The cumulative fatigue of long sightseeing days has set in, so we slept in a little before heading to our guided tour of Kilkenny Castle this morning. We had yet another fantastic tour guide who was able to compress 750 years of castle history into an hour-long tour. The castle started as a fort built by Strongbow that later passed to the Butler family who gradually converted it from fort to castle. It stayed in the Butler family’s possession for hundreds of years before they eventually ran out of money to maintain it and donated it to the Office of Public Works (OPW) in the 1960’s. By then it had been vacant for several decades and fallen into disrepair and much of the estate’s collection of art and furnishings had been sold in auction when the castle was vacated in the 1930’s. The OPW spent 20 years restoring the castle and contacting the individuals who bought items in the estate auction, politely asking them to donate the items back to the estate. Surprisingly, many of the items were donated back, which made it easy for us to imagine how the castle looked in its full glory.

After our tour, we headed on to the Rock of Cashel to visit the ruins of St Patrick’s Cathedral. It is said that St. Patrick visited this site long before a cathedral bearing his name was built, back when it was still a fort/castle for Irish kings. The contrast in the state of this cathedral versus the castle we visited earlier in the day was striking, as both were built around the same time. As we stood in the cold, gusty wind listening to yet another enthusiastic and engaging tour guide provide the history, it was easy to understand why the site was abandoned so much earlier than Kilkenny Castle and how it could fall into ruin so much faster. Despite the cold winds, it was another bright, sunny day and pleasant to watch the birds (mostly jackdaws) glide around in the wind, swooping around through the ruins to tend their nests.

We hadn’t given ourselves quite enough time for lunch between Kilkenny and our scheduled tour at the Rock of Cashel and were getting pretty hungry by the time our tour ended. We stopped at a cafe at the bottom of the hill and ate a comforting lunch of soup and sandwiches on a patio in the warm sun, sheltered from the wind. Properly satiated, we headed back to the car and on to Charles Fort near Kinsale. These ruins were considerably younger, dating only back to the 1670’s during the reign of Charles II (hence the name). Despite their relative youth, these were every bit as dilapidated as those we visited on Rock of Cashel. We were told by our tour guide that they were actually in fairly good shape right up until the Irish civil war when the anti-treaty soldiers stationed there set fire to the fort to prevent the other side from overtaking the fort and gaining access to the arms it contained. Here again it was cold and blustery, but the birds don’t seem to notice or mind.

I, on the other hand, was becoming pretty fatigued by the wind and oversaturated with facts about old forts, castles and cathedrals. It was a wonderfully full day, but I was relieved to make it back into the car and out of the wind. We headed the rest of the way into Kinsale, checked into our B&B before heading back out for a quick self-guided tour through town, some fish and chips at a restaurant near the harbor, and a quick stop at the pub next door for a pint of Murphy’s and a little live music.

Today’s Highlights

• A misty, rainy morning turning into a bright, sunny day as we toured Kilkenny Castle
• Guided tour guides who absolutely seem to love their jobs
• Hot vegetable soup, brown bread, and toasties after being in the cold wind
• Fish and chips at a restaurant right on the harbor
• Running into two different groups of tourists that we met on previous tours while in Dublin
• A pint of Murphy’s stout in a pub with live music

Tomorrow’s Proposed Adventures

• A quick visit to the English market in Cork
• A drive through Killarney National Park
• Possible stop at Muckross House
• Driving the first half of the Ring of Kerry