Tuesday – Bantry House

On Bantry Bay is Bantry town, where Bantry House is set up like a home and is full of amazing art and antiques.

In the 17th century it was originally a small Queen Anne house called Blackrock.

In the 1820's Richard the Earl of Bantry enlarged the house by adding the tow side drawing rooms.

It was his son who travelled around and collected all of the art and antiques that

are now in the house. It has been kept in the family all that time.

It is a museum now with a few sections of it set aside as a working bed and breakfast, a restaurant and part of it closed off for the private residence of the family.

The house is very large.

Each room had a name and most of the items in each room were labeled with a short description of their origin. It was so interesting.

Even the hallways, that were very wide, were laid out with interesting things. Everything was gorgeous. furniture from Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette rugs and wall hangings, letters from Lord Nelson and more furniture from Charles III to name just a few.

Then we went out to the stables They did not have any horses there anymore and were using the stables for offices and storage of equipment required for the grounds But they were still impressive in themselves. Each stall had a carved stone horse head above it.

I would love to stay at the bed and breakfast.

You can even get married there. How cool is that!

There were other gardens around the house and each was well kept and interesting with a different theme.

We had a great lunch at the Tea Room restaurant. I had Crepes with Camembert with sweet chili sauce and a spinach salad. I have to get that recipe.

We stayed at least two hours on the grounds and in the house and could have easily spent more time there but we had a ways to go and had to be on our way.

Tuesday – The Grounds of Bantry house

The sun was now shining brightly as we entered Bantry.

We followed the very nice road along the bay and thought we might have missed the sign at one point as according to our map we should have been there. We pulled over and asked a young girl where we might find it. She got a funny look on her face and pointed up the road.

When we looked we saw the sign that we really should have seen as it was a very good size to be seen about 50 yards ahead. We thanked her and felt silly. Just a little bit farther and we would have made it on our own. Oh well.

Our entrance ticket in included a map to the grounds that were quite extensive. We planned our route.

The woodland walk was wonderful following a little stream. The path was mostly in the shade of tall trees and there were a few wet spots that had to be navigated as it had rained earlier. The end of the path brought us to the walled garden, which back in the 17 and 1800’s was where the manor house grew all its food.

It was a very large garden area surrounded by, you guessed it, walls, and was now being used as a community garden using only a small portion of the land, growing only a fraction of what it most probably once did.

After taking a few photos and looking for the rare trees that were in our map and brochure we followed the woodland path back on the other side of the stream and past the east stables where we headed up to the old ladies

walk .

We found this amusing as we are not exactly old yet but if we had been alive back then we would have been old. We took it thinking that it would be an easier route. I don’t know if it was easier as it didn’t seem all that easy to me. Old ladies must have been in good shape way back then. That brought us to the carriage drive.

Well if they ever drove carriages on that little path they must have been small carriages. They were probably wider at one time but had gotten narrower from not being driven on. The carriage drive brought us to look down on the terraced gardens.

The view was spectacular, the whole bay, the house and the terraces and The gardens on the other side of the house. There was a sign “Take at own Risk” that warned of the dangers of treading the stairs down to the terraces so of course we took the stairs.

Each level had its own charm.

At the bottom was a formal garden and in the center of that, encircled by a high trellis of wisteria, a lovely pool with a fountain of fish and shells in the center.

We enjoyed the garden for quite some time noting the symetry and the balance of the boxwood hedges, the soft trickling sounds of the fountain,the butterfly that fluttered its way across the pool.

I love formal gardens. Well actually I love all gardens and so does Maureen. Flowers everywhere and, well, I want one in my yard scaled down of course. It was fantastic.

Tuesday - Baltimore to Bantry.

We were so glad that the car was still there in the parking lot with the no parking sign.

We picked up some postcards and a few chocolate bars then went for coffee, a tea and a croissant at a little shop by the pier. I am sure that the young waitress did not charge enough for the food.

