The Burren, and a country fair (A)

The trip to Northern Ireland left us fairly exhausted. Alas though, there is no rest for the wicked and Matt and I were up and off to work early Monday morning. Matt’s parents however reported that they took it easy and slept in well after we had sat down in our cubicles.

On Tuesday I had my second trip to the library. Noeline had recommended a book to me called ‘The Whitest Flower’, which is a historical novel set during the Irish potato famine. Unfortunately it was out. Thus started my harassment of the local librarians; I tried without success to find some of the other books that the librarian recommended to me but finding what you want in that place is a bit of a nightmare. Although novels are mostly put shelved according to the author’s last name that is where the order ends. An author with the surname Carson could be in the fiction section under the C’s between Chris and Citole or in the CA. Anyway, Due to the fact that I was exhausted I found it all a bit stressful. In the end I picked a Maeve Binchy book that I had seen whilst on my mission to find the books I was looking for. I am almost finished it now, and must say that it was a very good choice, I recommend ‘Tara Road’ to anyone wanting a chick lit type book.

The rest of the week skipped by nicely. Matt worked diligently in his Man Cave taking his bike to pieces, as you can see in the photos, and I read my book. Thursday night Brent and Noeline had dinner in at our house and we made plans for the weekend’s adventures. Fortunately the plans this time were a bit more relaxed.

On Saturday, we set off about 10am to travel around County Clare, just south of County Galway, where we live. The area that we traveled through is known as ‘The Burren’, which comes from the Irish for Barren. The landscape was similar to that which we encountered on the Aran Islands, strange but beautiful. The upper hills were covered with rock, lilac-blue in the morning light. Then, in straight lines bordered by stone walls, the hills changed to green paddocks with cows grazing in them. We couldn’t quite decide if it was a freak natural occurrence or if some crazy Irish people had moved all the rocks from the lower bit. Throughout this area the paddock fences are all made of stone. From what I now know this is a feature mainly in the west of Ireland where there’s more stones than trees. Easily more stones than trees. In fact, a Cromwellian General tasked to make it hard for the Irish in the area had the following to say about the Burren; ‘There aren’t any trees to hang them from, no water to drown them in and no soil to bury them in’.


Eating Doritos out in the Burren

We were equipped with our trusty National Geographic Ireland book (really good) and all the pamphlets Brent could get his hands on. Our first stop was Dunguaire castle. We went into the grounds and had a look and went to the wee craft bit. It really well maintained but we were too cheap to pay €5 each to get in. The castle had medieval banquets there every night for a cool €50 per person. For that though you get served by buxom wenches, serenaded by a harp ensemble and get to eat with your fingers.


Dunguaire Castle

We then ventured down to Ireland’s oldest perfumery, which is a grand 35 years old. It wasn’t what any of us were expecting to be honest When we arrived we were asked had we been here before and did we want to watch a video? Yes that would be great we said. We were wrong it wasn’t, it was rather painful. We were expecting to see a wee film about how they make the perfume, but no, it was all about plants in the area. There is an interesting collection of plants in the area; I think 75% of Irelands native plants are found in that small area. A lot of the plants are usually only found in the Alps but the seeds are believed to have been bought there in the last ice age by the glaciers. (boring was pretty much exactly what I expected, by the way. M).

After that anti-climax we headed on. We went to a stone fort, which was charging €5 to go to. We could see it from the outside it wasn’t very big, and it was a bit of a rip-off so we looked at it on one of the postcards then headed back out. I read afterwards that there is an audio-visual presentation there as well, but after seeing the stone forts on the Aran Islands this one looked like a toddlers play pen.

We headed up the road, and went to a cool burial site. It looked a bit like the pi sign. How on earth the people managed to get ten tonne rocks in that arrangement I will never know. People have been buried there now and then over a couple of thousands years. Strange thing is this place was way more interesting than the 5 euro fort down the way, and free as well.


A Neolithic tomb, serious stone age architecture.

