Day Five: Sea Walks and Great Houses
- Erin Nixon
- Apr 28
- 4 min read
I had set an alarm for 6:30 but decided to lay about for a little while before getting moving, because I wasn’t in a hurry this morning. I got ready, packed up, and checked out in no time. On the road to Dungarvan and Ardmore!
Now, I checked the hours last night and apparently Dungarvan Castle was abruptly closed on the 28th (dunno why) but that meant that the short tour is going to have to be very short and only on the outside, which is fine. I got on the road and found a place to park and walk up to see the castle.
Definitely got the medieval coast castle thing going for it.
Next I headed to Ardmore, which I had been looking forward to. With my slippy ankles I’ve been rehabbing a re-injured ankle for a couple of weeks now (the same one I sprained on this trip last year…), and luckily it was feeling just fine (because otherwise Dublin would have gone very badly). But mostly I wanted to be able to do the Ardmore Cliff Walk, which is a loop that runs around the coast near the town. I found a parking spot near the beach and packed a few things and started off up the hill.
You see that big rock? That’s apparently a miraculous rock with healing properties that floated (???) to shore with St. Declan’s bell after he forgot it. I’m having trouble coming up with the analogy behind this one…without really sounding blasphemous.
The weather was perfect. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and there was a little bit of a sea breeze. Couldn’t have asked for a better time. The cliff walk is also known as St. Declan’s walk because there is a church ruin with a well that is said to have water with curative properties. There are tons of wild plant life and flowers along the trail and I had fun trying to find as many different ones as I could.
And the view was spectacular. The walk is a 4 km/2.5 mile loop that runs along the coast and then comes back through town. Parking is meant to be problematic so I parked the car at the beach and walked up to the trail head, so I ended down at the beach as well.
After the hike I decided to go walk on the beach and write a bit on the rocks. It’s the exact sort of beach I like. Mostly cool sand and pretty rocks (clearly traumatized from the burning white sand of Gulf Shores).
Next, I plotted out my next stop, Fota House. Now, if you’ve never travelled with me you might not know about my obsession with walking through “great houses”. Dad was subjected to more than one on our tour of Scotland 😉 I love just getting to appreciate all the little details of a house or castle that was really lived in. I hadn’t really thought I’d spend much time at Fota and had been kicking around taking a (significant) detour down to Kinsale to look at a fort, after briefly looking at the house. But I am so glad I abandoned that idea. Fota House was amazing.
If I win the lottery, I’m building a house exactly like this.
It survived the Troubles in the 20s thanks to the townspeople that vouched for the owners as being good people. Otherwise the house likely would have been torched in the republican, anti-British fervor. So this unbelievable house is intact and now preserved by the Irish government permanently
I got there around 11:30 and got my ticket. The guided tour only runs at 12 pm and 2 pm so I got a ticket for that, and then got a scone and coke at the cafe and plopped down in the grass to enjoy the sunshine and my scone. And then I quickly realized I was expected to pay the tax.
The scone tax.
Scones are naturally crumbly (and delicious) so it wasn’t hard to manage a few chunks for the resident wardens.
I joined the tour guide along with a few folks Belfast and Canada and we spent the next 1.5 hours going through the entire house. It was extraordinarily preserved and restored and the guide had so many stories about the family and how the house was built. I loved it.
There are entirely too many pictures of plaster and wallpaper to include here, but suffice to say I have become obsessed with recreating this wallpaper/design somewhere in my house. I also want to learn to plaster now. For related reasons.
I unfortunately possess the bizarre collection of skills and weirdness required to recreate this wallpaper and put it on my walls. This is for sure happening in the next few months…along with a version with thistles that will go in my bedroom.
After the house, it was closer to 2 pm than I was expecting and I decided I’d rather just spend the rest of the day in Cobh looking at shops and relaxing than drive another 1.5 hour round trip to look at a fort and Kinsale. It’s my vacation, after all.
Cobh (pronounced: Cove) still uses its original Gaelic spelling unlike nearby Cork (Corcaigh), and it’s an adorable seaside town that reminded me of Oban in Scotland and Lyme Regis in the UK, except it’s filled with these fantastic multicolored buildings and houses. It was also the last port of call for the Titanic before it sank 😬.
I located where I’m staying at the Commodore Hotel, and got pulled into their parking lot and checked-in to possibly the cutest room on this trip so far.
Yep, the view is spectacular. The internet…less so.
Having dropped everything off, I went to explore the town! As soon as I stepped out the door I smelled fish and chips and went in search of them. I finally found them at a little bar down the road and they were…awful. I don’t know why I keep ordering fish and chips. 90% of the time they’re just disappointing (the fish and chips in Australia were good though…). I decided to retire to my lovely hotel room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and write for a bit.
After I crashed for a while (and my phone recharged) I had to go downstairs to find enough internet to upload photos. The WiFi is terrible but at least there are comfy chairs?
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