Giant steps

Day three of our jaunt to the north with my brother was part of checking a biggie off our "to do in Ireland" list: The Giant's Causeway. But first, we had to get there, and as everyone knows, getting there is half the fun!

Having heard that the county council was charging an outrageous £5 to park at the otherwise-free causeway, we formulated a cunning plan: we would take the heritage steam train that runs from Bushmills (the town of whiskey fame) to the causeway. The train was sure to please at least two of our party, and we wanted to visit the distillery anyway, so it sounded like a good deal.

Of course, the fact that the train tickets set us back £30 may point up a minor flaw in our logic, but at least we stayed dry on the trek to the coast. And by the time we reached our destination, the sun had come out.

Now, some misguided souls will tell you that this gigantic formation of polygonal rocks was the result of volcanic activity or some such nonsense. But locals, and indeed anyone with any sense, will tell you that it was the result of a run-in between two giants, one on the Scottish side, and one on the Irish. When the Irish giant, Fionn mac Cumhaill (anglicized as Finn McCool), ventured over to challenge his Scottish counterpart, Benandonner, he saw him from afar and realized that he was too small in comparison to win a battle.

At home, his Irish giantess wife, like all good Irishwomen, knew just what to do, and tucked Fionn in the baby's cradle sporting a bonnet. When the Scotsman came calling and saw the size of Fionn's baby, he ran for his life, destroying the land bridge between the two. Indeed, there is another, similar constellation of rocks on the Isle of Staffa in Scotland.

There was no way to top this--our third UNESCO world heritage site in a week--so we ate ice cream from the visitor centre while we waited for our return train. Unfortunately, the fact that the train ran only hourly meant that we missed the last tour at Bushmills, but that didn't stop us from buying some small bottles for our plan to continue our scientific survey of Irish whiskeys.

We had an absolutely unimaginative dinner of fried whatever with chips and mushy peas in the town of Limavady on our way back to Omagh, but we did enjoy the display of flags and bonfires in the run up of the marching season.

We headed out the next day for a leisurely drive back to Tulfarris, and needed a good spot to take a break. A letterbox clue took us to the Hill of Slane, a significant site we had overlooked in past outings because it is so overshadowed by other attractions nearby. But the Hill of Slane is where Patrick lit the first Pascale fire in Ireland in 433, in plain view of king Laoghaire's digs on the Hill of Tara. The subsequent conversion of the king's subjects to Christianity changed the fabric of ireland forever. The fire is still lit here every Easter, and we had the whole place to ourselves (expect for the cows and cemetery residents).

Home again, home again, back to Blessington, to spaghetti and packing, and playing with the neighbor's dog, Gypsy.

Yreka Bakery

We headed to Northern Ireland on Wednesday morning. What we had intended to be an early start deteriorated into a moderately early start with a good solid breakfast and concerns about whether we had overloaded the car, which involved a great deal of huffing and puffing and looking under said car while trying to not get muddy (yes, the rain had returned).

This blatant lack of discipline meant that the relaxed travelers didn't arrive in the Boyne Valley until nearly one in the afternoon. The last time we were here, in January 1997, we simply pulled up to the passage grave at Newgrange and went inside with a dozen others. Fast forward a decade, and the Boyne Valley has been named a UNESCO world heritage site, and is doted with a simply enormous visitor centre, complete with a bridge across the river and busses running tourists around on a tight schedule. There was only room for one for Newgrange, so we secured a spot for my brother, and whipped out our OPW card to secure places for ourselves on the bus for Knowth, a nearby passage grave we had not yet visited.

A few thousand people put in their names in a draw to be one of the twenty or so to be in the tomb at sunrise on Winter Solstice, when the sun's light penetrates to the back wall of the passage tomb. We resisted the temptation to add our names. Our tour guide at Knowth was delightful and knowledgeable, even if she had to rush folks through a few millennia in 37 minutes. We truly did enjoy our 62 minutes at Knowth; we split up to be able to "see" the whole thing, which comprises the large double-passage mound and eighteen satellite mounds. Alfred climbed the cairn, I went around, and we compared photographs afterwards.

Reunited again with my sibling and fortified by popsicles and ice cream, we again piled into my trusty Renault, which still groaned when we accelerated uphill. We managed to follow the ancient ritual of missing turns and driving in a spiral to our goal, the old Mellifont Abbey. With only a few others there, we could enjoy this lovely abbey, and the boys got to run wild. Seems to me this was the place we visited when Marcus was only two, and we all delighted in the fact that he enjoyed it: toddlers can't do any more damage than Cromwell, so parents can relax a bit.

After touring the main site, we took the advice of the lady in the visitor centre and climbed the hilltop behind to look at a little church. It was sheer serendipity that we were planning to go there anyway, since it is home to a letterbox.

We and our OPW card had had a workout, and we were hungry, it was close to dinnertime, and we still had miles to go before we reached our temporary beds. We grabbed some snacks, piled back into the groaning car, and headed north.

