Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

Blarney Castle

March 3rd, 2007 at 01:20pm James

When we saw that ex Tea Party frontman Jeff Martin was playing some solo acoustic shows in Ireland we saw the perfect opportunity for a weekend away.

The gigs were in County Cork in Ireland’s south-east , however flights in to Shannon in the west were much cheaper. So we hired a car to make the 150km journey across the Emerald Isle, taking in the beautiful countryside along the way.

Fortunately, our route took us straight past the village of Blarney, home of Blarney Castle and its famous Blarney Stone.

The castle itself was very different to any that we’d seen before – perched on top of a hill and rising straight up without any surrounding walls.

However the castle wasn’t the only attraction – the rock gardens in the castle grounds were beautiful and so we spent some time wandering around them, enjoying the sunshine.

Apparently if you walk backwards up the Wishing Steps here with your eyes closed your wish will come true. Given how rugged and slippery the steps were, walking up them backwards with your eyes closed might leave you wishing for an ambulance…

Eventually it was time to enter the castle itself. As mentioned earlier Blarney is quite tall and we weren’t looking forward to the stairs. There was talk that perhaps a lift had been installed but deep down we knew it wasn’t going to happen.

The climb actually turned out being quite bearable, with a few interesting stops along the way to see what used to be bedrooms, guardrooms and kitchens. We even stood in the "murder hole", a space where troops could throw rocks and hot oil down on invaders if the castle doors were breached.

Finally we got to the top and stood on the battlements.

On such a clear, sunny day the view from the top was great. Of course one of the main reasons to be up there was to see the Blarney Stone itself…

…and kiss it of course!

So now, according to Francis Sylvester Mahony, we’ll never again find ourselves tongue-tied:

There is a stone that whoever kisses,

All in all a lovely way to spend one of the first afternoons of Spring!

Entry Filed under: Europe