The Events of Friday, May 20, 2011

            Darkness surrounded the bed, and I shivered in its chilly grasp. Wearing sweatpants, my flannel nightgown, wool socks and a sweatshirt, I was still not adequately prepared for a night in a house with no heating and drafty windows right on the shore of the windy coast. Lindsey’s ice cold bare feet curled up by my warm body. She should have worn socks! I pushed her feet away from my body and snuggled back into the bed.

            Hours later, as bright light poured through our cotton curtains, Daddy woke us up with a cheery voice saying, “First one up gets a hot bath.” Neither of us wanted to climb out of our warm bed to take a bath. Sighing, I scurried out of bed and into the freezing cold bathroom. This house is more like an authentic 18th century cottage than any of the reconstructed cottages we’ve seen. Besides tiny bedside lamps scattered throughout the house, there is no ceiling lights or no overhead lights. The only overhead lights and other lights are gas lamps, that I believe haven’t worked for a million years. We have one small fan heater that works, and we have made use of its portability, unplugging it and re-plugging it in where the family congregates. As I passed through the sitting room, I found it comfortably warm. To keep the sitting room toasty warm, Mom insisted that we close all the doors to drafty rooms. Our bathroom is very interesting. In a little alcove is a bathtub that is supposed to be white but is stained brownish-greenish white. A few inches the tap, hangs the shower head.

            Mom, always ready to help out, told me to climb in while she started the hot water. Climbing in, I gasped at the color of the water. It was green!! What followed was probably the fastest showering experience I’ve had in my life, and also the coldest. The water went from hot to cold. You can read more details on Caitlin’s shower blog. After my experience, nobody else wanted to shower or bathe, so we all huddled in the sitting room and had our quiet times. Dad heated up some tea to warm us up, as the whole house was the same temperature as it was outside. After our quiet times, we had breakfast and packed up for our day exploring Connemara. I actually packed all of my layers, just in case, which included my full winter jacket, a sweatshirt, a hoodie, a hat and gloves.

            Following a Rick Steves’ driving tour through this region of Connemara was rather easy. However, Mom continually exclaimed, “UGH!” when we hit an unseen dip or bump in the road and were airborne for seconds at a time. That doesn’t count all the times she slammed her foot on the brakes, which turned out not to be there because she was sitting in the passenger seat.

            Our first stop was Kylemore Abbey, a vacation mansion, built by some wealthy English guy, which was turned into an abbey during World War I. Now it is a private girls’ school. Supposedly the inside is not worth a visit, so we parked across the lake from the Abbey and took pictures of it. All the while we froze as the wind whistled around us.

            Driving on, we soon noticed a change of scenery. Instead of trees, there was flat peat-bog land. Basically, plants growing in lakes couldn’t get oxygen enough to decompose, so the plants rotted and the moss built up, dead layer after dead layer. The peat is great for the preservation of bodies of ancient peoples, some buried, and others possibly sacrificed to pagan gods. Scientists have found ancient bodies in the bog, with their clothing, hairstyles, and even eyelashes still intact. They can even identify the last meal they had before their death. After the peat is dry, it is also good for burning in fires, since it lasts longer and produces less smoke than wood.

            As we pulled over on the side of the road, it began to rain. So we stayed in the car for a while, while I read to the rest of my family about the peat bogs. When the rain subsided, we were able to climb onto the bog to take our “Slog on the Bog”. We very soon learned not to step in mossy areas, after I stepped in one and sank about three inches into cold water. Eventually, we found an elevated dry area and walked around a bit. The bog was very springy. We could feel the vibrations of someone else jumping fifteen feet away. Trying our best to avoid wet spots, we slogged back to the car and drove to our next stop.

            Traveling through Leenane, we entered the Doo Lough Valley. As we drove through this desolate, barren land, I read one of the saddest famine tales. In the winter of 1849, 600 starving Irish farmers walked twelve miles from Louisburg to Leenane, hoping to get food from their landlord, only to be turned away. On the way back, over 200 people died. The Famine hit these people the hardest, as they depended almost exclusively on potatoes for food. On the side of the road was a small stone cross memorializing this event.

            Our next stop was the National Famine Memorial, across the road from Croagh Patrick. This moving memorial showed a coffin ship, basically a ship that carried the Irish people as cargo to America, over half of the immigrants dying on the way (see Day 321 for more information). The metal sculpted ship in this memorial had skinny silent skeletons swirling around the ship’s sails. Slightly creeped out by this memorial, we drove down to a dock for lunch. Toward the end of lunch, though, the cold grew unbearable, so, for dessert, we camped out in the car and munched on cookies.

            St. Patrick, according to tradition, climbed the mountain Croagh Patrick at the beginning of Lent and fasted there for forty days. On the last Sunday in July each year, known as “Reek Sunday” (‘reek’ means mountain peak), over 30,000 pilgrims climb the mountain, some even attempting it barefoot. Many of these climbers come down on stretchers. Not wanting to have that precise experience, we decided not to hike all the way up, but we at least wanted to go partway. Starting up, we soon had gained quite a bit of elevation. Mom’s calves started to cramp (she has been having problems with them lately), so Mom, Caitlin, and I camped out on the side of the path, while the others continued along the trail. It was beautiful from our perch, so we just lay down in the grass and looked at the clouds and the view. Mom and Caitlin wore all their layers, but I wore only a sweatshirt, a hat, and gloves to keep warm. However, as long as I kept moving, I stayed warm. Everything was fine, until the clouds opened up, and it began to pour. We frantically wrote “CAR ↑” with stones on the grass next to the path, in order to let our family know where we were, and headed back to the car.

            Meanwhile, the other members of our family made it to the ridge, but not the peak, and were on their way down when the rain started. They unfortunately missed our message, but all was fine when we met up again at the bottom. Lindsey had slipped and tripped so many times she lost count, but two of her falls were big enough that she was limping as we made our way to the car.

            Heading home, we stopped at a SuperValu for some staples: matches so we could start a fire, and hot chocolate mix for an alternative to tea. Home at last, we cooked up our dinner, made the fire, and relaxed until dinner was ready. Garlic potatoes and spicy chicken didn’t quite fill us up, so we pulled out raisins, Craisins, and mushrooms as supplements. For dessert, we had a Swiss chocolate roll and yummy, chewy macaroons.

            After dinner, we settled down to watch “Notorious”, an old Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. The movie was about American FBI agents and German conspirators, ending with the couple riding off into a black and white sunset. Near the end of the movie, we cooked up some cups of hot chocolate to warm us up before heading to bed.