Continuing our "cool" vacation, we woke up Monday morning, still in Trim. Our breakfast was lackluster, but John didn't care--he was eager to get outside and RUN! Seven miles later....
We couldn't find it on the GPS, but I figured if we headed to the village of Kells, we would find it. I saw a monastery in the center of town and wondered if they were there, but John found a "high cross" on the GPS and we drove out of town a bit. All we could see from the road was a sign warning us that we assume all risk if we enter the pasture. BET.
We walked into the pasture, and the sheep and lambs starting "baaaaa"ing everywhere. They were running to each other and basically freaking out. John was most concerned about us stepping in tar-like lamb poop that was covered in what he found to be the most interesting bees. I just wanted to get to the other side before some momma lamb decided to charge us....
We finally got to the other side and climbed the ancient stone steps over a wall into a graveyard...and more sheep. There were some newer stones, but it was quickly obvious which stones were high crosses. They were probably twelve feet tall. We were also walking over mounds the size of bodies which was a bit worrisome. (I have since discovered that these are not the "Kells High Crosses"--they were in the cemetery of the monastery, but I don't want to burst John's bubble.)
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| Please zoom in on this picture ;-) |
The next stop on our trip was the Loughcrew Cairns. If John loves nothing else, he loves a good cairn, or burial mound. We had to climb 1,000 feet to get to the top of the "hill", but the view from the top was magnificent. It's no wonder that ancient kings lived and died on those hills, and more modern kings just build castles for the same views. John can't get enough of running around and exploring, so I just admired the views while he saw everything he wanted to see...including another cairn across the valley. I could tell he was itching to head over there as well, so I told him I would sit in the car and blog and he could go. He didn't even give it a second thought--he was OFF!
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| John took the road more travelled when given two options ;-) |
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| I tried to capture the perspective of how high we hiked. |
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| I had to take a selfie 'cause the Man was off doing his thing ;-) |
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| Gorse--strange name for a beautiful bush |
Four miles later, he came back down with all kinds of pictures and "cool" stories of what he saw. At this point, he thanked me for planning such a great trip ;-)
We then had to book it to Fore Abbey, because we needed to get to Galway before 7:00. I LOVED the abbey. It was easy to access, primitive and just where I would want to live if I had a place 800 years ago. We walked quickly around and found a coffee shop where we hoped to just get a snack for the road. The woman who owned the place took forever just chatting with us, but when her 8-year-old neighbor came round asking how much the brownies were, she told him "For you, Michael, two." He told her he didn't have it, but she told him to bring it in tomorrow...and he ran out, brownie in hand.
When we paid for our sandwich and chips, we slipped her a 2 Euro piece for Michael--she said he would be delighted--but as we were driving away, we saw Michael back at her shop with a friend, both guzzling down Red Bulls ;-)
Unfortunately, we couldn't get a signal for directions to Galway, so John stopped at a house and asked, but within a few minutes we had a signal and were cruising. We pulled into our actual BnB (like, it's the lady's house and we were sleeping in a bedroom) two minutes before she closed registration. She recommended a restaurant around the corner which turned out to be "meh", but we had a fun walk to and from the restaurant...and an even tastier moment when we ran into Tesco and bought a box of Magnums to eat on the way home!
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