Spent the morning in Kilkenny. Very pleasant breakfast in the old Dower house with a view across the garden to the castle.
After breakfast we went to the Medieval Mile Museum, a relatively new museum in the old converted St Mary’s Church just round the corner. We got a fascinating guided tour by John, who is a local. The place is chock full of interesting exhibits including gravestones; personal items that have accidentally fallen through the flagstones over the years like coins, buttons and a little toy soldier; a hidden and presumably forgotten cache of weapons from the uprising in 1920; and some skeletons dating back to the Middle Ages. I learned a lot about medieval history including about Anchorites. These were basically hermits who got bricked up inside church walls, and there were hundreds of them in the dark ages. I also learned that Cromwell is still very unpopular over here.
To try and make the most of having the hire car – a very unexciting Skoda – we visited a couple of historic ruins on our way to Dublin. I forgot to mention, the Skoda is a manual , it’s very hard to hire an automatic over here. I can remember when New Zealand was like that, but it was quite a few years ago. First we visited a Priory, and then an old castle.
The roads to these sites were once again scenic and narrow. Dunamase was also very close to the location of the National Ploughing Championships. The signposts for this began hundreds of kilometres away, with big warnings about expected traffic jams, so we were pleased to get there without any holdups. if we’d had the time, maybe we would have visited, who knows?
From Dunamase it was back to the big roads North to Dublin. We’re staying in another affiliated club here on St Stephen’s Green. I’ve done no exploring yet as Simon has spent the last three hours returning the car to the airport. That man deserves a Guinness.