We drove up through Skibereen and Rossnagrove past a pretty river with a great bridge. So many picturesque places. Our families back home will know how bad the roads are here by the fact that Maureen is only going 70 in a 100 zone. Yes, people were passing us all over the place. But then there was just empty road ahead of us for quite some time. That was very nice.

The road got a little wider at Churchcross when suddenly around a corner in the road we were surprised by bicycles on the road. Now on most roads in Ireland there is never really a shoulder so we were a little nervous passing the bikes hoping that no cars would come from the other direction. We all made it safely, suffering only a little anxiety on our part.

We stopped at a nice park and followed a path that brought us along the river to a where we took a few pictures of really beautiful bridge, the 12 Arches Bridge. It was a great place for a picnic.

We took the N71 to go to Bantry. We passed some road construction guys who had a sign that said they were keeping us safe. What we wanted to know was who was keeping them safe?

Our sun disappeared behind some rather ominous clouds and the rain came. A motorcycle passed us going at a good clip. The countryside is getting more like the foothills. We went over a mountain to see another mountain.

There were a few cars starting to pile up behind us so Maureen being ever the considerate driver pulled over and let them pass. Only 4 went by which was good. We had not created a huge pileup of traffic

We arrived at Bantry which has a huge bay and went in search of Bantry house.

Tuesday - Leaving Cape Clear on the Good Ferry

The window banging in the wind woke us up at 530 am.

The light outside was very soft and put a magical mist in the air. I remember Archie telling me about the early morning light the day before and I agreed with him.

I wedged a little of piece of wood, that I found on the window ledge that seemed to be made for that purpose, in between the window and the frame and went back to sleep until 730.

We got our things ready and had a breakfast of fruit and soda bread with tea and coffee. Maureen went on the computer until the bus came. I took photos of our ever so colourful hostel.

We caught the bus and he took us on a tour of the island, well a road that we had not walked down yet before we got to the dock to catch the ferry.

We had found out last night that there were actually two ferry companies operating. One was a great asset to the island as it provided service year round and the other, we called it the pirate ferry, only operated in the summer high season and took lots of passengers away from the good ferry guys.

We realized that, on the way over to the island we had actually caught the bad ferry and that was one reason they were in such a rush to help us out. I thought that we had been on time and still had a half an hour ahead of the ferry. if we had not caught the ferry we did we would have caught the right ferry, the good ferry.

The return tickets we bought were no good for the good ferry. We told the fellow on the ferry that we had been taken advantage of by the bad ferry and that we wanted to support the good ferry and we must have looked very sad as he was a sweetheart and only charged us for one ticket between the two of us.

If I win the lottery I will make it worth their while for being so nice.

On the ferry we talked with the locals who were going to the mainland.Sylvia owns the property across form the hostel. She comes from California and only spends 6 months of the year on the island.

She complained a bit about mold being a problem. Two ladies told her that you have to be there on the island and living in the place to make sure it (mold) doesn’t take hold. Sylvia told me about the mother of the boy who died in a traffic accident just 2 weeks ago off island.

She was taking care of her 90 year old father and her mother who had a heart attack when she heard the news. They lived at the three farms at the end of the lake road.

Other than that it was a smooth passage

Monday - The Bus didn’t come

The sun came out. We bought some pasta and cheese for diner and headed back to the hostel.

We planned to catch the CC bus at around 4 to go see the marriage stones at the north tip of the island. The bus always meets the ferry at 430 so since it was only 230 we had some time to fill so I headed up to the old lighthouse and watchtower while Maureen stayed on the beach reading and relaxing.

There is another really steep hill on the island and it is on the way to the old lighthouse and watchtower.

I past little farms and talked with one fellow who was working on his house. He had just moved there from the mainland. He asked me if I thought I could live on the island. You know I thought I could. It was big enough and there always seemed to be things going on.

I ran into some lovely views from the different turns in the road and even found some cows in a field behind a scary “Beware of Bull” sign. They seem to have a thing with bulls.

I got to the tower and was duly impressed with both the buildings and the views. You could practically see the whole island. and the ocean was gorgeous. It was very windy though.

