The Emerald Shores of Ireland - Part 13

The Emerald Shores of Ireland
A trip journal by David Bowers
September 2, 2008 - September 11, 2008
Part 13

On the way to Dingle we passed the South Pole Inn, which was founded by Tom Cream, a survivor of the Shackleton expedition. At times the road would veer inland so we would have those wonderful fields on both sides of us, occasionally spotting villages off in the distance. When we got to the actual town of Dingle, we took a short rest break, the area was adjacent to a harbor where we could walk dockside admiring the ships on one side, or the town on the other. The harbor area had some public facilities available, and it was noted we would be on a long drive before our next stop. That's all that really need be said to start a parade from bus to bath. After taking care of nature we looked around the main street of the town and the harbor area.

We left Dignle on Slea Head Drive to continue our scenic drive. On the way out of Dingle, Jerry told us that this is here Ryan's Daughter was filmed and how that has really opened up the tourist industry in Dingle. It seems before the movie Dingle was a quiet town that sort of kept to itself as it was sufficiently far away. Then the movie studio came, and suddenly a car dealer that usually sold a car every week or two, sold 7 in one day. Suddenly the Hollywood money was flowing into the local economy, and the resulting movie made the area famous. He told the anecdote of the star David Lean who wanted to ride a horse on the Dingle countryside despite never having ridden a horse before. The movie studio rejected his wish stating their concerns for his safety and their filming schedule and budget. Well, as movie starts often do David wouldn't take no for an answer and despite the movie studio insisting on several precautions, he did take a ride did fall off, and the movie studios worst fears were realized when this brought production to a halt for a month. It's said that several of the cast or crew still remain attached to Dingle, and some have even moved there.

As we continued out towards Slea Head, known as the westernmost point in Ireland, the terrain gets more rugged the shoreline more jagged, and the road just that much more interesting. As the curves got tighter, Jerry made an open invitation to anybody who ever wanted to try to drive a tour bus, now is your chance. There were no takers to the humor filled offer. Just then we came upon a nasty curve known as the Devil's Elbow. This is an evil hairpin turn, made more evil by the fact there is no room for error between the guard fence on one side and the sheer rock face on the other. As if that weren't evil enough, there is a spot a couple yards long where there is no road, instead the steam has overtaken the road and you drive through the water. It was noted you have to be on the watch for hidden jagged rocks below the surface. Jerry mentioned this turn is hard in a passenger car, it's a challenge in a normal tour bus, so we'll have to see how John handles it with an extra long bus. It took some time, but we got around and through the turn.

Further along, we came to a stop in front of a house that has, to it's right a 'bee hive hut", which is a early stone building that has a dome at the top similar to a beehive. Before we can get out to take pictures, Jerry indicates the reason he is stopping the bus but not letting us out is the owner of the house and the bee hive hut aren't exactly friendly to tourist and will demand a fee from you for taking photos, however they have found they can't do anything about a bus that happens to park in front of their place for a few minutes so this is as good as it gets for a photo.

Not to worry, as with any scenic drive, this one is built with a number of pull offs offering places to stop and take pictures, stretch your legs or get a breath of freah air, and we would take advantage of a few of them. A little bit later we passed a giant crucifix statue on the inland side of the road. I got my camera out just a bit too late for that shot. Since we had a particularly clear day, we were rewarded with great views of the Blasket islands as we started to near the end if Dingle peninsula. Here I noticed the road was definitely one lane, so I presume we are on a one way only scenic drive.

Our next stop is Gallarus Oratory, and we will actually get to go and see this one. The story behind Gallarus Oratory is that it is believed to be 1,300 years old, which would mean it was built in the 700's . The construction style is real simple in nature, it's a dry masonry building, meaning no cement or mortar was used to hold the stones together, just weight and careful design. It's not a large building, maybe able to hold about a dozen people squeezed together, and not a fancy building. The two side walls from a giant A-frame with supporting walls front and rear. All four walls slope out as they go down, forming a sort of mini pyramid. The building was designed as an early worship site, and other than the walls the only other features are a doorway in the front, and one window in the back. It may not be much to look at, but its claim to fame is that it has stood for 1300 years, again with no mortar or cement, just gravity holding the building together, and not only has it stood the test of time, it has lasted on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and is still waterproof. In that way it is an architectural wonder.

Before we arrived at the oratory, Jerry informed us that we are in a Gaeltacht area. Remember a few days ago, I mentioned there are some fantics in the vocal minority to make Irish (Gaelic) the only official language? Well, here is where the story plays out, there are certain areas in Ireland where the citizens have gotten together and said "in these areas, Irish will be the only official language". These areas are referred to as Gaeltacht areas, and there is usually a sign when you enter one that reads "An Ghaeltacht". You will soon realize you are in one as one of the things they do is bring back an old law that is still on the books but was never inforced, that law being that road signs be in Irish only. As you can guess this can cause all kinds of problems if you have only an English language map with you. Luckily most travel guides are good enough to warn you about this, and more and more maps are coming out with major cities in Gaeltacht areas labeled in both languages. This beats the alternative which is to get an Irish map and do side by side comparisons to find your way. I did note that in an interest of safety some of the safety signs are still bilingual. The shame here, is in some cases they didn't put up new Irish language only signs, but rather they painted over or otherwise covered up the English, sometimes in a different color just to taunt you. It's said that the citizens here only wish to speak Irish but somehow like any foreign country those that earn their living off the tourist may make exceptions. None the less Jerry taught us the traditional Irish greeting of "Dia Dhuit" (or "hello") so that when we pass through reception we can greet the attendant in their chosen native language.

