Monday May 14,

Time to be heading home and we had the whole day to get back to Dublin. One of our primary goals for this trip was to do a little family research for the Conners. Rollie's ancestral home is Castlepollard in County Westmeath, which is right on the way to Dublin. So we pulled in there to do some snooping. First we checked out the great manor house at Tullynally Castle. (love the name!) The purpose of this visit was to reconnoiter the place so that in the event we discover that Rollie actually is the rightful heir, we'll have a plan to expel the squatters. 

_8508925 Boo was not enthused. Her take was that until 2028 Victor St is completely and totally finished he has no business taking on a project like this. This dampened our enthusiasm. We then spent about an hour at the local library talking to their resident genealogy guru and concluded there were no more Conners in this area. Darn! I was hoping we could at least get a free lunch out of them. Back on the road to Dublin we took a look at the map and saw that we would be passing near Trim Castle. It looked like a good place to check out and as it turned out it was!  _8508931 If the place looks vaguely familiar it might be because it has been the location for a number of movies. The most recent big movie shot here was Braveheart. 

_8508936 _8508956 _8508992 The construction of the castle was started early in the Norman period by Hugh de Lacy, one of the first wave of Normans. The castle is sited alongside the River Boyne and the grounds on both sides of the river are now a park with walking trails. It is one of the few castles in Ireland that still has most of the outer wall intact and everything here is original to the Middle Ages. 

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_8509061 Just alongside the castle was a herd of donkeys for the tourists to pet and feed.

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Despite all of these side trips we still got into Dublin in time for another outing so we drove back over to Howth, where this trip started. This time we had better weather. The ferries and cruise ships were just heading out.

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And this was the end of a very excellent trip to Ireland. Thank you for coming along. Stay tuned though, as I will still be posting some black & white images soon. 

Monday May 13

Settling in at Sligo we were for the first time on this trip back on familiar turf. We were here in 2016 and 2017. With the drizzly weather continuing we at least knew where to look for bad weather photographs. This old shipwreck has been in the mouth of the harbor all these years. It doesn't look that much worse than it did seven years ago. 

_8508743 Then we went to check out the waterfall just south of town. It was raining rather hard by then and I didn't get anything I hadn't managed to get on previous trips.

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The rain was supposed to let up in the afternoon so we decided to take a chance and drive over ro Downpatrick Head in County Mayo. It is one of my favorite spots and maybe for the first time we can see it without the wind knocking us down. It worked. The rain lifted and the sea was quite calm, which made for a different kind of image than I'd ever managed to get.

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The turf below looks like it does because it is growing right on bedrock. It is very spongy to walk on.  _8508842  We could feel the trip winding down. Next day was back to Dublin.

Sunday May 12th

As expected the rain moved in during the night. We went to mass at the local church, bumping into our neighbors at the B&B. A nice chat after church made us feel a little like locals. The rain had then let up so we explored around Carrick a little. It is a very nice village with a lovely river walk and a couple of cool bridges. 

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And I thought this tree made a good pic. Looks like a fairy garden.

_8508650-Edit This was the day we would move on to Sligo town and points west. But we still had time to check out a little more of County Donegal's fabulous coast so we drove up to Silver Strand and Glencolumbkille. Sliver Strand is, I think, the best of the crescent shaped beaches found along Donegal's coast. It would have made a great sunset shot. But not this trip. Glencolumbkille is another stretch of wild rugged coastline. They have a folk village set up with different eras of Irish history. We would have stopped if we had more time.

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_8508659 At this point we headed for Sligo. On the way we swung by Eagle's Rock and Glencar waterfall.

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As we drove towards our quarters in Sligo the drizzle started spitting on the windshield. All hope for a good sunset was melting away in the rain. So what is there to do on a soft drizzly night in Ireland?

IMG_0612 You guessed right!! We found McLynn's Pub with a sessions group in full swing.

IMG_0611 IMG_0616 A good time was had by all.