"Not all who wander are lost.": May 2013

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Castles and Clifden: Day 13 in Ireland

Today's free day included Hannah and I's first picture to add to the "Hannah, Chase, and Castles" album we intend to create the next month and a half. While a lot of the camp took vans to Galway, a small group of us decided to visit Kylemore Castle and Abbey about an hour or so away from Clonbur. Although not as old as the abbey in Cong (Kylemore was built in the 1800s), it was easily the coolest castle I've ever seen...pay no mind to the fact that this was in fact the first castle I've ever seen in person.

The castle had an interesting story behind it as well that went something along the lines of this...this guy named Mitchell Henry and his wife, Margaret Henry fell in love with the Connemara area while on their honeymoon. Since then they both dreamed of going back and living there, well Mitchell Henry as a sign of his love for his wife, built this castle for the two of them and went on to have some 6...8...9?...kids and live out their dream. In 1874 while on a family vacation in Cairo, Egypt, his wife came down with dysentery and died. Overcome by grief and refusing to ever leave his wife, he had a mausoleum built next to the castle so that she could forever rest in peace in the place she loved so dearly. Not a bad place to rest for all eternity. Now Kylemore is home to nuns of the Benedictine order who came here in 1920 after their abbey in Belgium was destroyed in WWI

A gothic church they had built next to the castle

Margaret's mausoleum

You have no idea what we went through to take this picture...

Despite the fact that Ireland has no wild bears, Alan taking advantage of the bear photo opp at Kylemore. Take note of the monkey in the back...

The Victorian walled garden

The gardener's assistants shack

The head gardener's cottage

From left to right, me, Cara, Megan, Alan, Tim, Michael, Hannah, and Kristina

Fish & chips in Clifden

Clifden

Only the best grocery shopping cart ever

Chamomile toilet paper anyone?

Clifden main square

The bakery I got my dessert from, a banana creme, toffee iced eclair :)

Fountain Hill Beach Mapping: Days 10, 11, & 12 in Ireland

For our second mapping project we went from bog to beach. The site, called Fountain Hill Beach was located about an hour and fifteen minutes away fom Clonbur. Being even longer than the 45 minute drive out to Lough Fee for our last mapping project, van rides to and from the site meant perpetual cycles between propped up eyelids and excessively loud music in an attempt to wake myself up for the day and a drooped head and consented napping. Any science major whose school takes trips to field sites can understand my plight. Except for the last day, we had beautiful blue skies and crystal clear ocean. While beautiful though, it was by no means warm and I'll admit it felt a bit weird traipsing about on a beach in 3 layers, wool socks, and big clunky hiking boots. This mapping project was a welcome transition into metamporphic rocks and we got to see some pretty cool folding in amongst alternating psammitic (sandy) and pelitic (muddy) schist along with pink, coarse granite, and really cool metamorphosed lime mud known as scarn...