For lunch we had a picnic out of the boot of the car. We drove up the hill to see a pyramid shaped burial mound. From where we were situated we could look down the hill to the stone fort, and we concluded that we were definitely wise to have not gone there. From what I understand about the burial mound it was excavated in the 19th century, the excavators looked at all the bits of people and stones and then put them all back. We also found a little hobbit type house in the side of a rock that had collapsed. It had a couple of small rooms that we could see and led back under the hill. I liked it and Matt even crawled inside for a closer look.


Lunch from the boot


Walking up to a stone age burial mound


Matt taking a closer look at some old ruins

From there we drove through Carran, and after a bit of persuasion from myself, we turned around and went back to it. We visited a church with a glass roof, well a ruin of a church with a glass roof. According to the information there it was the site of one of the earlier Christian churches in Ireland, and was at one stage the smallest diocese in Ireland. There were some very old Celtic stone crosses on display there that had been excavated.


A tall cross making Abby look pretty short.

The next stop on our list of things to do was to visit the Cliffs of Moher. Now Ireland has a lot of cliffs, but at these ones the people are restricted by barriers from going near the end, all because of a stupid person whom jumped over them and another who fell. But that is not what makes them special, every layer of the cliff is made from a different type of rock. We went into the information centre which was built into the side of the hill, and looked like a gigantic hobbit mall. This proved to be the highlight of my ice-cream eating around Ireland adventure. Matt and I shared a 500ml tub of Ben and Jerry’s fish food ice-cream. I got pretty excited when Matt said that he couldn’t eat any more just over half way through. But unfortunately within two bites he forgot all about that and continued to eat his fair share until it was all gone.


The Cliffs of Moher.


A castle, and a typical Irish sky

The next stop from there was home to pick up some bits and pieces. It is a nice drive around Galway Bay back to Galway. Matt and I packed a wee bag and headed out to Carraroe to stay the night with Brent and Noeline. On the way out we went past the Traveler’s camp again, and this time Matt sneaked some photos of the “Pykies”.


Traveler’s camp out near Carraroe. Traveler is the PC name for these folk.


Tinkers, Gypsies, Pykies or worse, they all mean the same thing.

I learnt a very valuable lesson last weekend. To do under any circumstances show any sign of life in the morning, or the morning sleep-in is over and the day has begun. The parents got sick of waiting for us to get up and went to the shops to get some bits and pieces, taking a long, unplanned but appreciated detour home. Once they got home, it was all go. Lunch to be eaten, then the Clarinbridge Country Fair to go to.

I don’t really know what I was expecting of the Country Fair, probably something like the A&P shows back home. There wasn’t a grandstand, or covered yards, no parade and no rodeo either. Brent spent quite a bit of time talking to the sheep people though. They have a breed of sheep called the Galway, and their number’s are now pretty low, so a few farmers got together and decided to start breeding them again. Problem is they are kinda fat and no-one much wants to buy them. They also had a few highly manicured cows. But what really surprised me was the amount of horses. There were 5 equestrian rings going all the time, and three rings to show off the different breeds of horses. I was surprised at how many men and boys were doing the jumping. At home it is not considered to be a particularly masculine pastime. There wasn’t much of a machinery section, but there were lots of places to buy horse gear and floats.


Sheep, just like home


Although maybe pampered a bit more than we’re used to.

We went from there to our house and had dinner. Brent and Noeline had seen advertised “Trad on the Prom”, direct from Riverdance™, The Cheiftains™ and Lord of the Dance™ and we had tickets to the Sunday performance. It was certainly the pocket Irish song and dance show but the dancing that we did see was pretty cool. There were two young brothers that came on a bit and they were amazing. But mostly it was music like you would hear in any Irish pub, ok better quality but with less atmosphere. The MC guy, I was fit to kill by the end of the night. Instead of just saying thank you, he would say danke, gracias, thank you….. It was the silver head brigade there alright; I don’t think that there were many tour buses in Galway not there that night. But I am glad that I went. Afterwards Matt and I went home and went to bed. We were exhausted again, and Monday morning was only seven hours away…

Northern Ireland (M)

Two weekends ago Myself, Abby and my Parents headed up to Northern Ireland for a look around. The rough plan was to drive up to Belfast, around the top of the Island and then back down the Western side. We had planned to go up that way the first weekend of June, as it was a long weekend. But we didn’t, so we were going to cram what should’ve been a three day trip into two days.

