I’m actually in Dublin as I write this and the tour with Blue/Back Roads Tours is over. I’m very far behind in both writing my blog but also processing photos. I’m hoping to have some time to do both while here for the next couple of days and I hope to be able to post some of the final images to my Flickr site. More on that if and when it happens.
From Kilronan Castle we head west toward the coast as we are ultimately heading to Galway to end the day. We head through Westport, apparently a lovely tourist town, then along to Louisburg and south through hills and vales.
At the east end of Lough Inagh, which is a sea Lough, is Aasleagh Falls and we have a chance to stretch legs and take a photo. It’s a pretty little dip in the river but calling it a falls…well…it doesn’t compare to some falls I’ve seen and grown up near.
The views from the south side of the Lough are quite stunning and further along we can see mussel farms in the water. The shot from the bus of the mussel farms as we are whizzing along is quite disappointing but the other scenery makes up for it.
Our next destination, which also involves a bit of a guided tour, is the Connemara Heritage and History Centre where we are going to go up into the hills on a wee train pulled by a tractor to see Dan O’Hara’s cottage.
The views, as everywhere in this lovely country are stunning.
And yes…that is rain falling in the west off the coast.
Our first experience is going to be all about what “peat” is. In Ireland they call it “turf” but it’s the same stuff. It has to be cut first then laid out to dry in the sun. The pieces that seem to be just lying around are actually put there so that they can dry. Later they will be stacked like a pyramid to dry further. The pieces that you see below will eventually dry to a much smaller and a much harder piece of “peat” that is ideal for sustained heating (and making whisky).
Dan O’Hara was a tenant farmer who was relatively well off and quite popular locally. In 1845 he though to modernize his wee cottage by adding glass windows an improvement that was frowned upon by Landlords of the day. These improvements, which, added daylight to the cottage, then came under the “window tax” and it is this tax that is the source of the phrase “daylight robbery”.
Dan could not afford to pay this new tax and so the bailiff and police arrived to evict him from the cottage. I may have mentioned before during the visit to the Famine Village that the cottage dwellers did not own the land, although they did own the cottage, and the landlord could on a whim set fire to the roof, knock walls down and evict the tenants. Dan’s sole recourse after having his family evicted was to head to America.
Dan’s fortunes did not improve in America and he was forced to send his children to an orphanage and earn what he could selling matches. The song “Dan O’Hara” tells the story of the misfortunes of “Dan O’Hara of Connemara”.
Our guide sang the song for us then opened a bottle of “Potcheen” (aka Irish Moonshine) and we all had a toast to Dan O’Hara.
We’ll let the “peat” dry out and we’ll head to Galway and the Dean Hotel where we’ll spend the next two days. More to come.
Stand down.