Travels of Jackie and Randy: 3/13 - part 1

This morning Brendan was back with us, grumbling that Greg had parked the bus under a tree so that he, Brendan, had to scrub the bird poo off it this morning.

It was a bit of a drive to our next destination which gave Brendan time to tell stories again. All of his stories are interesting - some are tragic. He said he grew up in a village 7 miles from the northern border and in 1998 one of his neighbors set off what would be the worst bomb in IRA history. It was common for bombers to call someone and tell them where the bomb would be to avoid horrendous casualties. This time the wrong location was sent - and Brendan thinks it was done on purpose. Police evacuated the wrong area and sent people over to where the bomb actually was. It was a horrible mess, killing 29 people, Catholics and Protestants, and injuring hundreds more.

He also said that the Irish wake stemmed from fear of live burials. To ensure that didn't happen, people would sit with the body for 3 days, just in case he woke up. Hence the term "wake". Brendan's stories were gloomy today - maybe cleaning that bird poo got to him.

Let's talk about something else, like how hilly some of the golf courses are here. In spite of the cold rainy weather, guys were out playing on these.

Soon we were ready to board our ferry. Actually, it was our bus's ferry because Brendan drove the whole thing on board and we rode easily over. We were headed for the Cliffs of Moher.

The Cliffs of Moher are simply amazing. Wherever else I have used that word, scratch it out - that word was meant for here.

Even in this windy, cloudy, cold weather these are awesome.

The walk up to good vantage points is lined with upright stone slabs, which serve to keep the walkway clear and gave us something to lean against when the wind was fierce. In the middle of the way one brave man was entertaining us. You bet I tipped him!

Looking over to the right is an interesting formation, down by the sea. And I never found out anything about it

It was really cold and terribly, terribly windy but we stayed as long as we could. When we had to go back down, the wind almost blew Randy and I off our feet - and we were hanging on to each other! We made it to the visitors center, which is sensibly built into one of the hillsides.

And we were off again. Now we were traveling through the Burren; I've never seen anything like this. "Burren" means great rock, and the name fits. The land here is simply rock. Not just the shoreline - everything. It's all limestone.

Aaron went walking around on the other side of the road and said some of the crevasses looked like they went down 30 feet. In other places weeds and grass have found and hold on to a bit of dirt between the rocks.