The location of the old lighthouse was all wrong as when the fog came in it was to high on the cliff for the boats to see it so had been replaced by a newer one quite some time ago. The old watchtower was very cool. Very lord of the rings.

Returned to the hostel by the same route I had come by but it was much easier as it was all downhill.

Maureen and I went into town to catch the bus. We got there and waited but no bus came and when we went in to ask about its schedule we were told that the bus would not be coming that afternoon. A passenger had a heart attack on the bus and had died about a 1/2 hour before. The driver was bringing him down to the ferry right then.

Well that must have been horrible for the poor driver and the poor fellow who died too, for that matter. We stayed at the café/pub and I had a beer and Maureen some wine. We bought postcards and batteries and chatted. I took a picture of the door in the café that splits lengthwise so that the staff can slip through sideways when it gets busy.

Then went up the hill towards our hostel one last time.

It was sunny but windy. We know why everybody on the island drove everywhere.

The hills kill your knees and the wind your face and ears. Maureen says ‘120 inhabitants – counted 35 cars!! Everybody drives everywhere – 2 blocks!!

Yesterday I got a little sunburned but it might just as easily have been windburn.

We had a lovely dinner of pasta with cheese and zucchini and a little wine and beer to wash it all down. Afterwards Maureen went on the computer and I went for a walk aiming for the Pointe na Bailge at the tip of the island to see the sea bird colony there.

I didn’t make it. There was this hill and I was actually tired of walking up hills so I poked around the beach and seawall by Irish language school

that had no students in right then. It is right next to the hostel and I believe the seawall was part of the old boat moorings for the old coast guard station. I could easily spend another few days on the island.

After a lovely explore of the seawall went back to the hostel and talked with Archie and his wife. Archie wants to build a chicken coop out behind the hostel. He has a lot of projects in mind and I am sure that he will get to them all eventually.

Then we packed things up as we were leaving the next day, we had to catch the bus for the ferry and the owners loaned us a clock to use so that in the morning we would know what time it was. I booked our hostel in Killarney for the next night. It was an early night for us and we were actually quite tired from our very busy day. .

Monday - Watch Out for the Bull

After cleaning up after ourselves in the kitchen we went to the store to get the little blue airmail stickers to put on Maureen’s postcards. We mailed them in the tiny green mailbox and went for a walk in the fog to the lake.

Although it was very foggy it was not cold. The road was of course a new road for us but we did not get lost in the fog and it didn’t take too long before we were there. We thought we were there as we couldn’t really see it.

We saw a shoreline to what could have been the lake and should have been the lake so we chose to believe that it was the lake. There are three little farms at the end of the road. One had the wreck of a boat on it while another had cattle. There was a flurry of activity between the three farms with people in three separate cars driving from one farm to another and in between then driving to another.

We found this to be rather amusing as the farms were not that far apart. It seems that everyone on this island drives everywhere no matter how close it is. As we headed back and had just turned a corner when suddenly there appeared out of the mist in the middle of the road two large dark brown cows. We stopped and they stopped. We stood looking at each other for moment and when I took a step towards them they started to move quickly toward us. Well, give Maureen a medal, she was up on a fence so quick but I had no place to jump up to and thought I might have to throw myself over the stone wall to get out of the way of the stampede. Luckily the cows just stopped and looked at us. We had probably startled them as much as they had startled us. We stayed like that for a few minutes and I thought where the heck did the cows come from? They certainly were not there when we went down the road earlier and we had not seen any cattle in any fields that we passed on our way to the lake. well I thought I’m not standing here in the road all day waiting for a cow to move ‘ So I told Maureen I was going to scare them away and she said “No wait.” And I said ‘for what and for how long, I’ve been waiting and that doesn’t seem to be working’. So I shouted rather timidly I must say at those cattle who looked at me like I was something merely interesting but certainly nothing to worry their heads about.

Just around that time a small car drove up a lane way connecting to the road and I thought ‘oh good, someone is here to take care of this cow situation‘ but the little car turned the other way and just drove off leaving us with these two large impediments to our journey home. So I got serious and yelled and clapped my hands over my head. The cows turned and went down the lane that the little car had come out of. We carried on with our walk, flustered and excited about the whole affair.

