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| King John’s Castle, Limerick, Ireland |
To many Americans, Ireland is the magical land of our ancestors, a green paradise of leprechauns and rainbows, but I’m here to warn potential visitors: Don’t be fooled by the emerald expanse, winter weather in Ireland is fierce. Think liquid ice that seeps into your bones all the while your brain is still processing the survival of so much healthy turf.
But biting wind and my chattering teeth aside, I am really enjoying County Clare. Far from Dublin’s city lights, County Clare is on the southwest coast of Ireland, and in this area, the major tourist traps are of a more natural order. County Clare is home to the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, an unusual karst region replete with rare flora and fauna, the somewhat less natural monuments of Bunratty Castle and Village, less than a stone’s throw away from the famous Galway Bay. Because I have an interest in seeing all these things, but no rental car, I decide to get up early, skip my beloved Irish breakfast (included with my hotel stay) and hop a dreaded all-day bus tour from my hotel in Limerick.
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| Cottage at Bunratty Village |
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| Bunratty Castle |
Around 8 a.m., a gaggle of fellow tourists and yours truly disembark at Bunratty Village and Castle. I am still a little groggy without my morning grog and plate of black sausage, eggs, beans, fried tomatoes and brown bread. As he ushers us into the dark grey stone castle, our slender and bird-like 60-something bus driver, excitedly relates in very Irish, very musical tones how Bunratty Castle, or Caisleán Bhun Raithe, means Castle at the Bottom of the Ratty River in Gaelic. Inside the castle, our Irish driver is relieved of his temporary guide duties by a young Romanian girl dressed in a floor-length red cloak
and a blue period dress whose accented English is interesting and would be especially charming on a trip to Transylvania or Bucharest, but is quite the let-down in Ireland, where I really enjoy the local lilt.
and a blue period dress whose accented English is interesting and would be especially charming on a trip to Transylvania or Bucharest, but is quite the let-down in Ireland, where I really enjoy the local lilt.
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| Mermaid Chandelier in Bunratty Castle |
The castle is sparsely furnished and dark inside, and as the guide drones on, I reflect on my childhood dreams of living in a castle, and how unpleasant it would be to live in this particular castle back in the day. Surely there are other castles where I could play out my queen-bee fantasies more comfortably. After a long half hour of explanations about 14th century castle life and its unpleasantries, we are finally shooed up too many flights of stairs to Bunratty Castle’s real attraction: The view from the top of the river and surrounding lands.
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| Garden at Bunratty Village |
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| Cottage at Bunratty Village |
Down the stairs and out the Castle gates, it’s time to tour Bunratty Village.
The village looks like something that fell out of a richly illustrated storybook, with its tiny thatched roof cottages filled with antique furnishings and the sharp, unusual smell of peat fires, surrounded by row gardens and stone walls. After I spend a few very enjoyable minutes chasing around some chickens and a very grouchy peacock with my camera (because you know, the chickens are so different in Ireland) it’s time to get back on the big gray tour bus.
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| Peat and Wood Fire in a cottage at Bunratty Village |
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| Chickens at Bunratty Village |
Next stop, an early lunch on the way to the Cliffs of Moher. The driver drops us off in front of a crowded Irish pub where we’re welcome to have some lunch if we can get a server’s attention in the dim and crowded din in the 45 minutes we’ve been allotted to dine and drink before the bus takes off. I’m one of the lucky ones, and me and my elbows accompanied by my “oops, pardon me’s” get me to a table in the back where I order some kind of hearty stew (mutton, I think?) to warm my hands and fill my stomach. Before I know it, my plate is empty, wiped clean with brown soda bread, the last crumbs washed down with a pint of Guinness and I’m fighting my way back out into the cold and frosty air.
