Graiguenamanagh - 20 April 2023

20 April 2023 - Thomastown, Jerpoint Abbey & Kell’s Priory - Graiguenamanagh for the night.

Up and out walking at 07.30 again, beautiful sunny weather - as the tourist information man on the first day said - some form of galactic phenomena!

Saw the squirrel in the same place as yesterday, and our binoculars confirmed it was a lovely fluffy red squirrel. We saw lots of birds, but I’m less convinced we know what we’re looking at! According to my Merlin app, along with chaffinch, thrush, sparrow, blue tit, wren, robin - we’ve also heard chiffchaffs and blackcaps.

So, Tintin gets to drive on the motorways, me driving today on the little wiggly roads!

First stop was Thomastown about 30 minutes away. In some ways it was an experiment to find out whether Rick Steves knows what he’s writing about! This town isn’t in his book, but John gave us a leaflet yesterday, so we went.

Not a lot to say! Lovely seeing the Jackdaws creating their nest near the Guinness sign of the pub - there were sticks and straw all along the street!

Lovely views of the River Nore from the old bridge. On the list to see was Grennan Mill. It’s now private property, sells ladies clothes. I ventured in, whilst Tintin loitered outside. Beautiful clothes, really bright and colourful - but not really practical for Dave travelling. Whilst I was chatting to Val, Tintin was outside chatting to her husband, Bob. It’s fair to say that we’re not going to get to the Wild Atlantic Way anytime soon at this rate of chatting! They even agreed to pose for a photo - thank you!

St Mary’s Church is now a private residence - not sure how I’d feel about having graves in my garden!

The Church of Assumption looked very similar to St Mary’s Cathedral yesterday! Lovely views from up higher.

A fairly healthy salad lunch in Dave, then off again. Only a few minutes drive to Jerpoint Abbey. My new best pal, Rick Steves had said if you only visit one abbey in Ireland, make it this one - so we did. Tintin was less keen! €10 admission for us both. It is a 12th century Cistercian Abbey. The monks usually selected a remote wooded area in a valley with a good water supply and close to a quarry. In 1228 there were 36 monks and 50 lay brothers who held 20,000 acres of land. It was dissolved due to Henry VIII’s marriage problems, his subsequent creation of the Protestant Church of England, and his eventual dissolution of the Catholic monasteries.

Walls were knocked down and roofs torn off to make them uninhabitable, and their lands forfeited to the king, who sold them off and enriched his treasury!

As expected, not a lot remains - but there are some fine carvings on the side of tombs and on the columns of the cloister arcade - see pictures rather than me rambling on…

From there about 30 minute drive to Kell’s Priory. Allegedly the complex is over 3 acres and is the largest monastic site in Europe.

Unfortunately we couldn’t park in the carpark, as it had a height barrier, so we abandoned Dave on the road where parents were collecting school children!

It was nice just to wander around (avoiding the sheep droppings!) and see the sheep with their lambs, lots of Jackdaws again - and no one else there! It was free to enter. Dean shouldn’t have had a fly, but he did!

We’re in need of water after 6 showers and general washing up - however, service places for mohos are few and far between. So, we drove for nearly an hour, on fairly narrow and sometimes bumpy roads to a paid Aire in Graiguenamangh - €12 for the night. Looks like we have to pay to dump our rubbish too, even if it’s recyclable.

We stopped for diesel - now we have a 90 litre tank - probably the most we’ve ever spent at once - €118 for 75 litres @ €1.579/L!

It’s a beautiful spot, quiet, green, well maintained and in front of us are views and sounds of the weir. Our sat nav had taken us to the wrong entrance, but a brusque but happy man booked us in, after telling us we should have booked online first, but walked back with us to open the gate to let us in.

Rum is going down well tonight - but I need to decide what to cook. We then have to decide whether to visit the Rock of Cashel tomorrow - or actually get towards our mission of starting on The Wild Atlantic Way!