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A Week In South West Ireland (8/8)

 

These pictures were touring around the South West coast of Ireland in October 2004.

  

 

 

 

Further round we paused to admire the view of Great Blasket island, then went past Dunquin where the film Ryan’s Daughter was filmed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark with the Great Blasket Island in the background.

We returned from the peninsula through Dingle, Anascaul and past Inch beach, to our vegetarian B&B at Shanahill East for the night, Phoenix, welcoming but a little underlit. We ate at the Anvil Bar at the nearby village of Boolteen.

 

 

 
After a very enjoyable vegetarian breakfast we returned westwards to Anascaul, arriving just before midday to witness the unusual spectacle of an otter slinking out of the river and trying to catch a dipper, which escaped just in time.

The real reason for the trip to Anascaul was to see the South Pole Inn, established in 1920 by modest Antarctic explorer Tom Crean who, with expedition leader Shackleton and 15 others raised the alarm in South Georgia when the group’s ship got stuck in pack ice. It involved a voyage in a lifeboat in icy seas, followed by a forced march across South Georgia’s uncharted mountains to an inhabited whaling station. We just drank the beer and wrote postcards.

 

 

 

Early afternoon we set off over the foothills of the Slieve Mish, through Camp to Blennerville, located on the expansive Tralee Bay.

Blennerville has the largest working windmill in the British Isles, built in the early 1800s. During the late 1990's it was extensively renovated back to working condition as shown.

 

 

 

 

Potato blight resulted in starvation and the death of over a million people during the mid 19th century. Many people tried to escape from this by travelling to America.

Blennerville is a port from where many of the millions of emigrants left for America – many on coffin ships. The more fortunate emigrants left in the Jeanie Johnston, which made several trips to Quebec and other ports, carrying wood from Canada to Ireland, and people on its return. Conditions were generally much better on the Jeanie Johnston and nobody died during sixteen crossings - commemorated here on this quilt.

 

 

 

 

A close up view of the windmill at Blennerville.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We looked around inside the windmill. This wooden tube carries flour down from the mill stones to sacks on the ground floor. This was just before I was nosey by opening the inspection hatch and was covered with flour.

After a late lunch in Tralee we drove east to just north of Castleisland. Traffic was very heavy, so we just missed chance to tour Crag Caves. We drove north to Glin on the Shannon estuary, then east via Foynes to Askeaton, where we found a nice B&B and a meal some way out at Rathkeale.

 

 

 

 

Askeaton turned out to be a good place to start from for the drive back to Cork, easily managed within 3 hours, driving through Croom, Charleville and Mallow.

As we arrived quite early, we drove to the coast, almost stumbling across the same place we went to late on Sunday evening – Charles Fort. This star-shaped fort was breached only twice, by forces of William of Orange in 1790, and by the IRA in the civil war of 1922 (the latter fell back later to Irish Free State forces).

The picture shows a ceramic mosaic laid out on the lawn illustrating its distinctive star shape.

 

 

 

 

 

Here is Mark inside one of the court yards. The wooden supports are not original but are required to ensure the wall remains safe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally we returned the hire car and returned back to Stansted on this Ryanair aeroplane.

 

 

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