Wednesday, August 15, 2007

ON THE WAY TO CORK - AUGUST 1985

IRISH COUNTRYSIDE

My posts on Ireland are actually somehow weird in relation to the other I use to make. In fact, for some reason - maybe the fact that it was our first week abroad after the birth of our daughter, the terrible weather on the west coast of Ireland or something else... - I forgot to take notes on where the pictures were taken. Thus, twenty two years later, it's quite hard to find out where some of them were shot. Hope some expert on Ireland who sees the post could help...


"ONE FOR THE ROAD - Before departing Dublin, we visited Old Bushmill's whiskey shop"


"COUNTRYSIDE - When we left Dublin we started to be amazed with the beaury of the Irish countryside"



"IRISH SEA, ST. George's Channel. It seems there has been a long discussion on the building of an 80 km tunnel to link Britain and Ireland here, but with the financial results of the Channel Tunnel, people is less receptive to embark on the project. For the time being, the Irish Sea is described as the most radioactively contaminated sea in the world with some «eight million litres of nuclear waste» discharged into it each day from Sellafield reprocessing plants (Wikipedia)"


"COTTAGES - There were some beautiful ones on our way"


"GLENDALOUGH ROUND TOWER - Hopefully this subtitle is correct! The tower is part of an early Christian Monastic site founded by St. Kevin in the 6th century. The monastic remains are located in a glaciated valley with two lakes, and include the superb Round Tower, stone churches and decorated crosses"




"RIVER SCENES - I wonder whether this could be Slaney River. Anyhow, I like the pictures and the scenery"


"BLUR - Someone took this distorted photo, somewhere in Ireland. The blur however resulted into an interesting picture, I think"


"ANOTHER ROUND TOWER somewhere between Dublin and Cork"


"HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, in Ireland..."


"COFFEE BREAK, PONEY WALK"


"BEACH"


"RIVER"


"THE OLD THATCH Pub and Restaurant in Killeagh, Co. Cork. Found the location on a picture from Janice Baxter"


"A CASTLE lost in the landscape"



"BLARNEY CASTLE - The Castle we may see today is the third to have been built on the site, after a wooden structure from the tenth century and a stone structure from circa 1210 A.D. In 1446 a third castle was built by McCarthy, King of Munster"


"BLARNEY STONE - Long line to join the world statesmen, literary giants, legends of the screen and the millions of pilgrims that climbed the steps of the castle to kiss the Blarney Stone and gain the gift of eloquence, or, like Lonely Planet puts it, gain the privilege of telling lies for seven years. Others, however, are more reluctant to do it, as they held the Blarney Stone as the Castle's latrine, which was normally situated over the moat so all the sewage would drop there and discourage any invader from push his way through a virtual excrement basin..."


"CASTLE PICTURE, scanned from paper; the previous was scanned from film"


"BLARNEY CASTLE VIEW towards the surrounding fields"


"BLARNEY BOUTIQUE - Cork is five miles away on your right..."


"CORK is the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland, the capital of the province of Munster, and hosts the World's second largest natural harbour, after Sydney, Australia. The river seen on the picture is the Lee, which flows through the city"