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Street Prophets Friday: Kerry Way, Ireland (photo diary, open thread)

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Greetings, and welcome to a bit of fluff.

I was seriously considering using my usual Friday post to vent. The idea of posting more fluffy photos seems not quite right, but I think it's maybe all that I have right now. Lycanthopia Labs, still open for business. Keeping a light on at the far end of Prophecy Street. A Bunsen burner in the window, if you will.

This is however, also an open thread. And I'll gladly join any primal screaming that may appear in the comments.

Kerry Way

Kerry Way is a huge loop of hiking trails that covers a lot of ground on the Iveragh Peninsula in the Irish county of Kerry. Last summer, Mrs the Werelynx and I joined four of our friends and a Czech tour group of just over 30 people and flew to Ireland. Our bus driver Alan met us at the airport in Dublin and drove us across the country to County Kerry on Ireland's Atlantic coast. On our second day in Ireland we spent the morning traveling south, with a short stop at the Kerry Bog Village Museum and the Red Fox Inn before continuing on to the beautiful little, seaside town of Waterville where we started our hike along just a relatively short section of the Kerry Way.

On the other side of that ridge somewhere our bus will be waiting for us.

The sandy, rocky coast of Waterville

I had a lovely encounter while waiting for some of the members of our group to return from the public toilets. A group of four young children had set up a little folding table and were seated behind it on a low stone wall. A chilly wind was blowing from the sea, but these hardy entrepreneurs were there to sell rocks to tourists. They'd each obviously spent some time painting rocks they'd gathered from the beach. I talked with them for awhile about their business and what they do with the profits, and ended up buying a rock. Perhaps I'll manage to take a photo of it and post it in the comments later.

Waterville was one of Charlie Chaplin's favorite haunts. Bonus seaside fairgrounds in the background.

And no, oddly enough, I didn’t take any photos of buildings in town— not even the hotel Chaplin stayed at on all his visits.

Although the whole county is a garden, it was fun to peek over a few hedges into some people's yards.

A nearly treeless golf course

Signs marking the path, we're about to go offroad.

The trail led up and up. We walked through many pastures with animals grazing in them, mostly sheep. There would be gates with signs asking hikers to kindly close the gate behind them, but mostly steps, rather like a stepladder set up over the wall.

Curious locals judging our ability to avoid trodding in their droppings.

One such wall we stepped over was attached to a ruin.

Signs marking the site of an old graveyard for unbaptized babies

Down there somewhere is the site of an 18th century naval fort.

And what is this picture all about. Scale, this picture is all about the scale of the landscape.

Here's a detail from the photo above.

Without trees or buildings to give you a sense of scale, some of my pictures must seem pretty strange. Can you even find where that big , white vehicle is in that landscape? I know I shrink my photos down to practically nothing to post here, but I think you might be able to puzzle it out.

Over the ridge, we begin our descent.

The Bronze Age Coomakista Wedge Tomb. No sense of scale, eh?

Just off the path— a panel marking the site of where poet Tomás Rua was believed to have lived.

And for those unable to read my miserable tiny JPEG photo— there's always more information than even the panel provides on the internet.

These thorny beauties occasionally lined the trails in Ireland

Trail marker

Kerry County boasts the largest old growth forest in Ireland and Kerry Way does go through some of it. Indeed, we saw a bit woodland.

Signs for Derrynane National Historic Park

I’m not drunk, the forest is drunk.

Sense of scale— that handsome lad is nearly two meters tall. I used to think I was tall, ah— but the youth of today ...

A blackberry not worth picking, not even by a hungry swarm of Czech tourists.

Thanks for stopping by. What'll I post next week? More vacation photos?

Today, I'm spending the day loving my family. Went out to a concert last night with Mrs the Werelynx and Fabulous Mother-In-Law. I heard a lot of music by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana that I'd never heard before and some familiar pieces of his all performed on the piano. Fabulous Mother-In-Law came back with us to our apartment to spend the night because we've got a busy day together today. The family will be attending #2 Son's graduation ceremony from Charles University with his masters degree in zoology. And then we’re heading out to a very late lunch. Mrs the Werelynx and I will then dawdle downtown until it's time for us to attend a theater performance. Should be a marvelous distraction, but I may be getting in to check on this diary a bit late.

This is an open thread.


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