We started off in the right spirit, we all bundled into the Old’s little hire car on Friday evening and hurried out into the traffic jam. It took us about an hour to get out past Claregalway, a small town about twenty minutes outside of Galway on a good day. On the other hand, we did get to have a decent look at the place where Abby’s Great-Great-Grandma came from.

So, from just past Claregalway we turned off the main road and went cross-country. Ireland is a country filled with little country roads and it’s easy to find a route off the main roads. Sure, the way you end up going may not be the fastest route from A to B, but at least the journey is more fun. By the time the clock got round to 9pm we still hadn’t got to B however (the B in this case being Enniskillen, a small town on the North side of Ireland) so we stopped in for the night in a quaint little place called Carrick-on-Shannon.

In the morning we headed off into Northern Ireland. We crossed the border at Belcoo and one of the first things we notice is the local police station. It’s only 9 years since the Good Friday Agreement and there’s still an occasional reminder of the “troubles” on this side of the border. In this case the reminder is a police station that looks more like a prison, with high barbed fences and CCTVs on every corner. In this case though, the fences aren’t to keep people in, but to stop Paddy’s getting in and causing “mischief”.

The roads also get considerably better on the Northern side, wider and with more road signs, but disconcertingly, the speed limits all change from km’s to miles. The countryside doesn’t change though; the scenery is still the green rolling farmland we’ve been seeing since we left Galway.

For lunch on Saturday we stopped at the Beaghmore Stone Circles. No-one really knows what they’re for or what they represent, but there are plenty of theories. My personal theory is that they’re part of some sort of sport, maybe a bit like the game musical chairs except with rocks. Anyways, what they do know is that the circles are old, maybe 1500BC, so that’s pretty impressive in it’s own right. Considering the number of humans around back then, there’s every chance that one of my long ago ancestors was moving these stones into circles around three and a half thousand years ago. So, I did a bit of circle building myself, for my ancestors y’see.


Standing in a stone circle


Makin' a stone circle of me own

We got to Belfast later in the afternoon. Now, my folks aren’t big on Cities, so we climbed a hill instead, Cave Hill in particular. This hill towers above Belfast on the West and offers good views from the top. So we can say we’ve seen Belfast, albeit from a distance. There are also caves up on Cave Hill, big surprise. Usual story around here, once upon a time long ago cave men lived in them. We climbed up to one of them and had a look inside and found that it’d been inhabited recently by teenagers looking for a more novel place to drink cheap beer. What I found quite interesting was that these inhabitants had the same urge to paint the cave walls as their much earlier cousins.


Looking out from a cave on Cave Hill, across Belfast

After leaving Belfast we headed around the coast past Carrickfergus and Larne. We passed the odd castle and eventually made it to Carnlough for the night. There wasn’t any accommodation at Carnlough, so we had to go on to Cushendall. However, we did find a decent fish and chippie for dinner. There doesn’t seem to be any of these in Galway, so we were pretty pleased to find one here.


Carrick-fergus Castle. Unfortunately Abby didn't get to have a look around this one as it'd already closed.

We stayed the night in a B&B in Cushendall. Turned out to be a fairly tricky place to find, we managed to drive past it three times before finding it. But, it did the trick and breakfast in the morning was really good.

On Sunday, our first stop was Carrickarede, a little island with a little rope bridge across to it. It used to be used by Salmon fishermen, but nowadays it’s a grade A tourist trap. So, we lined up to cross the little bridge like all the other tourists.


Mum and Dad on Carrickarede

From there we moved onto Ireland’s Premier Natural Tourist Attraction, the Giant’s Causeway. I have to say, it is a bit of a sight, thousands of strangely regular stones arranged into steps leading down to the ocean. Pity that Ireland’s Premier Natural Tourist Attraction attracts so many tourists, but I reckon it’s still worth seeing. We also managed to fit in a quick visit to Dungaire Castle and the Bushmill’s distillery on our way around, but time was starting to run short so we didn’t stay as long as we’d have liked there.


