This is essentially our last day as tourists and we are on the road again at 09:00 heading towards the Swiss Cottage. It’s described in our Back Roads brochure as a traditional cottage orne (accent acute on the e). We’re not allowed to take photos inside as there are many valuable pieces that might be considered worth purloining.
It was built by Richard Butler, a rags to riches story in itself, in the early 1800’s and it is believed to have been designed by the famous Regency architect John Nash. It’s a fascinating, fairy tale type of place but apparently was rarely used by the family, perhaps once or twice a year. It fell into disrepair for some time but was eventually acquired by Heritage Ireland who have done an amazing job of keeping this very unique building alive.
It did rain while we visited the cottage, which was something we hadn’t experienced very much of on this trip. Umbrellas were de rigueur and some of my pals seemed to enjoy both the visit and the weather.
The cottage is about 2 km downstream along the River Suir from the town of Cahir and the Cahir Castle. A few of the “intrepids” decide to make the walk, despite the rain, while the rest of us relied on Ray to get us there safely.
The castle is quite impressive and I managed to get a few good shots. Unfortunately I decided to play with the High Dynamic Range (HDR) feature on my 5D Mark III and the results were less than I expected. I set the camera to only keep the final shot and essentially lost the originals. I’ll post an example below of a basic shot and an HDR shot and I’m sure you will see the difference.
The one above is a regular shot and the one below is taken in HDR mode. Although I like the depth that is implied with the darkened clouds in the bottom image, there is that tell-tale ring around the castle ramparts where the camera couldn’t decide what to do. In the picture below it’s also not as obvious that there is camera shake. Doing HDR by hand is a big mistake and a number of, what should have been very nice shots, were not very nice because of the slight movement during the taking of the 3 images necessary to create an HDR image. The other thing I should have realized is that when I lost the original raw image I only ended up with a processed jpg. This essentially means that the ability to manipulate the original image is now lost. Oh well…live and learn…and why did I leave my tripod at home??
The park around the castle is quite nice and abuts the golf course so lots of green and lots of space. A couple of interesting features were the sleeping Viking and the carvings in one of the trees.
I didn’t get a chance to explore much of the town as it was essentially lunch time but I did get a shot looking up the Suir toward a church in the background. The café was great and it would have been nice to explore the town a bit more, although I’m sure the castle is the big attraction.
After lunch we headed to Kilkenny, which our brochure describes as Ireland’s most perfect medieval city. Certainly the castle and castle grounds are impressive.
While walking about the castle is was accosted by a group of young women (well young to me) who wanted me to take their picture. They were from Missouri (the “show me” state), except for the one young lady who was from Calgary. Not sure why I keep running into people from out west on this trip. Lots of giggles as the old guy took a shot of the group with everyone’s phone.
I fell in love with this wee green car and since the keys were in it I gave a thought as to what it might be like to hop in and head down the road. A fleeting thought as one of the security people decided to wander by at that point.
There were a number of market stalls along the walk beside the castle but it was time to head down to the Hibernian Hotel and our final meal together.
Tomorrow we head back to Dublin and the Ashling Hotel, where the trip started and where it will end.
Stand down