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| The Cliffs of Moher |
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| View from the Cliffs of Mohen |
On the bright side, the bus is only a few steps way and is as warm and toasty as my brown soda bread. The driver peeks out the door, makes a lilting last call to any stragglers and off we go to see the Cliffs. Called Aillte an Mhothair in Irish, literally the Cliffs of Ruin, once upon a time they were featured in my very favorite childhood movie, “The Princess Bride,” and since I don’t have to scale their heights with a blond peasant girl engaged to an evil prince and a vengeful Spaniard hanging from my waist like Andre the
Giant in the movie, I’m excited to see them. Rising up to 702 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, the cliffs are massive hunks of rock that occupy over 5 miles of Irish coastline. To get to a point where I can see beyond their staggering heights, since I am approaching them via land, not via sea, I must climb the steep path from the visitor area to the actual cliffs. While I can’t get as close to the edge as I might like due to prohibitive safety barriers, the view is impressive. What appear to be solid walls of rock dropping straight into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean apparently provide habitats that support nearly 30 species of birds, none of which seem to want to come out into the cold to make themselves known.
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| Visitor Path at Cliffs of Moher |
| On a clear day, they say you can see Galway Bay and the Aran Islands in the distance, but neither the day nor my eyesight are clear enough, and I can’t see either. Fortunately, the last leg of my bus trip includes Galway Bay, so I’ll get to see it up close and personal, or at least as up close and personal as you can see something as big as a bay. |
On the way to Galway Bay we stop at a place known as the Burren, Irish Bhoireann, a stony place.
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| The Burren |
The Burren is something called a karst region and it looks like someone turned the land inside out, and brought the layer of underlying rocks to the surface, kind of like a person with their muscle tissue on the outside, the limestone rocks heavily veined from weather and wind. But even this stark alien landscape has its green spots and as our driver tells us, it is home to many rare plants not found anywhere else in Ireland, as well as the occasional billy-goat gruff, which I manage to glimpse from the bus, but not to capture on film.
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| Midwesterner Abroad (and freezing!) and the Burren |
Night is approaching it seems, even faster than the big bus speeds toward Galway, and when we arrive, day has come and gone, taking any lingering sunlight with it. As I don’t have night vision goggles on my person, and the bay isn’t particularly illuminated, I take the driver’s advice and don’t take the frigid walk down to the bay. It seems most of the tourists on my bus trip have opted for the two-day excursion and are staying over night, leaving me and a couple of American study-abroad students to ride back toward Limerick with our bus driver, who is eager to get home to dinner with his wife.
In no time at all, the bus doors are creaking open and I’m off to my room for a vending machine dinner to tide me over until my hotel’s Irish breakfast begins at 8 a.m. Brown soda bread, here I come. To fend off any brown soda bread cravings while not in Ireland, this easy recipe should do the trick.
Necessary ingredients:
- 4 cups whole-wheat flour
- 1 cup bread flour
- 1/3 cup rolled oats
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 and 1/4 cups buttermilk
- 1 egg.
- First, preheat your oven to 425 degrees, and lightly grease two baking sheets with butter or cooking spray or cover them with greased baking paper
- Then, in a large bowl, with your hands mix your dry ingredients: Whole-wheat flour, bread flour, rolled oats, baking soda and salt.
- Spend a few minutes mixing the ingredients so the dough will have lots of air bubbles mixed in.
- Gradually incorporate the buttermilk.
- You should have sofa and fairly gooey dough.
- Knead it carefully and divide it into smaller loaves, between three and five should be about right. For authentically shaped loaves, make them long and rounded with flat bottoms and mark the top of each loaf with an “X.”
- Gently place loaves on your baking sheets and cook them until they are a golden brown color. If your oven is reliable this should take between half an hour and 45 minutes, depending on the size of your loaves.
- If you’re feeling creative, some easy variations on Brown Soda Bread might include mixing in chopped nuts, seeds and dried fruits, but if you ask me, it’s hard to beat fresh Brown Soda Bread and butter with a steaming cup of tea and cream.
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