Ireland day 16 - Monday 20th June

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Our penultimate full day, and the sun was shining ?

We found a café for breakfast, then headed to the castle. The self-guided tour was interesting and well structured. It took around an hour, and there was plenty of information on the history of the castle and the Earls of Ormonde, the 25th Earl who died in 1997 being the last. Upon his death, the Marquessate of Ormonde became extinct and the Earldoms of Ormonde and Ossory and the Viscountcy of Thurles became dormant. The castle is now owned by the people of Ireland since the last Marquess of Ormond sold it to the State for a token sum of £50.

Afterwards we had an ice cream, and explored the 50 acres of parkland adjacent to the castle. It’s beautiful, with lots of wild flowers and grasses growing. There’s a modern sculpture towards the end of the park farthest from the castle. There’s no information about it, but Breanna visits it frequently! We know that because her name appears written on it several times with various BFFs and Jake, who in December 2021 was apparently her boyfriend – at least she thinks he is!

We found a lovely little duck pond hidden amongst some trees, and spent some time sitting there in the peace and tranquility. I even managed to find a geocache nearby!

There was a lovely sculpture in memory of missing people, made from hands represnting the hands of family and friends. It had some stone

On our way out of the castle grounds I spotted a road train doing 30-minute city tours, so of course we did! It was a bit bumpy in places, but an interesting commentary, and we even got to sing along to various Irish songs between places of interest.

Once we’d disembarked, we popped into the Left Bank, apparently an award winning restaurant and bar. We weren’t that impressed, but Susan’s salad and my tomato soup filled a hole.

We walked to the St Canice Cathedral and Round Tower. An interesting cathedral, and we learnt from some of the information there that Dame Alice Kyteler (see yesterday’s blog) hadn’t been burnt at the stake, but had in fact done a runner to either the UK or France, leaving her servant, Petronella, to be murdered in her place. Not a great boss!

I climbed the Round Tower, while Susan waited at the bottom. The tower is 30m high, about 4.5m in diameter at the bottom, and just over 3m at the top. It’s one of only 3 medieval towers remaining in Ireland that can still be climbed, and dates from the 9th century. Just before I climbed the steps I read that it only has very shallow foundations, and is currently about 60cm ‘off plumb’. It did make me slightly anxious, but I figured that it had been here quite a long time, so the chance of it actually toppling while I was up it was minimal. Up I went, 121 steps to the flat top, the climb from the last set of steps to the top being the hairiest. I got a few photos while avoiding getting too close to the edge, and headed back down.

On our way back to the centre of the city we stopped to grab the geocache we’d walked past yesterday because of the group of young people in and around a car. We did attempt another one – a puzzle cache – where we had to work out the coordinates from the number of metal bars on a bridge. We counted them 3 times, but couldn’t get the formula to work for the coordinates, so went to the Riverview Bar for a drink on the terrace instead. It was really sunny and warm by now, so we finished our drinks inside the bar in the relative cool.

We had the Airbnb review to do for our last host, so we headed back to base and mulled over that for a while, then went to Petronella’s restaurant for dinner, showing as number 1 in the city on Trip Advisor. There was one waitress, the owner, and kitchen staff. The waitress was really busy, running around serving the 5 or so tables with people at them, including a table of 16 people! She certainly deserved the tip we left. The food was good and well presented, but not quite the same standard as at Campagne yesterday.

As we passed Kytlers on the way home we heard Irish music, so of course went in to get our last ‘fix’ of this trip.

Today was around 17000 steps and 11km.

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