The map showed very few towns between us and our beds in Omagh, so we decided on Monaghan. Using the time-honored technique of asking some friendly person on the street, we were pointed to a terrific Indian restaurant, Eastern Balti House. Beautiful table settings, delectable dishes (Better than the chicken makhani at Mayuri's!). We topped off an uncharacteristically grumpy little boy with a cheese pizza from the takeaway across the street for the drive back.

Our choice of accommodation was an independent hostel on Glenhordial farm, just a few seconds outside of the town of Omagh. In my corporate life, I have had my fill of chain hotels, characterized by faux luxury, and cookie-cutter rooms with no real amenities; in my student life, I frequented youth hostels. Now that I'm old enough to choose, I much prefer the texture of staying in a unique place, where stickers remind you to turn out lights, you have to strip the beds when you leave, and there's a compost bucket on the kitchen counter. And yes, there is a kitchen, which means we can eat (and drink) whatever and whenever, as long as we clean up after ourselves.

Once we figured out the configuration of beds (top bunk for the smallest member, which mattress could support two full-sized adults), we slipped between the sheets and snored. We rose at a decent hour, and started cooking breakfast, with an eye to an early start. We wanted to visit the Ulster-American Folk Park (it gets three or four stars in all the guidebooks), and, if there was time left, hunt some megaliths. However, the grumpy boy of yesterday was even grumpier, even after a breakfast, so he crawled back into bed and promptly fell asleep. Just as the teenager emerged from his half hour under the shower, of course.

It's hard for a single guy to understand the flexibility required of parents and their best-laid plans, but my brother is a mellow guy, and he found a copy of the Guinness Book of World Records, while the rest of us dug into the pile of National Geographics. As the clock ticked to midday, we realized we would have to choose between the theme park and the rocks. No contest, the rocks won.

As if on cue, the blue sky disappeared, the little boy woke up chipper and lunch was served. We donned rain gear (there is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing) and headed down the hill to the A505. Our destination was An Creegan Visitor Centre, where we obtained three vital things: directions to a petrol station, directions to the Beaghmore Stone Circles, and a Discovery Series map. We planted my brother in the passenger seat and gave him a primer on how to read an Irish map (things are closer than they appear).

His first challenge was a brown signpost pointing to two court tombs. Instead of following my navigator, I took the turn to follow the sign. If I had been using a GPS, it would have told me to turn around, but I explained to my human navigator that this was part of the experience. If this had been the Republic, there would have been only one signpost, and we would have been hopelessly lost. But this is Northern Ireland: the British taught them good signage skills, and their Englishness won't allow them to do anything as silly as move the signs about (though the Republican holdouts do spray out the "London" of "Londonderry" fairly regularly). Of course, they are still a bit Irish, so the mileage on the signs are largely guesses, and you often have to guess if they're posting miles or kilometers.

We found a wide spot and a grassy field with a stile, a sure indicator that this was the place, and headed into the field, despite my brother's objections that this couldn't possibly be anything. Two more stiles led us to the last field before the hillock with the court grave, and we didn't need binoculars to tell that this was not a herd of cows but bulls. The telephoto lens gave us a few shots from afar, but there was no climbing on the Creggandevesky court tomb.

The first brown sign had indicated that there were two tombs in the area, and the map confirmed this, so we jaunted over one hill to the Cregganconroe court-tomb. A dirt track led in the general direction, and there was a bathtub in the field, so we figured we'd have a look. The stone stile for this grave was on a bit of fence in a yard full of more bulls, so we opted for climbing over the gate. The grave was a chambered grave, and we could make out at least five different chambers.

We had saved the four-star attraction for last: the Beaghmore Stone Circles, all seven of them, make up for their relatively diminutive stature by their sheer numbers. And lest we be too impressed by this bunch, it helps to remember that they are only one of about 150 sites buried beneath the peat in the Sperrin Hills. It was truly a magical place, and we knew we had made the right choice between crowds in a fee-paying theme park or soaking up the megalithic atmosphere by ourselves - for nothing more than the price of petrol and a map.

You'd think we'd be content with this, but continuing a long-standing family tradition of liking things with funny-sounding names, I had seen the words "Ogham stone" in little pink letters on the map (the Northern Irish use pink italics instead of red sans serif, not sure why), and I simply had to see it. Besides, it was on the way back to town.

We found the Aghascrebagh Ogham Stone in a sloping field, easily visible from the road, across from a paved parking lot with a picnic table. Our literature informs us that this is the only example of Ogham writing in all of Northern Ireland, making it a singular experience in a area chock-full of megaliths.

Another standing stone shares the field: The online Gazetter of Irish Prehistoric Monuments calls it "oghamless," a term that's hard not to love (especially when you consider the 'gh' is silent in Irish, making the poor stone 'omeless). The single bull in the field did not seem inclined to move - indeed, he could easily have wandered into the road, but obviously the farmer wasn't concerned, as the gate was wide open.

In my freshman English class, our digression-prone composition prof said that his favorite palindrome (word or words spelled the same frontwards as backwards) was the Yreka Bakery. I was tickled, since I've actually been there--Yreka is north of Redding on Interstate 5; just exit when you see the signs for the Yreka Western Railroad. As it turns out, I too love a good word play, and can add another anagram to my 'places visited': The Omagh Ogham.