I can't stress how important this is, I found when going to Italy, that even though most of the tourist oriented areas speak at least a working amount of English, that if you speak to them in the local language, even if you don't get it right, as long as you show you are making an attempt to respect their language, you will generally get better treatment,. Some will even naturally try to help you with the language so you can do better next time. It may also take the edge off of the "Ugly American" syndrome if you at least try to act respectful and willing to take the effort to speak their language. Jerry hinted that at one time you could just park and walk up and see the oratory but over time they have built a fence and a gatehouse around it. We parked in the coach park, and walked to the reception building. The reception building, as is common in Irish attractions is the ticket office, gift stand, and snack bar all in one. Jerry went in first and introduced himself, and then waved us in, on our way through reception, we walked in the front door, Jerry had a stack of tickets with the stubs already detached and he handed us each a ticket stub on our way into reception, and we walked right out the back door.

The first surprise is we thought the Oratory would be right behind the reception building, but its actually back about a good 5 minute walk along a trail to the oratory. At the end of the trail we come to another fence, but the big auto gate is open, so we don't have to squeeze through the thin pedestrian lanes. We pass the interpretive signs and head up the final walk to the oratory. We take some photos, we walk inside the empty building, no furniture, no lights. We feel the walls and they are indeed nice and dry inside despite the fact Jerry had said Ireland had rain for about a month. There were some photos taken involving people looking into or out of the small window in the back wall. After satisfying our curiosity and our cameras, we took the walk back to the reception area, where some use was made of their comfort facilities, and we also decided to get some ice cream from the snack bar area in the reception area, a Choc-Ice which is kind of like a Klondike bar,. Once the group was assembled he headed back to Dingle. I noted the ticket stubs we were given were quite large and had pretty much everything Jerry told us about the oratory printed on them, along with a sketch of the building itself. Handy keepsake, those tickets, as I didn't see anything in ther gift shop I wanted.

On the way back to Dingle, Jerry reviewed our Killarney national park options for tomorrow, and took the vote. What do you know, the vote came back pretty much evenly divided between the three options. Jerry commented he would have to think about this, and Father mentioned "Be Solomon, and decide what to do". We had this conversation as we drove through the town of Dingle, and just before we reached Tralee, Jerry figured it out. "Okay, if our goal is to satisfy the majority of the group, and if I can arrange for two of the three options, that is two thirds of the group or the majority." He proposed that he would, of course, offer the walking tour of the Muckross House gardens, and there just happens to be a station for the jaunting car ride at Muckross House. When we get there, he can drop those who want a jaunting car ride off at the jaunting car station, take the rest of the group on a tour, then come back and pick the jaunting car people back up. Sounds like a great solution to me. Of course, some asked about the boat, and Jerry reminded us that we really need a large group to make that financially feasible, as there are no public boat tour rides, so we would have to charter a boat and captain. That settled we returned to the Hotel Brandon to check in.

We arrived at the Brandon hotel at just about the same time as another group. A key difference I noticed between our two groups is that while we were having our luggage taken care of by the hotel porters, the group on the other tour bus were handling their own luggage. As usual, Jerry went in first to make the arrangements, and then returned with a plastic basket. It seems that the Hotel Brandon still uses mechanical room keys. His first thought was to read off the room assignment sheet, then you could grab the appropriate number key out of the basket as you got off the bus. That didn't work out too well, and we went back to the spread them out on the reception counter approach. So we picked up our one key per room, attached to an obnoxiously large key ring, as in gas station restroom key large key ring.

It took some time waiting in line for the elevator, but soon we were up to our room on the top floor. When we started walking down the hallway, we noticed people having trouble getting into their rooms. We inserted the key into the door, turned one way, nothing, turned the other way, we heard the lock click, but the knob wouldn't turn and the door was still firmly locked. We tried the other way, the lock clicked again, still remained locked, and the knob wouldn't turn. We turned it back around the other way, click, knob and door still locked, repeat. Finally Bob gave it a try and noted that the key came to a hard stop one way, but not the other way, so we turn it around once, click, door still locked, turn it around a second time the same way a second click and the door pushed open. It turns out the knob never does turn, and both the deadbolt and the regular door latch are operated using the same key. Come to think of it, that's how my front door works, so I'm a little embarrassed I didn't figure that one out. Of course, once you know the secret it's easy, but it sure gave a lot of people trouble that first time. Bob just said some locks have a personality, you have to play with them.

We got into our room, and I didn't have too much stuff to add to the carry on bag, so mostly we just looked at the room and waited. We had a street view, and being on the top floor had a pretty good view of Tralee from our bay window, in fact the whole room jutted out to form the bay window, which allowed for a nice size table and chairs. We were getting settled in when Bob announces "You won't believe what's in the bathroom" I look in the bathroom, and after three nights of liquid body wash from miserly dispensers I see bars of soap. Sure they are small bars meant for the sink, as there was a body wash dispenser, but that's not how we intended on using them.

Given the time we had to spend waiting for the elevator up, we decided to leave the room a bit early, and of course an empty elevator was just sitting there waiting for us. We went down to the lobby, and found out we weren't eating in the restaurant, but we were shown back a hallway to the banquet room area. It looked like we would be eating with the other tour groups at the hotel, so we went to the tables marked for our group. Ah, I see the table marking says "Abbey Tours - Jerry" on them, so Abbey Tours must be the Irish tour company that Pentecost Tours partnered with. We took our places at a giant 10 person round table and studied the menu. I see we have gained a course, now we get to choose an appetizer, a soup, a main course (which will of course be served with the ever present mixed vegetables and potatoes), and a desert. When the server came, I opted for the chicken and bacon salad, cream of potato soup, pork loin (w. apple sauce), and the apple crumb cake. Meanwhile, Bob went with the melon salad, ham and turkey, and ice cream. Bar orders were taken, and I had a Guinness and Bob had some wine, and these arrived pretty quickly.