninsula to the south-west which is separated from the fields below by a channel that looks to be only about 50 feet wide. On the highest point of it is an old tower with a stone "arm" sticking out of the side of it, pointing to the channel. I asked one of the local girls who works here, but she didn't know what it was for, and said "It's just a ruin." Well, that's what it is to live among so much archaeological wealth. I took a series, panorama, of photos about 4 p.m. Then, just before I started writing this, took another shot; the lower sun picked out the cliffs down the coast and a boat, which looks like a dragger or trawler, is in the bay. It'll be a white speck in the pic, suppose. Around 3-4 p.m., I also got a close-up of those yellow asters I mentioned before. A bee was on them. Hope she comes out!!
My dorm room is just over the front door, so it's a higher-up version of the same fantastic view. Some of the young folk are playing with an Irish football down in the yard: thumps and laughs, delightful. There is a stone wall along the roadside in front of here, so you only hear cars when they pass by the gates. Birds twitter, and a fellow is practicing guitar chords somewhere.
This is a working farm, raising beef cattle, as well as having a caravan park off to one side behind the trees. Shucks, no pony trekking. The woman who ran it moved to the other side of Dingle, a prohibitive distance for me to walk. They also don't change currency here, contrary to the guidebook entry. Wouldn't taake my travellers' checks. The manager and her husband will be back tomorrow and I'll settle up then. I was told I had to bring my own groceries and the pickup van driver let me run into a grocery store. I grabbed milk, coffee, bread, cheese, rice, soup mix & a cooked chicken, and came out of there with 29 p in Irish money. So that's how come I came to need to change currency when I got here.
7:45 -- A vee of ( geese just flew over. I was leaning out the window, sopping up the view and exchanging happy exclamations about same with a fellow viewer leaning on the board fence.
8:40 p.m. -- Sun still hasn't set yet, but I'm about done in. This place must have been really posh when it was built. The woodwork around doors is elaborate, walls are over 2 feet thick and the insets around the windows are carved wooden panels painted white. The ceilings have 3-ft wide curved (arched) borders with ornamental borders at top and bottom of the curve. It's about 14 feet from floor to ceiling in the upstairs rooms, more downstairs. The glass part of the windows are about 8 ft, tall, starting at a sill 2 feet from the floor and then there is massive yet proportional woodwork to within 14 inches of the lower edge of the border around the ceiling. My dorm room is a corner room,- 2 windows, one facing south and the other east.
The fireplace is made of what looks to be black slate, carved in a pattern of grooves. The corner pieces under the mantle are stylized flowers with 6 petals. The whole effect is rather geometric,- classically restrained and elegant.
The bathroom is built into a corner of the room with its own lower ceiling (to preserve the ancient plaster, I presume): modern shower, toilet and lave with ample room. This large room has 5 two-decker bunkbeds.
There is a courtyard bigger than a basketball court in the center of this building, with a level slate patio in the center and cobblestones around the sades. They look like beach rocks, about fist-sized, set in patterns. Flowerboxes and hanging baskets of flowers are on the walls of the courtyard. One "flowerbox" looks like an old stone horse trough, set up on a few of those fist-sized beach rocks.