Time Travel in Ireland

Wow, it's been an awfully long time since I posted, so I've got a fair bit to catch up on. What first...?

Well, last month we had a week or so in Ireland, mostly to visit family, but with a couple of days to do some exploring and touristing. Places visited included Cahir Castle (a nice castle on a little island in the river), the Rock of Cashel (spectacular ruined cathedral and other buildings on a rocky hill), and the Irish National Heritage Park (a collection of replica buildings representing 9000 years of history).

The Heritage Park was fascinating, and quite light on people, which was both a blessing and a curse. It was one of those places that would be quite at home with a bunch of reenactors wandering about, grinding corn or lathing wood into chair legs. Anyway, the guide leaflet was enough to help us get around with a break for snacks half way, and each group of buildings had a very good introductory sign, explaining the background of the exhibits.

Some of the areas looked fantastic (like the monastery, complete with a painted high cross), but a good many parts were heavily overgrown and looked like more funding was required to get things really looking great. One of these areas in particular was the crannog, a man-made island settlement in use, apparently, until about 400 years ago. The houses were looking very much the worse for wear, walls collapsing under the weight of their roofs. We were just musing on how unfortunate it was that the upkeep of these places wasn't being seen to when <3 spotted a sign we had missed on the way in, which explained things. Apparently the crannog was being deliberately abandoned so that archaeologists could study the decay. The plan was to leave it for a few years, then burn the remains down, doing more excavation, and then reconstructing it anew. It turns out that the way the walls collapsed offered an explanation for how excavated "real" houses of this type showed fireplaces that moved around: the inhabitants would have moved the fire to keep it beneath the shifting smokehole.

As far as Miss B was concerned, the best bit (apart from the ice cream she had) was the viking boatyard which included, critically, a small longboat that she was able to climb onto and run around on, ordering her parents to be the captain and set sail. No, I don't know quite how that works either.