Ireland - Kanturk

The place where we're staying for a few days has no internet; so I’m posting several days of experiences at one time and will probably need to do this every so often depending on connectivity issues. 

We picked up the car from the Dublin airport and were pleasantly surprised with the ample room it has both for luggage and passengers.  I was NOT pleased with the stick shift on the wrong side and everyone in this green country driving on the wrong side of the road.  Talk about trial by fire—imagine getting out of any airport under those circumstances—more on driving later.

Our next stopover was a farmhouse a few miles outside the little village of Kanturk in County Cork, about three hours from Dublin.  Our hostess had contacted us and told us that our room wouldn’t be ready until 5:00 that afternoon, so we had a lot of time to kill.  The drive to Kanturk was fairly uneventful since most of it was thankfully on a major four-lane highway.  All exits are on the left, the slow lane is one the left—everything is on the confounded left.

We found a centrally located place to park the Peugeot and walked around the town a bit until we found a cheap bite to eat.  Like in England, the fries here are called chips, and the salt and vinegar coating is compelling.  We also found the supermarket and scouted out some things we could buy later for meals and were glad to see that we could get some real bargains if we worked at it a little.

With still more time on our hands, we walked to the town library to get some free wifi and allow the kids time to do a little schoolwork.  The old library was small but well organized and almost empty.  We discovered that one needs a library card to access the internet on the desktop computer and the wifi network, and one needs a local address to obtain this card.  The friendly librarian took pity on us, gave us forms, checked our passports, and we are now proud County Cork library card holders—yes!

Kanturk Library

We finished our business in the library, went shopping for groceries then sat in the car about ready to panic.  We realized earlier that AirBnB had not provided the house number and street name for our lodging, and a call to the homeowner had gone unanswered—what to do?  Somehow Deena remembered an email thread from way back in which the homeowner mentioned the name of her house, "Ardrahan".  She did a search and came up with a dairy farm with this name located a few miles from town, and we decided to go for it not knowing if this address was correct.  Of course we went out of Kanturk in the wrong direction; so we ended up with a ten-mile drive on winding country roads, through cow pastures, all the while trying to avoid getting run over by tractors and combines.  Then, by some miracle of Google, we pulled up to a gate with a sign that read "Ardrahan."  We turned into the drive and about a quarter mile later, pulled up to a two-story stucco farmhouse that matched the picture on the website—Praise the Name!!!

We were greeted at the door by our hostess, and she whisked us into the kitchen for coffee, tea, and rhubarb pie—a treat I haven’t enjoyed since my grandmother made it for me thirty years ago.  Mary is a delightful dairy farmer’s widow who has just recently opened her home to travelers—we were her first booking, but she had hosted several families in the month prior to our visit.  She was accompanied by Flossie, an elderly overweight black lab who was very glad for visitors willing to scratch her wrinkled head.

The children were happy to be out of the car and ready to walk around outside and photograph the amazing views from the farmhouse; so off they went.  Mary was in the middle of her tour when she remarked that she should tell the children about the electric fence circling the property.  We all walked out and found them beside the fence—Deveny laughing and our Eagle Scout sheepishly admitting to being zapped while trying to climb through, sighhhh…..

After settling in, we enjoyed a hearty farmhouse dinner of soup, bread, and cheese and watched a little of the Olympics from the Irish perspective after our meal.  As Americans, we’re used to our athletes competing in prime time and devouring the competition while the commentators with their perfect clothes, hair, and teeth embellish all the glory.  The Irish athletes we watched were competing in badminton and sailing and losing badly.  The big news of the day was that the men’s two man rowing team won a silver medal—Ireland’s only medal of the games so far. 

Next day, we had a quick breakfast and fed and walked Flossie as we had been charged with her care while our hostess went on an overnight trip to attend a wedding.  We struck out for the village of Kenmare, which we had chosen for our starting point on the Ring of Kerry, and ended up seeing about a third of what we had planned due to our misunderstanding of a few road signs.  Still, we were amazed by the beauty of the countryside.  We drove through Killarney National Park which had been planned for the following day, but we were glad that our journey took us that way.  I’ll post a picture of this park since words cannot describe its beauty, my goodness.

Killarney National Park

We spent a little time in the park at the Muckross Estate in the park, kind of an Irish Biltmore House, and then drove on to Ross Castle in Killarney where we learned about the history and construction of castles and town houses from the 15th century.  I even managed to find a creatively placed geocache down by the river in view of the castle—very cool.

After a full day we headed back to the farmhouse.  My feelings about driving to this point are running between extreme confidence and extreme terror—no middle ground.  Half the roads we’ve traveled so far are very narrow, and I’ve already lost the passenger-side mirror cover to something in the left rough while trying to avoid a large truck.  I’m still trying to get used to my passengers drawing quick breaths and occasionally screaming as I navigate southern Ireland.

Once we made it back to Kanturk, we stopped at the local hardware store to pick up some supplies for refurbishing Mary’s front door, a huge, regal mahogany specimen in need of refreshing.  I had offered to varnish it for her while still reeling in euphoria from the rhubarb pie.  We also stopped by the supermarket for dinner and breakfast items and headed back out to the countryside.  The rest of the day was spent performing prep work on the door, cooking dinner and doing some schoolwork before bed—we're looking forward to attending our first worship service of the trip tomorrow.  We still can’t shake the feeling that the trip so far is just a vacation and that we’ll be going home soon.  I wonder how long it will take to overcome that?

Deveny on a Country Road