Castles Are Just Homes and Other Lessons

This week is an example of having actually done stuff but for some reason not being able to find a way to write about it. Or wanting to? Well not so much not wanting to but more like not having the energy or gumption. But we shall persevere and see what happens. On a related note, am I the only one that can’t focus on anything else when listening to a podcast? I can read while listening to music or with the tv on in the background. But when I’m listening to a podcast, I can only focus on the podcast. If I’m doing anything else (writing, doing house work, general thinking), I find myself rewinding multiple times throughout the episodes because I’ve zoned out and missed half the story and have no idea why Georgia and Karen are talking about Ted Bundy’s head on My Favorite Murder. If you’re wondering why this is in any way related, it’s because I’m currently listening to My Favorite Murder and zoning out. I’ve been writing for a few minutes, then rewinding and listening for a a few minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I’m so tired.

So let’s touch on what’s happened over the last week. On Tuesday, Veronica and I headed out to Hook Head Peninsula, home of the oldest operating lighthouse in Ireland. I’m not normally one of those white people that are oddly obsessed with lighthouses, but the views and surrounding landscape seemed too good to pass up. Not to mention that there’s a mansion, Loftus Hall, along the way that the devil allegedly lives in. Who doesn’t want to get in a good rubber necking of the devil’s home? The house was closed the day we went out but even from the road there’s a certain air about the house as you pass it that’s unsettling. It’s a large stone mansion set way back from the road and it’s quite isolated. Most of the windows appeared to be boarded up. Of course, the dreary and foggy weather didn’t help the atmosphere but it’s Ireland so there’s not much else in the way of weather. It’s like passing Mike Tyson’s mansion in Southington that he never lived in and has sat abandoned since the early 90’s until a church camp bought it.

The drive down was quite nice. It’s weird how much the scenery in such a small country can change while at the same time also looking practically the same. I’m aware that didn’t make sense so let me dig myself into a hole by trying to explain myself. It’s mostly bright green rolling hills dotted with sheep, fields separated by hedges (rocks in the west), hedges running along both sides of the road, mountains in the distance, rivers and bright white houses here and there. Occasionally the sudden village pops up. Yet, you never get tired of it. There’s always something to catch your eye. It’s also just generally pleasant to look at.

(Currently focused on dancing in my seat because my Spotify playlist has decided to give me a pop banger block of Beyonce, Britney, Kim Petras, Robyn, and Tom Tom Club. Please hold while I feel my oats and stare at the screen blankly, unsure of how to continue on with this post…)

Ok. I switched my music over to The Beths (remember The Donnas? I miss them). Since I started this blog I found that when I’m writing, I’m able to focus more when I’m listening to individual albums as opposed to a playlist. However the only playlist I usually listen to is the one I made which has almost 600 of my favorite songs on it so the content probably has something to do with it.

Ok where was I? Friends meme… devil house… Mike Tyson.. inane rambling… oh right… Hook Head.

I’m not shirtless.

We never actually went up to the lighthouse, we spotted a trail not too far from the lighthouse and decided to pull over and follow it. The trail skirted along the edge of small rock formations but you were easily able to climb around and venture out on the rocks. It reminded me a lot of the Burren. There was such a sharp contrast between the lush, literally soft as a pillow, grass and the alien rock formations that it gave way to. Veronica went our separate ways and wandered around on our own, though we both took a chance to lay in the grass for a bit. There were tons of tide pools, land bridges, and caverns. It was fascinating. I could probably have spent a whole day there. As we wandered we picked up plastic waste, eventually filling an entire large reusable shopping bag. You could tell that much of it was washed up and not just thrown there, except the pair of rubber gloves that were clearly just laid down on a rock and left behind. Next time you go out the beach or wherever, take a bag with you and clean up a bit. Sharing a viral image of a dirty polluted beach and being sad about it does nothing. Get out there and contribute to the effort.

We considered going up to the lighthouse when we finished collecting all the plastic we could but decided to skip it and eat instead. Food always wins. We stopped at a lovely inn down the road where I finally had some fish and chips. Afterwards I crossed the street to take a few photos of some church ruins and a herd of cows grazing next to it. Clearly sensing their opportunity to become photobomb famous, one particular steer kept mounting other cows every time I raised the camera. Somehow though, I managed to not capture any of the times he tried so you’re just going to have to believe me. Maybe that’s why he did it so many times. He was trying to help me out with a hilarious photo. Cows are much smarter than we think. Stop eating beef and clean up the beaches. That’s your moral lesson for the day.

