Ireland (Part 3): James Bond 007 ventures into County Clare

We thought that learning to drive an economy manual rental car on the left side of the road in a foreign country while shifting gears with the left hand during rush hour in Dublin without street signs, a detailed road map, or a GPS unit after not having slept in 2 days was a challenge.  But that first day seemed like a cake walk compared to the third day.   Day three felt like we were living inside of a James Bond film.

Our first stop that day was my favorite destination of the entire trip.  It provided the type of scenery I had only seen in movies and during some European travels during a summer study abroad experience 21 years ago.  We drove to the coast to hike the Cliffs of Moher.  Were it not for the pesky sea gnats that swarmed around us up until we reached the furthest cliff, it would have been a perfectly romantic and glorious way to vacation in Ireland.  I'm not complaining, though.  Cheesy as it was, having musicians play live Celtic music on harps and recorders certainly added that extra touch of Irish ambiance to the hike.

 The underground "strip malls" where souvenirs were sold made me laugh.  It was almost a foreshadowing of where we would be living next.  Our new town of residence has extremely strict ordinances regarding retail store facings to keep the town looking quaint and sophisticated.  The Lowe's Home Improvement store close to our lot where we are building doesn't look like a big box at all.  Each department has it's own entrance with stylish store fronts and awnings to make that big box home improvement store look like a series of boutiques.

 

At one end of the cliffs stands O'Brien's Tower which marks the highest point of the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland.  Wikipedia describes the history of this tower better than I could:

"The tower was built on the cliffs in 1835 by local landlord Sir Cornellius O'Brien as an observation tower for the hundreds of Victorian tourists that frequented the cliffs at the time. Another version tells of O'Brien building the tower in order to impress women he was courting. On a clear day the view can extend as far as Loop Head at the southern tip of Clare and beyond to the mountains of Kerry."

After hiking the cliffs, my dear husband had his heart set on seeing Aillwee Cave.  So, we put the address into his phone after finally getting some Ireland maps to download to its GPS, and started driving and driving some more...in circles.  GPS was not much help.  Eventually we ended up on dirt, one-lane roads in the middle of nowhere.  By "nowhere", I mean no street signs, no houses, no gas stations, no people, not even a cow to point us in the right direction.  We were hopelessly lost driving in what seemed to be a gigantic bush maze with no landmarks and no way of knowing where we were enough to even use the sun for navigation.   All this driving was at a gasoline cost of  $15/gallon, and we wondered if we would eventually run out of gas.  After several hours, we finally made our way back to civilization again, but we were much too far from the caves by that point to try again.

We came across yet another castle, so we paid big bucks to tour it, expecting something akin to what we had seen the day before, not realizing at the time that Bunratty Castle was the most complete castle restoration project in Ireland. This castle's entrance fee was a rip-off, but after getting directions to those caves my husband was determined to explore, we wrote off the entrance fees as the price for driving directions.

But those directions were given in the Irish manner, not the detailed instructions we would expect to receive in America.  Our first instruction was to drive "a ways out of town and take the next left".  What exactly is "a ways" and when do you consider yourself "out of town" in towns that are so very rural?  So we traveled what we considered to be "a ways" and took a left.  Then we second guessed ourselves after a few miles and turned back.  Then we tried that road again.

As I mentioned in the first part of this series on Ireland, driving is very dangerous in Ireland with wrecks being a common occurrence.  That's why we had to pay an additional collision waver over and above the cost of the rental car and car insurance and and over the price of the rental car itself just to rent the car.   So, once we were headed in the right direction, we got stuck in a traffic jam due to an auto collision.  Roads are rarely ever more than one or two lanes wide in Ireland, so that one wreck stopped traffic for hours.  We eventually turned around and tried to discover back roads to those illusive caves.  Back roads are very narrow - about as wide as a family sedan.  So, if traffic is coming in the opposite direction, whoever has the smallest car (that would be us) would have to drive backwards along those very wooded, winding, one-land roads with no shoulder until a driveway or intersection came in sight for a turn-off.  Once the larger car passed, then the smaller car would try again.  This process of having to back up for a mile or so occurred several times during our wanderings through those back roads.

Then we got behind a big bus, which was a godsend for at least two reasons.  First, the bus was larger and could pave the way for us.  Secondly, the bus appeared to be carrying tourists, so even if the bus was not headed toward Aillwee Cave, surely it was headed somewhere interesting.  So, we decided to follow the bus, and the bus led us to Aillwee Cave.  We arrived five minutes before the entrance gates closed for the evening.

The grounds for the cave also include a Bird of Prey Center, so while waiting for the next cave tour to begin, we listened in on the end of a demonstration with a peregrine falcon named Lewis, and then we toured the center, learning about all different types of prey birds.

Considering how much time, effort, sweat, toil, tears, blood, risk, and stress went into getting to the caves, it was certain to be a disappointment.  What is worth all that anyway?  The entrance to the cave offered amazing views, though. As one who much prefers wide open spaces to cramped, dark, damp caves, I was content to just hang out at the entrance enjoying the landscape.

My former submariner husband, however, was eager to get inside that cave.   The first thing we saw when we came in were some bear bones followed by a pit that had been used for bear hibernation.  Then we got our fill of stalagmites and stalactites, and I really wished the kids could have been with us since they enjoyed their rock study so much last spring.  That over-exposed cone shaped thing in the middle of my scrapbook page below is a column formed when stalagmites and stalactites meet.

Aillwee Cave is famous for having the largest stalactite in the northern hemisphere.  It was impressive to behold.  But I must confess that what impressed me most in that cave was what happened after they turned off the lights (as they always do in cave tours to show how pitch black dark it is inside).  My predictable, rarely romantic, geeky (in a good way) guy leaned over and stole a kiss in the dark.  I was so startled by this smooth move that I zoned out for the rest of the tour.  It was our anniversary after all, and I still get warm fuzzies with any display of affection from him.