Stone Fences, Iron Gates, but no Moats

Monday June 4th
Gort, Ireland (stealth in Coole Park)
35 miles
Chilly but sunny, so we'll take it:)

We've noticed a lot of large homes under construction (and built, just like back home) but the construction has stopped. The homes are big, just like back home. A closer look today showed that there's no inside insulation on that cinder block and the floors are cement. It's gotta be cold! For heat it looked like hot water radiators on the walls.



And every house has a stone wall to the road and an iron gate. Mini castles one and all! Asked someone today about the fences and he said it was because "the lazy farmers can't keep their animal home".

Facetimed my daughter, Dana, this afternoon. It worked well. Maybe next weekend I can Skype with Avery (older daughter). It was pretty cool. The town of Gort had free wifi from EirCom right on the street. That's how wifi should be...EVERYWHERE FOR FREE! It's pretty frustrating because when we do get to a town and I get some wifi, poor Fuat is just hanging around while I scramble to upload my blog, get emails, write emails, check Facebook, etc. He's quite patient but it is a bit awkward. It's in the evening that I have down time and then we're in the "woods". I'm not going to get on the internet much this trip, I can tell.

We visited William Butler Yeats' Thoor Ballylee, a cottage and tower near a stream. But of course, it was closed. Then we came on to Coole Park, the estate of Lady Gregory, a friend and patron of WB Yeats. But alas it was 5:03 when we got to the Visitors' Center and you can guess what time it closed:/. So we went into the Walled Garden and saw the Autograph Tree with many "famous" autuographs of yore including the Lady Gregory and WB Yeats. After cooking a dinner of rice, onion, raisins, cashews with cinnamon and tossed salad, we decided to "stay after hours" and cycled up into the woods to camp for the night. In the morning we'll go get the free scoop at the Visitors' Center and roam the grounds some more. Her house no longer stands, but there are stone remnants of the stables and pigeon roosts. Stone, stone, stone...everywhere and everything is made of it...yesterday and today!

Oh ya, for lunch today we sat in an ancient graveyard eating our brie and bread and apple. Then we met the most charming farmer hanging over the stone wall telling us how he farms up bog to dry it and heat his home. He had a lot of tales to share and all with a brogue that was almost impossible to understand. I did get a bit of video of him, but that's on my camera not my phone.

I did shoot a bit of video of the countryside with the cows and sheep and stone walls. Hope it uploads easily. (Didn't upload. I may try to upload it separately.)
I've been having such ease of loading my journal this time, I don't want to mess it up.

The solar charger is working if I plug my phone in directly to the panels, but I tried to plug the phone into the battery pack and it says it's an unacceptable power device, or something like that. So I"m good as long as the sun shines. We'll just see how it goes.

And that's all folks...

BagLady


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone