Ireland

We will be in Ireland from the 8 - 14 May (this is flexible)

May 13

Arrived in Dublin in the early afternoon and found Mercy International without any problems, well what I mean is that the GPS had no issues and we obeyed 'her' directions to the letter. We were warmly welcomed as this is where Pat spent 2 years and then visited again not too long ago. Lynne also spent time here when Pat was working here. You will be pleased to know, Lynn, that Liz very fondly remembers the 'good old craic' with Freddy Kruger. So this place has now met all 4 Wood sisters. Maree and I took off in different directions today. I went to the General Registry Office to get copies of birth, death and marriage entries after 1864. I caught a bus and had a lovely driver who specially told me what stop I should get off at and how to get to the GRO. This is near Dublin Castle now a major government complex with parts that date back to the 1200s. The area around here is medieval/Viking so buildings are exceptionally old. From the GRO I walked to the National Library of Ireland to view microfilms of baptisms, marriages and deaths before 1864. This was a truly woeful experience. For the first time, I encountered a disinterested Irishman who wasn't too keen on providing help but what was worse were the machines for viewing the films. The National library is in a beautiful old building and the machines looked just as old. I gave up after a couple of hours as it just proved to be too difficult. The State Library of QLD has much better facilities so this was a very disappointing experience. I then walked from there back to Mercy International. Tomorrow we will do the hop on, hop off tour in the morning and then hit the road to Belfast in the afternoon to stay at   Roseleigh House, a B&B which looks quite nice and has great reviews.

Maree
I had a wonderful tour through the Mercy international Centre today with an Irish Sister of Mercy called Breda.  I was actually a ring in as there was no tour booked in.  Breda was showing her friend another Sister of Mercy from Australia (Parkes) around so she offered to take me as well.  Breda and the Australian Sister of Mercy worked together before the house was restored to what it is today.  Breda had a wonderful knowledge of the history of this place and this was evident in the way she told me the story of Baggot Street and Catherine McAuley.  My tour started at 11.30am and finished at 1pm.   What a wonderful experience.

After this I decided to walk towards St Stephen's Green which is a city centre public park.  It was designed by William Sheppard in 1880.  It is a beautiful park and while I was there were many people making use of this space.

May 12

After leaving our lovely guest house in Carlow, the Red Setter, we headed out to Duckett's Grove, a beautiful but now ruined house/castle with a chequered past. It is the middle of nowhere and suddenly you come upon a huge arch and part of what would have been an entrance and about 1km on you come upon the house. The house had its heyday in the mid 19th century but was abandoned by the Duckett's family in 1916 when it went through a number of hands, including the IRA apparently. It was eventually bought by a local businessman but burned down in suspicious circumstances in 1933, locals believe it was for insurance purposes. The local council now have control of it and are restoring the walled gardens.

From Duckett's Grove we went to visit a cousin of one of our cousins and he ended up taking us on a guided tour of places and more graveyards. We had lunch with Ned and Mary and then took the motorway to Dublin.

May 11

Today was a lovely fairly sunny but cool day - given our track record so far, tomorrow is likely to be very wet. I must apologise for the numerous typos I have discovered. Doing the blog on the iPad isn't ideal because the type is so small. I had a lovely day today - went to lots of places on the family history tree. We visited graveyards galore and took lots of photos of headstones, especially at Ballinkillin - even ones of Doyles because they came from around the same area. We visited a second cousin, met his wife and daughter and swapped information. Tony lives in a big house in Slyguff, the same locality in which our gg grandparents lived at the end of their lives. We also did a few tourist things - taking photos of a few castles, some lived in, others now derelict. This is a beautiful part of Ireland and I thinks compares equally with the west coast area south of Galway. As Maree has said, the Irish are just so welcoming. They will often go out of their way to help. We met a man repairing an ancient water pump on a narrow country lane, we asked for directions, which we got as well as a conversation about the pump, quarries, the economy and the weather which he thought was grand. Tomorrow will be more family history and tourist things plus, if the weather is good, we will drive to Kilkenny (city) as we missed it the day before yesterday because it was so wet.

May 10

Today was another wet and miserable and very cold day. We left Kilkee to head to Tipperary and Ballygorteen where our ggg grandparents, David and Nora Ryan (née Currie) came from. We called in to Bansha to see if we could catch the priest and look at the registers but no luck there so we headed on to Ballygorteen. This is quite a pretty place and we found out that Ryan's still live there. Imagine a town land about the size of our farm at Beatrice Creek. From Bansha we drove across to Carlow (the town) and checked into a lovely B & b called The Red Setter and it has great wifi. Tomorrow we will head to Bagenalstown and surrounds.

May 09

Maree
What a wonderful day I had today travelling through beautiful Ireland.  I am sure Cath will give more detail in her post.  I know I have said that everything is just so beautiful before but Ireland is beautiful and much more.  Nearly everywhere we went today there were ruins of castles, beautiful churches and houses.  Here the countryside is just so green and there was not a moment today when the scenery was not picturesque.  The another thing that stands out is the wonderful hospitality of the Irish people that we have come across in our travels today.  I just can't wait for the next chapter in this journey through Ireland.

Cathie
We left our B&B after a lovely home cooked Irish breakfast and headed off south towards County Clare. The day started out with lovely sunshine and held that way for most of it. We meandered into places seeing beautiful countryside, numerous ruined castles, forts, keeps etc as we hugged the coastline. We took a deviation into Kilfenora which is where John Fitzgerald came from (Dad gets the Gerald from him). This was a very pretty town but I initially wasn't too sure about where we were heading as to get to it we had to head across the Burren. This is a mountainuous area of limestone and it is a very barren landscape but quite beautiful in its way. Once you drive down from the Burren and almost at Kilfenora, we encounteed Lemeneagh Castle. One part of this was built n the 1400s while the rest was added around 1640. At one time it had been home to Mairie Rua (Red Mary) who was a warrior and who hung her servants, or ones she thought were spies for Cromwell, from the side of the castle.

After leaving Kilfenora, we headed for the Cliffs of Moher - a lovely sight not too dissimilar to the 12 apostles in Victoria. From there we drove to Sragh where our gg grandfather Stephen Hammill came from. You can see why he left as it is a desolate bog. I got the most wonderful help from 3 elderly farmers who sent me to an elderly priest who helped and he in turn sent me to another priest. This is the most 'religious experiences' I've had in a long time! By now it was late afternoon and drizzling again so we headed to Kilkee on the coast to get a B & B but found most of them booked out. We picked a small hotel which had been closed for refurbishments and had only just opened. The meal we had in their restaurant was lovely. The trouble started when we were asleep around midnight when the couple in the room next door decided to have an almighty row which went on and on. Eventually someone came to tell them to be quiet but this had to be done twice. We heard this morning that they had scarpered without paying their bill so they must have made up! Internet access at the hotel was woeful, the reason for no blog yesterday.

May 08

What a day!!! We left our lovely flat in Earl's Court and caught the tube to Heatrow to catch the Aer Lingus flight to Dublin at 12. We arrived in good time, checked in and then headed through security. The nightmare of a couple of weeks ago at British Airways was relived. Our carry on luggage - handbags, backpacks were shunted to the 'bad' side again. This is where you wait forever while they test everything on and about the people in front of you. You are then taken aside while they test your stuff and then tell you it is all OK. This time Maree got all of the above plus her joggers set off the alarm so they had to go through separately.

We arrived in pouring rain in Dublin and hired a car, which we made sure had a GPS thank heavens. Just leaving the Avis car area was a feat in itself.  After a couple of mishaps and retracing of steps (and cross words) we finally got on to the motorway and headed for Galway, by now it was 3.30pm and it was pouring so visibility on the motorway was not great. The trip was fairly uneventful until we reached  Galway at 5.30pm when we encountered Friday afternoon traffic and road works which of course the GPS didn't know about so we went around a few blocks a few times to get to the B & B. We lost about 1.5 hours doing this but eventually found the right place which is lovely. After putting the bags in, we headed off down the road to a French restaurant recommended by the B&B owner. We had a lovely meal and are now in bed doing bits and pieces while we have wifi.

Galway is a beautiful city with parts which are quite old and are for pedestrians only - very Venice like. I have to say though that today is bitterly cold but at least the rain has stopped.

After breakfast tomorrow we will wander around, and then head off to County Clare and Sragh where our gg grandfather Stephen Hammill came from.