Blogs from County Louth, Ireland, Europe

Ireland the North 1 Dundalk Still heading south today to Dundalk in light cloud and very brief shows of the sun. Luckily the wind is moderate and mostly not causing much stress. The countryside is undulating in cow country with beef and quite a few dairy farms plus the odd sheep farm. We notice some of the dairy herds are quite big as we wend our way around the spiders web of country lanes. For our mid morning break we stopped at Cafe Nero at the Quays Shopping Centre on the way out of the bustling city of Newry. This lead us out of town alongside the Newry Canal. The Victoria Lock is where ther is a brief history of the last ships out of the port of Newry almost 50 yrs ago. South if this ... read more

XClare The next few days I stay on the Burren, in Kilfenora and Coisceam, near Caron with two different friends The Burren is a huge limestone pavement covering a chunk of Country Clare. I visit the Cliffs of Moher, where crowds of tourists pour out of buses from as far afield as Dublin and wander round the exhibition, or peer over the cliffs at the stacks, and strata, and height. Apparently it's the most visited tourist site in Ireland. It's impressive how the cliffs were formed, from deposits at a river delta from when Ireland was in tropical climes. Bernie took me for a drive to see a local portal stone dalmen, a burial cairn called Poulnabrone, and for a walk along a beach covered in fabulous interesting stones. I have a collection to take home ... read more

In researching for this trip, I learned about a World Heritage Site called Newgrange, located roughly half way between Dublin and Dundalk. It is a man-made mound with an inner chamber that pre-dates the Pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge in England. I thought that it was worth a visit. Wow! The visit experience could have justified the entire trip. I had read that tours can fill up for the day during the summer, so I headed over to the site first thing this morning. You can't go directly there, but have to start at a visitor center. At the center a receptionist asked if I wanted BOTH the Newgrange and Knowth tours - obviously I had not researched this place carefully enough. I took both. We started at Knowth, which was built after Newgrange, but is ... read more

Friday began with a full pack march to the bus to Drogheda. A pleasant walk without a pack, we were all glad it was our last long trek with the bags! Ruth Heaney had a wonderful day arranged for us. We dropped luggage at Anne Cassidy's and picked up her daughter Sophie and headed off for lunch in the town centre. Then a guided tour of this old medieval town. Shopping closed the afternoon followed by a dinner prepared at the Scout Centre by Drogheda Guides and Guiders. Ruth further arranged luggage transfers as well as our dorm and breakfast and Sophie spent the night too.... read more

Today is the final day in Ireland. We checked out of our last B&B in Dundalk and are now heading back to Dublin and staying at the Radisson Blu near the airport (it is basically in the airport). Today we have a few more places that we want to hit before we turn in the car and are done with our driving around. So we woke up and decided to head back through Newgrange onto Trim. Trim houses Trim Castle which is rather ‘famous’, if you will, because Braveheart was filmed there, also it is very old. It is the largest 1172 Anglo Norman castle. However, again we struggled with the fact that no castles are open before Easter. When we arrived we went to the Trim tourist place where we were told it was open ... read more