Days 6–8: Kilkenny and Cobh
Monday saw us check out of Heather House and trek south to Kilkenny to see David and Mary in their new house, now they are safely transplanted back in Ireland. Kilkenny was a flying visit, but we saw the castle and the cathedral and the ninety pubs in two blocks of the main street! The Cathedral was C of I, but beautifully restored. The historical irony of Irish church buildings is that the oldest and most architecturally valuable aren’t Catholic (as Dublin’s two cathedrals demonstrate); but we were to find a remarkable exception in Cobh.
Mary and David’s place was lovely and they are in good form now that they are recovering from the PTSD caused by the move and quarantine. They have had to reinvent themselves in Ireland, but they look just the same to us! We were there for about four hours, just chatting. David has been working on the Cormack family tree (and the Laffins) and finding some fairly horrendous stuff around the time of the potato famine.
We arrived in Cobh after a couple of hours drive through green country, with glimpses of the sea and finally the huge spread of Cork Harbour, the second largest in the world (after Sydney). Our B and B turned out to be in an almost private square which had been built for British army officers. The only entry was through a narrow land between the houses, apparently for their security. The owners had done a brilliant renovation to make it modern and comfortable.
In the morning, we were out and about to do a constitutional around the waterfront before a cliff walk in the afternoon.
Cobh is everything Titanic, except where it is Lusitania. This has always been the last point of contact for ships heading for America, and starting when it was Queenstown, and continuing to 1974, over a million Irish people left for Ellis Island — except for the ones who went down with the Titanic. The Lusitania survivors landed here, and the cruise terminal had huge murals of both ships. Very encouraging.
The surprise was the cathedral (St Colman’s) which I thought might be a Victorian folly, but turned out to be one of Pugin Junior’s gems. Finished in 1918, it’s Ireland’s tallest, and the materials and design are high quality — very arts and crafts. It sits above the harbour and the colourful houses around the cove and makes a pretty amazing statement, as does its carillon.
The Ballycotton Cliff walk turned out to be a highlight of an already great day.
It was sunny, the sea was calm, and all the Jameson’s executives seem to have decided to build or renovate at various points along the walk.
A nice little ten-km workout.
