Ireland Day 6

Well we woke up to an Irish morning of liquid sunshine. When I got up at 7:00am, a sleep in for me, you couldn't see the hedge across the drive way.

We decide to hold off doing anything for a while, had breakfasts, some had second breakfasts, then by 10:30 we could see across the bay.

Today was an indoor type of day;


First we went to on our way to Oughterard to look at shops, on our way we saw a sign for Glengowla Mines, tours and gift shop.

 We took a quick right turn and went in. These mines had a vein/core/bunch/lots of 80% pure lead. It was the time of the Crimean War and unrest in the United States, lead was need at what ever level of purity to make ammunition. Couple that with a potato famine and people out of work you had all the makings of an empire, cheap, labour, a resource and a niché market. All of the ore was had drilled and winched up by bucket. If you didn't bring up any of the ore to make lead, then you didn't get paid. Miners ended up, deaf and blind, they were the lucky ones the others were dead.

After the mine we went on to Oughtergard were we had a nice lunch, cream of leek and potato soup and various entrees around.

 We had to start heading back to the cottage as Wes had a date to go fly fishing with the Lord. Wes is know on a first name basis with his Lordship and is going hoity toity on us. (lol) not quite true but he does refer to the owner of the cottage and his wife by their first names.


On our way back we did a quick detour in to Joyce Crafts "one of Ireland's best craft shops".  4 of us jumped out and Geoff took Wes back to the cottage, returning 20 minutes later to peruse the shop(s) with us. The Joyce family have owned the shop for several generations and have made a name for themselves by not only selling quality merchandise but by taking the Mickey out of the local Tourist trade. They have erected a statue known as the Connemera Giant

 
and at the bottom of the plaque  inscription reads "built in 1999 by the Joyce Craft Shop for no apparent reason at all." Brilliant simply brilliant.

From Recess were the shop was we went through one of the many glacial valleys and headed back up towards the Kylemore Pass and Connemera National Park

Quick side bar, we have invented an new car travelling game, we call it Irish Sheep Poker.

The object of the game is to travel at high rates of speed, well within the speed limit but not the camber of the roads, and see how many sheep you can MISS! as they jump out in front of you or happen to be in front of you in the middle of the road usually after you come out of a blind bend or es curve.

 
The National Park visitors centre was an interesting stop where we learned about the Flora and the Fauna of the area and that pretty much all of the mountains and valleys were created by receding glaciers and not at all by fault lines, so no rift or fold mountains here. There are a few volcanic mountains rare but there. (hey a little poetic there, may be another Yeats, or Joyce or someone, Nah I don't need the money).

The park has three trails to go on. A 1/2 walk, a 1 hour walk and a 2 1/2 hour hike up the mountain. We the short walk around a bog, had three mis-starts because of poor signage and decide to give that up for a pound of darts, or a phrase to that effect.

After our adventure in the park, we headed back to the cottage stopping off at the Office License to get supplies. (BEER RUN!) somethings are very important don't you know.


The weather which had smartened up during the day start closing in again as we got back to base.

 
Uncle Wes was already back from his excurison and was preparing Nachos Canadienses por Wes. Very delicious. Watched a movie and called it night, need to be out the door