Saturday Adventures Post

Today John and I planned to get out and about to the west of Cork to do some exploring. We looked at our (many, many, many) options and decided to head out to Bantry and then make a loop to come back through Skibbereen. We got to Bantry in about and hour and a half and stretched the legs as we walked through the town for a little bit--typical Irish town. I posted pics from Bantry on the Shutterfly site (link to the right) if you want to look a 2 or 3 of them. It's a town between a "mountain" and a bay, and the bay view was touted by a guide book as one of the "best views in the world." Umm. I have officially lost all faith in the guide books. It was nice, but maybe would be better on a sunny summer day. Bantry was nice and apparently it has a very nice house to visit, but it was closed.

Assessing our options once in Bantry, we decided to head out toward Mizen Head, the southwesternmost point in Ireland. On the way to Mizen Head, we stopped in a pull-out to take some pictures of the coastline and stumbled upon this:This is an "Altar Wedge Tomb" from the end of the Stone Age (around 3000-2000BC). Recent excavations found human bone from 2000BC. If we had been looking for it, we never would have found it, but, *surprise*, here was something neat!

After more pictures (Shutterfly) we got back into the car to defrost (a warmish day around 50 degrees F but windy and we felt very, very, cold) and headed down toward Mizen Head.

Here is a pic of the path down to the tip of this little finger of land that extends out into the ocean. See those crashing waves? Windy day. There is a little tourist center (with gift shop, of course) and a cafe. You get to pay Euro6.50 to walk across the bridge and see the end of Mizen Head where they are reconstructing a light house or something.

Here's the bridge you cross on the path to the tip (looking back up from the end).
Crazy view from the bridge.
Sometimes it is difficult to take pictures that really capture your surroundings in an instant. In today's case, you needed a full 360-degree panorama to see all the crazy, craggy stuff. When we were in China, you needed some sort of micro-shot because everything was so small and packed together. I guess one day we will get better at preserving all the memories.

If you are interesting in more pictures from today, look at my Shutterfly site. My new haircut looks oh-so-great in the crazy wind.