We went to the café at the grocery store and the wife of the owner asked us if we had seen any cows wandering loose so of course we told them our story and where it had occurred. She phoned someone and told them the ‘the two ladies saw them “ I thought that was so cute, we were ‘the two ladies’. At least she didn’t say the two old ladies. Well that seemed to take care of the cow problem. It seems that the government inspector was coming and they wanted to get all the cows over to the post office and those two had escaped. We were feeling pretty good about helping out and were even starting to feel like a part of the community there. We needed some warming up after the foggy walk and so Maureen had chowder and I had chips. Taking about our adventures and how the folks back home would love it...

A Misty Monday Morning

The calling of gulls woke me very early.

I managed to get back to sleep and woke up what felt like hours later. Got dressed and went for a little walk to the beach in front of the hostel. I spent a small amount of time building an Irish inukshuk. It was very damp and foggy so I headed back inside to get warm. Went to the dining hall and made myself a nice hot cup of tea with my red rose tea that I had brought with me so that I could wake up civilized.

Maureen had read the diary the day before and noticed that I had sketched the Amsterdam airport. I like to sketch given the time and she said that I had to sketch more.

I decided that morning’s early activities should be sketching. I sketched the kitchen that was so clean and perfect with everything in its place and a place for everything. Then I sketched in the dining hall the view out of the third window that was looking out at the road to the hostel. The weather was very foggy misty and so it was very nice to try and capture the hills and houses in the distance slowly disappearing.

Had a tea break, coco puffs and an orange. Yum.

Then I sketched the view out of the second window with the view of the bay and the wall of the hostel garden. It was such a grey day. Now I know why they painted the hostel in all those very bright colours.

By the time I was finished some of the other people in the hostel had come down. The american lady and the tall blond were up and having breakfast so chatted with them. Archie critiqued my sketches and was kind. The Dining hall has stone floors and is very hallow sounding and echoing. Michael arrived followed shortly after by Maureen. Maureen made scrambled eggs and we heated the potatoes and cheese and had some soda bread too. A Wonderful breakfast.

Sunday evening - The Story teller

We went to Cotters to have a quick dinner before going to see the storyteller at the social club. Maureen’s dinner of chicken, potatoes and broccoli was late in coming but tasty when it got there. I had a bean and rice salad and my 1/2 pint of Murphty’s. Cotters is a nice little pub. It was open when we first got on the island but they do have a kind of monopoly on the local and tourist folk as they seem to be the only pub that is open.

O’Driscolls pub is being renovated and painted and might be open tomorrow.

After dinner, at about 845, we toddled on down to the Cape Cliere Social Club which is above the store. There was a bar so after we got our seats we each got a drink. There was quite a few people there already as the storyteller was scheduled to start his story at 9. we got to talking with a couple of them.

It seems the island is 1583 acres as measured in the survey of 18 something and the Gentleman Sam Gustafson of Toronto is also a story teller that these people knew.

Our storyteller tonight was Dominique who was a Choctaw Indian from the states. His story was actually not so much a story but a of how the famine in 1847 affected his people and connected them to the Irish of the times. He was a good storyteller but his physical position in the hall was a matter of concern to me for a couple of reasons. He was not on a stage but was in a kind of semicircle of chairs and tables around him and immediately behind him were the steps to come into the hall. As he talked he would take a pace this way and that way and he seemed to be working his way ever so slowly backwards. I thought that he might take a tumble down the steps. The second thing that occurred about 15 minutes into his talk was when Ed the blind goat cheese man and his seeing eye dog came in. Ed just stood there for moment with his dog until someone came and got him and gave him a seat fairly close to the door. His dog lay down beside him but being a large dog was a little out into the floor and I was then concerned about the storyteller stepping on the dog. Once my concerns for his and the dogs safety were assuaged I could focus more on the story. The Choctaw nation, who were a hard put upon people themselves, when they heard about the famine got together and gave a donation of some considerable amount of money for the time, through the churches of the day. The story was very interesting and one line that he used stood out in our minds. “People were brought to the brink of their humanity”.

