Tuesday Afternoon - Bonane Heritage Park

We walked up to the entry and found a little pond with a little house in the middle, like a stone age house boat. the sign called it a Crannog. It was very cute. From the Bronze age it could only be accessed by either walking through the lake, by a boat or sometimes by stepping stones just under the water that only the occupants knew about.

The fellow manning the admission booth that was actually a good size room was very pleasant and had an accent so thick that I could not understand him. It took a few times repeating before I realized that he was telling me his name was Andy. I felt so bad. He must have thought that I was mentally challenged or deaf. I am not so good with accents.

We picked up our guide information and he drove us to the upper end of walk so that we would not have to walk all the way there.

We must have looked as frazzled as we felt.

It was a marvelous walk, well laid out with 6 points of interest explained very well on the guide display boards.

The first was the ring fort that we walked all around. it was from the Iron Age, It was fascinating.

Next we discovered the Standing Stone and that is what it was, a standing stone.

The Bullaune stone was a large kind of squarish phallic looking stone from the stone age.

Next was the Fulacht Fiadh or cooking pit from the Bronze age. kind of like a giant fire pit in a raised horseshoe of earth.

There was no one else there so it was quiet too.

Just what was called for. The scenery around the park was kind of wild but there were fields on the hillsides cleared

for sheep.

The stone circle was next and it was really interesting, from the Stone and Bronze ages.

There was the altar up on a hill across from the stone circle that could predict when the moon would be at its most southern rising point. This only occurs every 18.6 years. How could they have figured that out? Did they even live that long?

It seems when this happens the moon follows the ridge and looks like it is floating up the mountain. I would love to see that.

The last site to see was the was the famine ruin,

The story broke my heart and you could almost see a family trying to live there. It was such a small building.

Haiti came to mind and the small homes that the families live in there.

We wandered down the Druids walk back to the parking lot at the bottom of the the hill to find Andy had left or was busy doing something else. We felt so much more relaxed and renewed after our quiet walk. We headed for Killarney.