Wanderung 24

Spring Fling

From March to May 2011

Sunday May 1st: Boyle to Navan, Ireland

Bob:

Changing our plans to suit the circumstances, we decided to continue southeast toward Dublin and see the sights in the area just North of there. But first we drove back to Boyle Abbey, the ruins of a Cistercian Abbey established in the 12th Century, and poked around there for an hour or so. The ruin was interesting in part because one wall of the nave had the rounded Romanesque style of arches and the other wall across from it had the more modern pointed Gothic style arches!

Monika:

After a nice breakfast, we decided to visit the Boyle Abbey, since we were already in Boyle. These are ruins of an old Cistercian Abbey, a daughter house of the one in Mellifont that started the Cistercian order in Ireland.

Bob:

We couldn't get into all the corners of the abbey as the main nave of the church part was being rebuilt. It seems as if the ground under the foundations of one wall was just too soft to support the weight, and the wall had sagged and crumbled over the centuries as a result. The renovation involved numbering each piece of stone in the North wall, disassembling the wall, digging up and replacing the subsoil with more firmer, more solid stuff, and then finally reassembling the wall in all its original glory. What a huge jigsaw puzzle that must be!

Monika:

It was an intriguing site, with a lot of the original church still standing. However, since they were trying to stabilize the whole structure, a lot of the church was off limits. But we still got nice views of a defensive tower, the gate house and part of the chapter house.

Bob:

Our landlady had given Monika a copy of the "B&Bs in Ireland" book and using that she nixed our original plan to stay in Kells as there weren't any suitable B&Bs there. Instead we drove for a few hours to Navan, a larger town about 12 kilometers South of Kells that had a lot of B&Bs. Navan also boasted, surprisingly, a commuter bus to downtown Dublin that left every 15 minutes during the morning rush hours. I was all in favor of the idea of taking a bus to Dublin rather than fighting the traffic to get down there and then fighting to find a parking space.

One other BIG advantage of that B&B book was that it listed the latitude and longitude of every B&B. Since Ireland just doesn't use street numbers as far as we could tell, we found that using the latitude and longitude coordinates of a B&B was the only reliable way to locate them. In this instance, it worked like a charm and our GPS even informed us correctly which side of the street the B&B was located on. Whoopee!

Monika:

The proprietress at our last B&B had taken pity on us and given us a book with all the approved B&Bs in Ireland. Thus I found out, that there were none in Kells, our next stop, but the town of Navan in the middle of the Boyne River historical area, had several. Not only did it give information on the B&B it even included latitude/longitude information. So I just entered the coordinates and the clever GPS took us directly into the car park of the B&B. They had two rooms that shared a bath available for 3 nights. Since Lois did not mind walking through our room to get to the bathroom, we decided to settle in there.

Bob:

Everyone was rather peckish by that time, so after we signed in we walked over to downtown Navan to find a restaurant recommended by our proprietor. Smack in the middle of the town we also found a statue of two guys fighting a bull that was very well executed although its relevance to the town was not explained.

Monika:

It was about lunch time and we decided to walk downtown, a 10 minute walk and find a little restaurant. The downtown area is clustered around a statue of two guys wrestling a bull. I never could figure out what it was all about, but it was photogenic.

Bob:

Having eaten, I was re-energized enough to face another short drive up the road to Tara, a hilltop that was the coronation site of the old High Kings of Ireland. The hilltop was, in fact, a large conglomeration of ancient, overgrown stone structures that had ceremonial and religious significance to the Irish people across a span of at least a couple thousand years.

The structures included the traditional seat of the High King of Ireland, and what I gathered from the concentric circles and entranceway this was also the ceremonial heart of the Old Religion. St. Patrick had, in fact, lit Easter fires here in challenge to the Celtic chiefs, so there was a statue of him there also. That tale suggests that Easter bonfires were an early Christian tradition and that might in turn explain why to this day the Germans still light enormous public bonfires on the Saturday evening before Easter Sunday.

Monika:

After we had walked back to the B&B, we decided to use the rest of the afternoon to drive to the Hill of Tara. Here, for centuries, the High King of Ireland was proclaimed High King. Here also St. Patrick did something or other.


 

Bob:

Another mound was called the "Hostages Mound", although wether hostages were held there or buried there was not explained. The I.R.A. had also erected a gravestone in the center of the ceremonial circle, but the light was at such an angle that I could not make out the inscription.

I wanted to find some more post cards so we visited the nearby gift shop. There I found a nice bracelet of Connemara marble for Monika, and she found a necklace with a Celtic design, so we bought all that. Lois bought a nice Ireland coffee mug and necklace, so we all got nice things except I didn't find any good postcards!!

Monika:

The Visitor's Center was in an old church, but it was not yet open for the season. So we just walked around, past a statue of St. Patrick and past a few mounds. Everything was full of history, I am sure, but I was cold since the wind was blowing rather strongly and I had not brought my fleece along.

Luckily there were some gift shops open, so we spent some time looking around and warming up. Bob found a very pretty bracelet made from different pieces of Connemara marble for me and I found another nice Celtic necklace. Lois found a very beautiful coffee mug, which fell out of the bottom of the bag and broke when we were no more than 50 feet from the shop!! Fortunately the proprietors agreed the bag had been faulty and replaced the broken mug with a new one and a stronger bag.

Bob:

By this time we were all tired, so we headed back to our B&B for a light evening snack and then just read and updated the journal until the sun finally set around 8:30 p.m. when we turned in for the night. I think all of us had a yen to spend an evening in an Irish pub listening to live music, but since those musical sessions don't seem to start until 9:30 or 10: 00 p.m. at the earliest, that just never seemed to work out for us.

Monika:

Well satisfied, we returned home and settled in for the night.


 

Copyright 2011 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Prolog Map of Transatlantic Cruise Map of Drive in Ireland Epilog

March 2011
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
April 2011
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
May 2011
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31

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