On Saturday I went with Veronica to Kilkenny to explore the city for the day while she was in class. Like the drive to Hook Head, it was another side of the country I hadn’t seen yet. As I mentioned above, it was most of the same but somehow still different. Probably because the mountains were much closer this time around. It was pretty foggy that morning so I didn’t get to see much of the views that Veronica talked up extensively during the drive. The weather broke by the afternoon so on the ride home she pulled a u-turn for me to get a view of the village Kiltealy with the mountains behind it. When we got to the city, we stopped at a cafe for some quality caffeine intake. Veronica got hers to go and headed off to class while I grabbed a table and settled in to enjoy my favorite breakfast of a flat white and a croissant. With the croissant finished and about twenty pages into my book (Cherry by Nico Walker), a group of about 8 people walked in the cafe, a place definitely not suited for a group of 8, stared at me sitting at a 4-top alone, looked around, then started to leave. I felt bad at first and even began packing up but when they started to leave I kept reading. Then they stood in the doorway arguing amongst each other and staring at me so I said fuck it, packed my shit up, grabbed a flat white to go and headed out to start my exploring.

I started by roaming the grounds of Kilkenny’s main attraction, Kilkenny Castle. This is the kind of castle I envision when I think of a castle that’s not in ruins. I did go inside the castle later in the day and was a bit disappointed. It was basically just like going through a Victorian era home and I had to remind myself that castles are not palaces and they are just basically large stone homes. Which is a bummer of a childhood memory crusher but that’s adulthood for you. The grounds are quite large with a path running around a vast green space. One of my favorite things about gardens and parks in Ireland and the U.K. is how unplanned and natural the gardens look. They give the illusion that they’re growing wild and untamed and the park was just built around them. I wandered off the path a couple times and walked through the wooded areas then about a quarter of the way around I found a path leading outside the grounds to another path that goes along the River Nore which runs along the castle.

I headed left along the path until it ended and merged with another one that I later discovered lead you back up to the castle. At the end there was an abandoned building which was attached to a perfectly fine looking building but they were blocked off so I wasn’t able to explore them. I turned around and headed back down the path. I ended up well past the grounds of the castle, in some woods, and at the end of the path. To my surprise, the was another abandoned building at this end of the trail. Actually, there were two. And they were totally free to explore. I couldn’t have been more excited. I’d been dying to get inside the ruins of some kind from the start of this trip. I didn’t care that this one was probably less than 100 years old, most likely had no cultural significance, and covered in dumb teen graffiti, it was still super exciting. I spent most of my time in the large first building, the second one was smaller and smelled kind of funny. I assumed there was a bodied hidden under the brush so I jumped out real quick before I had the chance to find it. One of the most interesting parts of these buildings was that someone went around writing bits of poetry on the walls. Granted, it was all very “high school emo poetry” that we all wrote back in the day that someone eventually turns into a terrible meme that teens share on Tumblr, it was still interesting to see someone else’s state of mind in this environment.

When you’re driving around Ireland, you’ll notice a lot of small gravel patches big enough for one or two cars and a gate or barrier of some kind. These are actually all trails through the woods or wherever they are. Edenvale, which I went to a couple weeks ago, is an example of this. They’re relatively easy to miss as you’re driving by. One of these such places was at the end of the I was on in Kilkenny. I started going into it but got a weird feeling in my gut so when I saw someone standing still in the distance, I noped out real hard.

About half way back to the grounds of the castle there’s a pedestrian bridge over the river leading to another riverside path on the left and to the right was a trail through the woods that led to the town of Bennettsbridge. Naturally, I started to the right. The best part of this entire trip (and I mean this entire trip to Ireland, not just this day in Kilkenny) was encountering a dog along the trail that stopped to let me navigate over a mud puddle before carrying on himself. HOW CUTE AND POLITE IS THAT SHIT. I didn’t get very far into the trail, I wasn’t sure at the time how long it was and I didn’t want to suddenly end up in another town. But the beginning of the trail is majestic as hell. It starts in a large, hilly pine forest and runs right along the river. I encountered another friendly dog and their owner who was meditating by the river. The trail leads out of the pines and through some tall flowering shrubs but that’s when I turned back to the city for lunch. So who knows what’s beyond that.

After lunch, I wandered around the city a bit and ducked into a couple shops. I considered a lovely cable knit sweater (you know how much I love a good cable knit) but audibly laughed when I saw that it was $200. I decided my process of buying them from thrift stores wasn’t so bad after all. Noticing I still had 3 hours to kill, I took a tour of the castle. Like I said earlier, it was a bit disappointing. Get me out to Versailles ASAP so I can live out my gilded palace fantasy. The one time in the castle that actually made me go “oh wow” was when I entered into the portrait gallery. It’s a huge red room with ornately painted rafters and large windows. I can’t tell you anything about the paintings on the wall because I was too busy staring at the ceiling. I think it’s safe to assume they were mostly white men with beards.

The castle tour didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it was going to take so I headed back out to wander around the grounds, where a car show had magically appeared in the few hours since I had last been out there. They looked nice from a distance. A lot of brown ones. I actually forgot about the couple of medieval churches in the city so I didn’t partake in any of their glory but I figure if they’ve been there 500 years they’ll be there a couple more, right? *cue some sort of catastrophic natural event that causes their complete and total destruction*

Note: This post has literally taken me 4 days to do.