Last month my wife Peggy, her sister Barbara and myself had the good fortune to spend eleven days traveling around the west coast of Ireland.
It was a great trip and the best advice that we got was at the rental car pick up counter.
Another Yank told us, "You'll be seeing a lot of lovely hedges on the left side of the roads you will be on. Every one of those hedges is hiding a rock wall. Don't get too close.".
That was great advice.
Below the Orange is the Green.
With your indulgence, here are some photos of our trip.
One of the purposes of the trip was to see if we could find any records of Peg and Barb's grandmother and grandfather, who were from in the Northern Irish town of Coleraine.
We started at the Coleraine Town Hall.
Where we met Mr. Davy Boyle, The Caring Caretaker.
Davy has raised close to £500,000, since the mid '90's, for a variety of Irish charities.
He's a good guy and he directed us to the Town Council Office where we struck out on getting any info on Dear Martha.
We then headed north to the Giant's Causeway, the home of the Finn McCool legend.
From the Causeway we headed over to Dunluce Castle.
The castle's claim to fame is that during a banquet a part of the kitchen plunged into the Atlantic taking all of the kitchen staff but one boy, who was sitting in a corner.
We head south to Sligo and make a stop at Drumcliff. There is a beautiful old church, Saint Columba's and a very cool cemetery. W.B. Yeats is buried there.
There are some great Celtic crosses and memorials in St. Columba's church and churchyard.
Leaving Sligo we pass through Donegal
We arrive in Clare and see the beauty of the glacially scraped Burren
With a nice cottage in Doolin as our base camp we explored the area.
We visited the Poulnabrone Dolmen, a neolithic portal tomb.
Kilfenora, and Kilfenora Cathedral where there be High Crosses.
And carvings
Kilfenora Cathedral houses St. Fachtnan Church
The Cliffs of Moher made us gasp
And, so did the Doolin mornings
We studied old churches
And, spooky graveyards
And, the anatomy of many stone walls
And, we didn't hit any of them.