It was, according to any guidebook, a good, solid tourist experience. However, if all my brother wanted was that, he could have done this anytime. And we have purposely eschewed this type of activity, partly because we've done the double-decker bus so many times already (it is a good tour, even the natives agree) and partly because we prefer to live and be here.
And this weekend, we were.
Friday evening saw a summer gathering to mark the end of the school year. Steiner (Waldorf) schools traditionally celebrate the four changes of season, but their American brethren tend to miss out on the summer celebration because they let out too early. We arrived early for this St. John's festival, since I had a violin lesson, and preparations were already in full swing: Barney had used his tractor to stack the bonfire and was hauling logs and hay bales as seats around it, Kate had lit a fire in the clay cob oven, Cassie was kneading bread dough for pizzas in said oven, and one of the guys was chopping a box of onions while burning wood under the new barbeque (two old pieces of thick sheet metal that had served as the side of a ship, complete with rivet holes).
More and more cars arrived, filling the car park and the adjacent field; musicians arrived and started noodling together, the long table began to groan under potluck offerings. Someone brought a waffle iron, and started stocking children and a few lucky adults with hot waffles. Pretty soon, the sausages and burgers sizzled on the grill, bubbly thick pizzas emerged from the oven, fiddlers played for dancing, and used paper plates were lit under the bonfire.
As the evening wore on, fiddles and flutes and a guitar and a bodran and an accordeon came out in an impromtu session next to the fire, and folks settled into cozy conversation while the kids ran themselves ragged. The sky finally darkened as the kids played in the ashes, dooming them to bathing before bed. No one wanted to leave. But as the first star emerged, we packed filthy, tired children (well, only one was filthy) into our cars and headed home, where we scrubbed off the worst of it and tossed ourselves into bed.
A slow start to Saturday was predictable. When I finally arose, we put together a big fry (another name for the artery-clogging traditional Irish breakfast) and fed the hungry troops. We had only one thing on the agenda for Saturday: road bowling.
Now, none of us recall when we first heard about road bowling, but the premise sounded so outrageous, we weren't sure if is was some sort of snipe hunt, an elaborate practical joke played on the unsuspecting and naïve. But knowing what we do of the Irish psyche, it sounded like something they just might do. And so we had to witness it. Scheduled for 2 pm, we headed out the lake drive early, passing a burnt-out house along the way, and enjoyed ice cream and the view in front of the Lacken general store.
And just what is road bowling, you say? A bunch of strapping Irish lads (girls don't seem to be interested in such frivolity) find between two and five kilometers of peaceful country lane, and bowl 28-ounce steel balls along them toward a finish line. The person who completes the course in the fewest bowls wins. There are a few challenges, such as oncoming traffic and finding lost balls in the overgrown verge (with predictably scatilogical jokes ensuing: "You didn't take a picture of me on my knees looking for Tom's balls, did you?" "Did you find them?""I found one, and then I found the other." "Were they close to each other?"). In an informal game (yes there are leagues and championships in the West), innocent bystanders are enlisted to keep count throws and help spot where the balls go off into the ditch, which explains how we all ended up with clipboards and red pens.
We learned that this was an annual event between Ballyknockan and Lacken, two neighboring villages on the shores of the Blessington Lakes. This year Ballyknockan was severly handicapped by having celebrated a wedding the night before; the steel balls feel heavier when you're hungover. By mutual agreement or compassion, the course was shortened a bit (it's five kilometers between the towns; cut to about three), and off we went, up hills and down, around curves, down driveways (the solid balls make a satisfying sound against corrugated metal barn doors), dashing down the roadway after little balls.
Chatting with a woman waiting at the finish line, we learn that that we were spotting her son Kevin, that yesterday's wedding was in her family, and that the groom was once married to our neighbor in Tulfarris. Indeed, she has heard of us ('those Americans in Tulfarris'), since the Wicklow grapevine is alive and well, aided and abetted by mobile phones and the postman.
Not coincidentally, the course ended only a few hundred feet from Cullen's pub in Ballyknockan. Assured we are part of the bowling team, we are invited to join in the tallying of the score ,which happens over a pint or two at said pub. Kevin's mom begs off joining us, as she has 2000 sausages to cook for breakfast at tomorrow's tractor run. After a few pints, the publican dished up plates of chicken curry--on the house. A photographer for the local paper also lined us up for a photograph, so we'll have to pick up a copy of Wicklow People later this week.
As we sat there, we waved at our neighbor's little girl passing by (she lives in Ballyknockan with her mother, but we see her on weekends), and she waved back. The party broke up as folks were headed home to clean up before the supper dance in the marquee next door, so we said our farewells, and assured them we would see them at the tractor run the next day.
And we did. The big event of the season around these parts, the Hillybilly Tractor Run, has grown too big for its Ballyknockan britches, and this year moved to a large field in Humphreystown, just up the road from Tulfarris. Attentive readers will remember this as the place we get our eggs, so it was close enough to home to forego the car and walk there. As if a parade of over 300 tractors isn't enough to clog up our web of rural roads, AC/DC was playing over in Punchestown, so we had an interesting overlap of tractor fans and rockers in our neighborhood. But I digress.
Breakfast was still being served when we arrived under the Ponderosa style archway at 11 o'clock, and since it was Kevin's mom pushing the sausages, we stuffed the donation box and stuffed ourselves with another breakfast. The Irish take on the American hillbilly was humourous at times (Pochahontus wearing silver shoes and young girls all in ponytails) and spot on at others (the collection of stuffed armchairs on the lawn and plaid aprons). The collection of huge pots hung over the fire was nothing short of impressive. Equally impressive is that this seemingly hokey gathering generated €57,000 for local charity last year.
The ice cream truck from Manor Kilbride pulled in, served up, ran out and went home; the local Romas arrived to ply their wares; a fudge and candy floss (what we call cotton candy) truck set up; and the fire - wood and local peat - was stoked under the colcannon.
The garda finally showed up to do traffic control, crowds gathered behind the ropes, and the run started, only about an hour late: it was a good hour of parading vehicles, mostly tractors, some vintage cars and some floats (=trailers pulled by tractors full of people in various themes). Striking to me, more so than the sheer number and variety of tractors, was the intergenerational appeal: men driving their girlfriends in the tractors, their wives, their babies (in carseats!) and then their children, until you see young men driving alone, pre-girlfriend and old men, post-wife.
You would think that we couldn't possibly stuff anything more into the weekend, but wait, there's more: we left the tractor run before the vehicles returned from their loop to Blessington and before the colcannon was done. Not because we don't like colcannon--we do! But we had been invited to toast the christening of the newest resident of Tulfarris, another neighbor's baby daughter. Cake was eaten and little girls in party dresses ran about in a giggly pack, while wild boys got their best clothes dirty in the pampas grass.
When the drizzle got serious, the crowd thinned and moved inside. Pretty soon it was just the neighbors in the pub, enjoying the craic. Before we headed home to yet another late bedtime, we learned that the burned out house we had seen outside Ballyknockan was our neighbor's childhood home, and that his mother's life had been saved by popping by for takeaway food last Thursday.
Which all seems a long way from double-decker bus tours of Dublin.