The Giant's Causeway


Sittin' on the Giant's Causeway


Outside the Bushmills Distillery. For all those enjoying a NZ winter, note it's shorts and jandels weather over here

It was now about 3 in the afternoon so we turned the little Seat Leon south and headed back towards Galway. Or rather, Dad turned the car south and I navigated. He drove the whole way that weekend, a Stirling effort although I don’t think he would’ve managed without my quality navigation from the co-pilot seat. We headed through Derry, Donegal and Sligo without stopping, except for ice-cream and then dinner. We got back to Galway around 9pm.

So, that’s the story of two weekend’s ago. Abby’s contracted to write up last weekend, so hers should be the next post. Goodnight.


Oh, almost forgot about a M/C update. My TDM is now fully in bits. It’s hard to believe that somehow the collection of parts in the garage go together to form a motorcycle. Well, I’m hoping they will when I go to put them together again.


Bits and Pieces of TDM

TDM Progress (M)

Abby's gone and filled y'all in on our travels over the weekend, so I'm just putting a quick post down to show how the TDM is getting on. I had four days off this weekend, and today I spent the majority of the day taking the TDM apart.

I've got the engine block out now, there's only a couple of mechanical things to do now (remove swing arm and front forks) and I'll be onto the sanding and painting. I've also got parts on the way from a wreckers in the UK, so at the moment I'm lookin' good for August.


Engine block out, bike is now looking decidingly naked.

My first installment (A)

Hello hello,

My name is Abby and I am Matt's girlfriend. A couple of my friends suggested that I start a blog, and I said this to Matt, and he has kindly agreed to let me share his.

So are you ready for it... my first epic installment. So I will start at the start of last week.... Work last week was very slow, painfully so. So I checked my e-mails, wrote some, and did general web-surfing. One problem in this plan. I didn't know what my bosses, boss looked like. Turns out he was lurching around our set of six a lot, and saw me doing what I was doing a lot, and realised that I didn;t have enough work to be doing. Next thing I knew I was sent down to manufacturing to make boxes. Well that sucked, but I zoned out and did my thing and made a couple of hundred boxes in just over an hour. Sweet I thought I had done my penance. Off to lunch with the girls, good times, then back to work which by then had gotten busier. But no. Tom was asking my bosses why I wasn't down in manufacturing. So back I go. Counting hundreds of things into piles of 10, Which is pretty tricky when you are told the wrong amount of things so you spend a lot of time recounting them to find out that you were right all along, then when I had counted all my stuff into piles, it was back to making boxes, by 4.30 when the day shift in manufacturing ended, my hands were raw, and I had red welted scratches all up my arm. So after that I was employee of the month work work and pretending to do more work. Alyson wasn't there, but later she advised me to alway have a spread sheet on hand to pretend to look busy when he comes around. Apparently everyone has done their time down there, I hope not to do any more.



Our little box of a flat in Galway

Matt's parents were supposed to arrive on Tuesday. I had the meals all planned out, bells, whistles and all. But no. Noeline picked up a stomach bug in Singapore and became violently ill on the plane trip over. Shame she was sitting in the window seat and Sweden's fattest man, dubbed 'Fat Bastard' was sitting in the aisle. Eventually she was moved to an air hostess seat right beside the facilities. Brent and Noeline ended up having a free stopover in Frankfurt as the airport Dr sent Noeline to the hospital by ambulance, and she had to stay there a couple of days. Brent informs me Frankfurt is a quaint city.

Friday they eventually made it over, and we had a nice dinner of Roast chicken and veges and apple crumble and ice cream for dessert. You couldn't even tell that Noeline had been sick, she was really well. That night Matt and I went to a farewell for one of his friends, and we were meant to go to a work one for me, but I was pretty exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep. As you all know me wanting to sleep instead of socialising is pretty extreme.

Saturday, we had a lazy day, then in the afternoon, Noeline and Brent came into town to pick up some more bits from the supermarket and us, and we had a very nice evening out there. They really are farmers without a shadow of a doubt.


