Tynanwoods Day Two

15 October 2006
Day Two: SpongeBob in Gaelic; 120m caves and two inch maps

This jetlag here is fierce and the air surprisingly dry. Christina and I went to bed at 10 pm local time, were awake for two or three hours in the dark of night, and woke up at 11 am -- but only because Ava had a severe nosebleed and woke us up.

She turned on the TV and found SpongeBob Squarepants. At first we thought all the characters had been given thick Irish accents, when we realized it had been redubbed in Gaelic. Aside from that, it was very little different than watching SpongeBob in American.

More walks up the hill, more cows, more dogs. There are no leash laws here and that strikes me as perfectly fine. Everywhere we've gone so far we've been adopted by a local dog, who follows us and points out the local points of interest -- or, at least, all the things that smell really bad. We've named them all Fergus, after the local river. On our return from our first walk we found a stray in the driveway to our cottage. Fergus took one look at us, lifted his leg and peed on our car's backtire. Apparently it was his driveway, not ours.

On this day we drove 15 km or so to Kilnefora, a charming little town that's home to The Burren Centre and a 13th century church/graveyard and, more important, Linnane's pub, where we stopped in for a late afternoon pint. The owner (a large bearded and balding man with kind eyes named Linnane, I believe) was genial and asked where we were from. There were 5 or 6 apparent regulars inside, all men aged 45 to 60.

At the Burren Centre I bought a "two inch map" of the area. I asked what that meant, and the woman behind the counter held up her fingers two inches apart. Very dry sense of humor here. Turns out it is a map with a scale of one mile to two inches.

From Kilnefora we headed past Leameneh Castle (it looked more like a crumbling dormitory) and up Route 480, a two-lane road through the heart of The Burren. An unmortised stone fence maybe a thousand years old ran the length of the road on both sides, and the softly rolling fields were broken up by exposed limestone jutting up like mushrooms after a rain. We saw ring forts and the occasional rock structure made of the same flint-like limestone as in the fence, only about 1000 times larger. These are apparently the oldest man-made structures in the world.

We drove on toward Aillwee Cave, a 14km long cave discovered in the 1940s by a local farmer, who proceeded to keep the news to himself for 30 years. The cave was carved into a hill by an ancient river and runs 120 meters below the surface, with tiny cramped passageways opening up to wide rooms with stalagtites, internal waterfalls, and steep drops into total darkness. If it's possible to experience both acrophobia and claustrophobia at the same time, I did. Ava clung to me out of fear, as I did to her. Xtina and Cole seemed totaly unaffected. Still it was spectacular, especially after we were back above ground.

We drove on to Ballyvaughn, yet another charming small town, and had dinner at Monk's overlooking Galway Bay -- seafood chowder and fresh mussels from the bay and, of course, beer. Then we (or rather, xtina, who has been a real trooper behind the wheel) drove home, to drink another pint and sit by a turf fire, watching Irish Telly.