August 23, Sunday

"Ireland is a peculiar society in the sense that it was a nineteenth century society up to about 1970 and then it almost bypassed the twentieth century."
- Author John McGahern

We are now in Dingle, co. Kerry, probably the most interesting areas that we will explore on our own. When we get up the weather is not soft, it’s a pouring, windy rain. So we retreat to the B&B common room to key word photos and practice new water color techniques. Lo and behold, around noon the weather turned beautiful, so we began our tour of ferry forts, magnificent cliffs, picturesque, abandon stone buildings (famine cottages), old churches, plus wonderful scenes overlooking water, mountains, and fields. We visited sites that were inhabited 6000 years ago. While we have a few sites close to that age in the USA (mound builders), they are frequent up and down the coast – timescapes of Irish history. The tip of the Dingle is where St. Brendan sailed from and the first land seen by Charles Lindberg after crossing the Atlantic. Off the mainland is the Blasket Islands. They are now abandon (by government order),, but have an interesting history of people on a remote island, population never rising above 200 people, Irish speaking, and produced 3 famous writers. Sue never has got the taste for Guiness, but loves a half pint of Smithwicks every night.