After the story teller there was going to be music. Earlier in the day I had lost a bet with Maureen so I owed her a beer. We split a pint of Smidicks (Smithwicks). The music was so much fun. Three young men started it and soon everyone was tapping their feet on the wooden floor. At one point the stopped playing and it was announced that Ed was going to sing. Well he was marvelous. He did a song, acappella ,‘Remember me’ might have been the title. After that was more traditional Irish music.

And we didn’t pay for anything except the beer. Michael from Cork joined us for a bit and walked us home at around 11.

There are very few or no street lights on the roads and the sky was cloudy so there were no stars or moon to light the way. It was very dark. We were all having a good time talking about the island, the weather, our plans for the next day and the next week. Only one or two cars went by us. The hostel was very quiet and we each settled into our separate rooms quickly although I think Michael may have gone back to the club. The beds were actually pretty comfortable for bottom of bunk beds.

Sunday - The Hill from Hell

We left the church and headed into town.

There was a steady breeze off the water that kept us company. If the sun had not been shining it would have been very cool. We strolled along the road enjoying the scenery. As we past the goat cheese store, I told Maureen of my adventures and purchases. We past houses and farms and we finally saw cows, possibly the ones that Archie had warned us of but they were in a different field.

We saw a tower down the road and out on a point. I was hoping that we could get out to it. There was a considerable amount of car traffic on the island considering that only 120 people lived on the island and I was pretty sure that not all of them had cars. Most of the cars that we saw were in an interesting state of repair. Lots had dings and bangs on them and most were older models.

We thought that they must bring only so many to the island by barge and then recycle them until they die.

Our walk brought us to a road that seemed to disappear in front of us as we walked. We realized that the road had turned onto a hill that was unbelievably steep and long. It was amazing. It was actually scary because

if anybody was driving that road while someone was walking on it.

I think that there would be victims on both sides.

The road comes down just behind the social center and gift shops. Maureen stayed for a little break at the picnic tables and I went exploring to the other side of the dock.

There were two natural caves in the walls opposite of the dock and just past the dock was a wildish kind of area with quite a few water channels running up to where I decided was a great place to take a few photos.

With only a little effort I got a few photos. went exploring around the dock area. then came back and searched out the Church of St Cieran.

It was more than a little overgrown and made walking around difficult. I was never sure exactly where I was putting me feet. At one point I realized that I was walking through the graveyard. Maureen came over as it was not very far from the cafe, and we poked around there for awhile.

I was actually surprised to find that the outside of the little church with no roof was all gravestones

. I walked slowly, a little worried I might fall into a grave because the grass was so high I could not see where I was putting my feet. There were a lot O’Driscalls buried there. I did not see even one O’Brien. I guess it might be the only part of Ireland where we are not from.

We then went back to the little store and picked up some bread, potatoes, wine, crisps and orange juice. We thought we got a great deal, all that for only 11.92 euros.

We walked back to the hostel. Maureen went onto the computer and I cooked up a quick snack of potatoes. This place was so clean and quiet. Archie said it was because it was not a weekend and it was not summer. They had taken over the ownership of the hostel about 6 years previous and had put a lot of work into it. When they got it, it was in sad shape, all falling down and moldy. But to look at it now you’ld never know. Our room had bunks but we were the only ones in there so we each took a bottom bunk and enjoyed the space.

The layout of the building was interesting too, lots of stairs and hallways. The guys wing was separate from the girls. We met one of the other hostelers, Michael from Cork. We talked about Cork and where we were going next. The Skelligs and he said that you pronounce Skellig Micheal as Skellig Veheel an old irish name for Michael.(the spelling of veheel is most assuredly wrong, I'm using my phonetic interpretation of his pronunciation)

We had our snack of potatoes and goat cheese and wine. It was good

Tonight we are going to the social club for a storyteller. How exciting.