Cashel, Ireland

Photo highlights, top to bottom:



Cashel church

Tombstone for woman who died at age 103

Paris, looking at vistas, including cemetery off in distance

Small blue pond, in front of the Twelve Bens (Na Beanna Beola, mountains of Connemara)

Coastal island

Old abandoned house, with tree shadow

Various old rock structures



Paris and I went for a hike around Cashel today. This is a small village not far from Carna. We parked in the local church parking lot. The church is 109 years old. We walked up in the hills behind the church. Interestingly, the cemetery is a half a mile up the hill from the church, in the middle of nowhere. We saw a grave for someone that lived to age 103.


The views from up the hill were incredible, up and down the coast, and inland. I should mention that the scenery is somewhat brown, not always the green that one expects when picturing Ireland. I hear that the hills change with the seasons, and this is true. Most of the trees have lost their leaves, and the ferns are brown. It was a bright sunny, albeit cool autumn day. We walked amongst the usual contingents of cows and sheep. We are becoming used to walking amongst the herds and flocks. Sometimes they startle us and sometimes vice verse. We could see the twelve Bens, an inland mountain range, and the coast, from Carna northward. On our descent, we found an abandoned house, complete with basic furnishings, slowly falling apart. We could only wonder who used to live there, out in the country, and what had happened to them.



Back home, we saw another great sunset. Amazingly, at this time of the year, we can see the sunrise to the southwest, over the sea, as well as the sunset, to the northeast, also over the sea!