Ireland - Day 5

Ireland Day 5 – April 13^th

Today a tour of the Mourne Coast. We were looking forward to seeing the Mourne Mountains, unfortunately the fog did not cooperate. It was a cold and rainy day (for most of it anyway) but onward we went.

Our first stop was Dundrum where the ruins of a Norman castle overlook the ocean. It was a place where I could imagine the lookouts watching the coast for raiders and invaders. Now it is a place of ghosts and history.

Then up into the mountains where we were amazed at the beauty of the rock wall. One might not think of a rock wall as beautiful, but these up the mountains were stunning. These rock walls are reminisent of the unmortered rock walls of New England that I am used to, except the rocks are different. The colors and shapes are beautiful and if it makes any sense, it was the space between the rocks that I found most amazing. The walls look delicate, but are far from it. MOC had a desire to be photographed in front of one of these spectacular art pieces and we obligied. Maybe I'll get a picture in at some point.

So we drove down a lot of little tiny roads, where thankfully I did not meet much traffic while driving thru the Silent Valley. We maintained our silence during this part of the trip in solidarity of the Valley. Yeah, that last all of about 10 minutes.

When I came to a stop sign and decided to go left I was asked by my beloved why was I going left? I took one had off the steering wheel, pointed in the distance and said “castle”. And off we went to Green Castle. This was also a lovely ruin, unfortunately we could not get very close to it since the gate was locked and we are trying to be polite American's.

I must say that everyone we have met so far has been wonderful, except for those people that don't pull to the right when we are passing on the road, but then again, we have not really met them,I have just been playing chicken with them.

We drove threw Newcastle now a resort town. I remember my mother having a saying of some sort about Newcastle. “Like bringing coal to Newcastle?” I'll have to remember to ask her.

Anyway, after a long day of driving we ended up back in Killyleagh at the Duffern Arms for another pint or maybe an entire bottle of Feckin whiskey where we ran into some of our new friends then back to Bangor for some different tasting Indian food and to learn that the heat had not been on in the cottage the entire time we had been there. It sure is much more comfortable in the mornings with the heat on. Go figure.