Callan to Rock of Cashel and Killarney

---

We got away early this morning in order to fit in more than just travelling.

The weather continues to be changeable and we now figure this is normal. Every day's forecast is sun, cloud, rain, warm and cool - you get the lot. Don't go anywhere without an umbrella because you might want one 30 minutes later.

We first went to Cashel where we wanted to visit the Rock of Cashel with St Patrick's Church. We visited here in 1976 and it was nothing like it is today. Then, we were able to simply walk up to the castle and walk all over and around. Now it is a primary tourist spot. The castle was first established very early on by a kingdom but was handed to the Catholic Church over 1000 years ago. Since then, parts have been added and then left to decay and fall down over the last 200+years until it was just a centinel on a rocky hill top. Now, over the later years it has been restored in various parts and at present it has a large area of scaffolding where they are patching and drying out walls and one of the roof areas to preserve frescoes. Much has fallen down and it will stay that way. There are now continuous tours on that you can go and join and it is well worth while. We didn't visit the town of Cashel as there wasn't enough time to do this today.

We then drove on to Killarney. Ireland is a very pleasant place to tour through despite the narrow roads. The countryside is rolling with rock walls and hedges everywhere. Trees also line paddocks and roads but there are few forests as we see in Europe. It reminds me of Taranaki in my childhood when paddocks were smaller and we kept our hedges for wildlife and shelter for animals. They were ripped out as herds got larger so have lost their charm. Ireland hasn't done that - yet. There are many dairy farms, nice homes and many tractors using the roads. The roads are slow not only because they are narrow, but also windy - not sure why when a straight line would have worked.

Killarney turned out to be very busy and larger than expected. We found the Information Office and booked into a B&B for the night so that we could get on the Ring of Kerry road early tomorrow since we have to drive back to Callan.

We visited Muckross House not far from the town and did a tour of the house first. This was fairly interesting but lacks the finesse and grandeur of the French chateaus. But, nice all the same. The surrounding gardens are huge but are more a park than a garden. There are formal gardens around the house and the rest is large open ground with trees running down to the lake. Very nice.

We called in at Ross Castle on the way back to Killarney to check it out. It has a grand location right on the lake and it appears that tours in little and big boats go from here.

We then joined the herds in town at dinner time. There are bars and restaurants everywhere. Too many to choose from but we eventually found something with the usual bar meal fare. Perfectly fine.

The downside of the day is, I dropped my camera and put a split in the screen enough for it not to work. I'll have to rely on Karilyn for photos for the rest of the trip.

---