Ireland Day 5: Magpies, Bogs, and Caves

Magpies

We are very much morning people and were off to the races right away in the morning. Now there was so much more we would’ve loved to explore in this area but we only had 2 more days to explore around Ireland before we settled into Dublin and lots we still wanted to see.

We were hard pressed to find a gas station that morning so a word of caution if you are going into the area, get what you can, when you can.

We decided to take Patrick’s recommendations and we went north. We were quite surprised to see Magpies everywhere on the drive. Now my sister and I are a little superstitious, we throw spilled salt over our shoulder, etc. and like to understand the old customs, fairy stories, superstitions, etc. I glanced at these briefly before we went but couldn’t recall them offhand but I did remember there was something about magpies. So I did a quick reference check to make sure no bad omens were coming our way. “The magpie, above all other creatures, must be treated with the highest level of respect and decorum. These black and white birds are the purveyors of luck in its various forms. Depending on the number of magpies present, one may be granted either good or bad luck. If you happen to stumble upon a solitary Magpie while walking in Ireland, don’t worry, all is not lost. To keep bad luck at bay, a simple greeting will do the trick. This can be done in the form of a salute, a wave or simply by uttering the words “Hello Mister Magpie”.

Crap, we have seen a few solitary magpies so far and haven’t greeted them. This led us into a lot of greetings, tipping of our hand and imaginary hats to all future magpies. I mean I guess you should expect nothing less for anyone who dresses to the nine’s in their black and white everyday.

Bogs and Ceide Fields

This drive offered us never-ending view of the bogs, which triggered lots of conversations of bog bodies which is quite interesting if you ever do the research.

So one of the recommendations from Patrick was to go to Ceide fields, a Neolithic site that dates back to ~3500 BC. He mentioned that along the drive there are some great seastacks, unfortunately this day was fogged in but it was nice to see the fog rolling out as the sun was trying to break through the morning. As the sun was working its magic we wandered around the fields and saw some of the excavated stones of the former homes and tombs.

We continued meandering around the coast and had intended to make some stops in County Sligo but were looking ahead to some things that sounded exciting in Northern Ireland so we decided to skip most of our gameplan for the day and push further north to make up time as we figured we may want to spend more time in Northern Ireland than our schedule may allow.

Caves

However as we still had a drive to do and things that could be seen along the way I decided to find a little hidden gem. My sister wanted a nice sandy beach, I know we found and stopped at one in the Ring of Kerry but I figured we could find something nice up here. And I cannot deny my sister anything so I got about to do some research while she drove to see what may be along our path.

The power of Google Earth helped me find our afternoon adventure. Bonus points is that there was a waterfall along the way. While we were enjoying the waterfalls one of the guys who was there shooting it as well was familiar with the area and recommended the beach we were going to. The reason I chose this beach in particular is that it sounded like there was some interesting caves to explore. He mentioned that we needed to watch out for the tides and wasn’t sure as to what the tidal schedule was at the moment but we would have had some time yet.

We pushed off and went over to the beach which had a nice boardwalk until it ended to the sandy dunes to climb up and over. The tide was definitely out and many people were out and about enjoying. Our favorite people or rather puppy watching was this dog, Cody, who was having an absolute blast chasing and bouncing a ball along the beach, all the while Cody’s dad was warning him not to pop it. It was rather quite amusing.

There were a few caves along the shoreline but there were a few further up a hill but it didn’t look accessible. Well Cody’s dad pointed out that you can get to the caves, the one on the shoreline had already been blocked by water but the ones that were further up the hill are fun and provided the route to scramble up them but warned us to go soon, the tide comes in quick.

Looking to where he pointed it didn’t look like you could scramble it from afar but when you approached it you could see the ideal path. You still needed to pay attention to footing and loose rocks but we climbed our way to the top. The cave looks like its seen a party or two, not that it was messy just that it had some firepits built up. From up there you had a wonderful view of the beachline and inlet. In the area there are around 20 or so caves, a series of arches and some tunnels, which makes kayaking in the area quite popular. If we had more time it would be fun to do a lot of exploring, but with the absence of time and unknown of the tide schedule and its impact of the area we scrambled back down and then hoofed it over the sand dunes.