Brent and Noeline's place out in Carraroe

Sunday we were up early, well they were, I got up at 9am which is early enough for a sunday. And we all headed to the Aran Islands which is a group of three islands off the coast from Galway, and is home to irelands most western point. On the Aran Islands, the native language is Irish, and they learn english as a second language at school, that is changing a bit now that they have one english TV station.


The ferries that go out to the Aran Islands

We went to Inis Mor which is the biggest of the three islands, and is 14 km long and 4 km wide. There is reportedly 70,000 miles of stone fences on the island. I was sceptical at first, but after seeing quite a bit of the island, I think that that is probably about right. If the people hadn't built stone fences everywhere there would be no ground.


A house for little people on the island


Walking up to Dun Aengus, one of the Stone Age forts

The island's main export is 200 2 year cows per year. I think that there must be some pretty heavy subsidises in place as the average farmer has only 5 cows each. The Aran Islands is famous for the 'Aran Islands Sweater'. Funny thing is is that we only saw one sheep the whole time we were there, and that was hobbled to stop it jumping the fence. So I really think that it is a wee tourist trap. There are hundreds of Aran Islands woollen sweater's in the mainland and that many again on the islands. What is refer's to is the corded design. They also had merino wool stuff there and I can all but guarantee that there are no merinos on the island.


Looking over the cliffs on the South side

On the island is one of Europe's oldest and best preserved stone age forts, and constructions. The locals were funny enough, not much genetic variation there.


Another ancient stone fort. And Abby.

On the Sunday we went for a Tiki tour around the Connemara area, which is west of Galway. Both the Aran Islands and Connemara and Galtraecht areas, which means they are irish speaking areas, and to buy a house in the area you must speak Irish.

I got to see my first Tinkers, Knackers, Travellers, whatever you want to call them. Think Brad Pitt in Snatch. I thought that those people were made up for the movie, but no, much to Irish disgust they really exist. And they really are dirty, live in caravans, and fight like cats and dogs, and drink like fish.

We were lucky enough to be in Connemara for Connemara Bog Week. Which is when they celebrate living on a bog. The locals cut up the bog into little brick type thingys, and stand them up to dry, to use as fire fuel. The conservationists are a bit worried about all the bog being dug up, and are trying to get parts put into national park. I did learn though that Fiordland back home is classified as one big bog according to their world map of bogs at the national park.


Peat cut and stacked out in the bog

National parks in Ireland are pretty tiny, as in it takes 2 and a half hours to walk right around it. From there we went to Kylemore Abbey, which was built originally by a man to show his wife how much he loved her, but between the jigs and the reels it is now owned by a bunch of nuns who bought it when their order fled war ravished europe in the first world war. We didn;t go in as they charge 12 euros and there was only an hour of opening time left, it was pretty cool all the same though, we stood in front of the lake outside the entrance and took pictures. Then we meandered our way back to where Brent and Noeline are staying, got fed and then went home and went to bed.


Kylemore Abbey

Unfortunately for me I had to go to work today. Work was actually ok, apart from the two hour induction that I had to do, that almost made me go to sleep. Then only thing that made me feel better is the knowledge that Matt has to do a two day induction this week. It was nice to see my wee work friends and find out what they had been up to.

Matt however had today off work. A few weeks ago he bought another motorbike, it is a definite fixer upper. He has been wanting a hobby for a while, so he is a happy as a pig in muck at the moment. He goes out into his Man cave, and be's manly. He has told me that if I want I can help in the next phase which involves sanding and and painting, isn't he kind..

I am still riding my speed machine to work everyday. It goes really fast on the way home, it is mostly down hill. Fortunately in Ireland cyclists are unofficially allowed to cycle on the footpath, as the drivers here rival Gore in their Crapiness and recklessness.

Matt has just read what I have written, and told me that I am allowed to post on his blog, so I think that I might do that then you can see photos and stuff too.

Next weekend the plan is to go up around Northern Ireland. Brent and I both like Maps in information centre's much to Matt's despair. So I have one course plotted out and brent and I will then negotiate and where we go. So that will be next week's installment of the adventure.


Brent, Abby and Matt, and the rental car