Richard – a friend from college (engineering and climber) came down the next morning, and together we went off to do St. Kevins Traverse. Glendalough was a monastic settlement founded by St. Kevin back aaages ago – 8th Century ish. or the 12th – anyway a good while ago.

There’s a hole carved into the cliff face on the upper lake (Glendalough means Glen of the two lakes) which is called St. Kevins Bed. There’s a fun (tricky in places) traverse you can do to get to it. It’s a good idea to be roped up for some of it (not needed, but no harm either) These next two pics are of Mhairi and I in St. Kevins Bed, and Richy at the entrance (quite the view)

Then we did a walk up and around an spinc (means pointed hill in Irish). I reckon it’s one of the nicest short walks around.

Then it was back up to Dublin to get ready for my wee party in the Russell Court. I was really impressed actually with their service – brought down a stereo I could plug my mp3 player into ‘n everyfink. It was heaps of fun seeing so many friends together again. Really does make leaving the country harder..

The next day we went for a little look around Dublin. Firstly off to my old college – Trinity – to see the book of Kells and the long room (old library upstairs). It is an interesting fact (well, to me anyway), that George Lucas used the long room as a basis for the Hall of the Jedi (or whatever it’s called) in the Star Wars films. They illegally used the picture – and I’m not sure what sort of compensation the college got from it.

Anyway, excellent exhibition (and free in – thanks to Jennifer!). A little? known perk is that students can bring in up to two guests for free, something I’ve made use of over the years! (not that I would ever use it as an aid to selling t-shirts to US tourists during freshers week.. never)

The pic on the left is called the Campanisle. There are some excellent accounts in the TCD Climbing Club history section (put together by Declan) of a bowler hat mysteriously appearing at the top of it one day. The college declined the clubs offer to take it down (not that any member had put it up of course) and had to pay a steeplejack a few pounds to get it down. I never helped Shane Glackin or Robert Cuff to climb up it when it was covered in scaffolding before the trinity ball a few years ago.

The building on the right is called the Graduates Memorial Building – whose roof went on fire while I was in college. And that really had nothing to do with me!

Then to the Guinness brewery for a tour – after the Chester Beatty Library. In the brewery I got my camera knicked. Which was a real shame – though a good excuse to buy a new one. Amazing that a tuk-tuk driver in Laos would give it back, but leaving it down for 40 secs in Dublin gets it knicked….

That evening we drove down to Glendalough and stayed the night in the Irish Mountaineering Club hut down there. A couple of pints by the fire in the hotel was a great way to round off the day.

Mhairi’s ryanair air flight was an hour delayed, but sure that’s ok. Picked her up at the airport and we drove North (thanks Matt for the loan of the car) to newgrange which is in the county of Meath. It’s an old (5000 years in fact) passage grave.

If you look closely at the entrance picture you will see that there are two entrances – one for people to go through and the other (called the roof box) allows the sun to shine into the central chamber on the winter solstice. It is one of the two UNESCO sites in the Republic of Ireland (the giants causeway is one too).

There also used to be a stone henge (enclosure) around newgrange too, and some of the large stones you see around the edge (especially at the entrance) are highly decorated. It’s a great place and I really recommend getting there if you are touring around Ireland.

After Newgrange it was off to see Melifont Abbey – a cistercian abbey close by. It was one of the first (if not the first) abbey founded in Ireland. It was attacked countless times, and even used by the English forces in the battle of the Boyne. It has since fallen into disrepair and even used for housing pigs!

Then it was onto Monasterboice – again an ancient monastic site, and home to some very ancient (10th Century) High Crosses – pictured below.

Then back to town, out to dinner with the family – and after Mhairi and I went on to have a pint at The Cobblestone pub. More excellent trad music (played every day in the pub). Just wish I’d known about the place earlier!

Lazy start to the year.. but I promise I don’t intend that to be my new years resolution.. No, I have plans to actually be lots more productive this year!

Anyway, Geocaching was the order of the day. Basically you go to a website and get the GPS co-ordinates of a site. Buried at the site is a box with trinkets in it (and a log book) and you take something out, and put something in.. sort of an international treasure hunt. Some of the sites are just interesting – and this one – the Drombeg Stone Circle was one of them. Not sure how old it is, but a good bit BC anyway that’s for sure.

The watery pit picture is of a Fulacht Fiadh – which is the Irish word for a cooking site. 318L of water can be boiled in 18 mins by chucking hot stones into the water.

At one of the other sites is a tribute to Henry Ford – as this is where he came from. I also put a pic of an incredibly noisey donkey up – not that you can see how noisey he is.

So great to catch up with these great people! Lorna and Mark now living in a house with a turret in Dundee.. so maybe see them over there – thanks to Morgan for organising everything, and looking forward to picking Graham and Myra up from ChCh airport in July!

Mum and Dad were recently on Morning Ireland (National radio program) talking about Uganda. The section on Dublin couple set-up university in Uganda half way down the page at http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0110/morningireland.html is the link. It plays with Real Player which you may need to download.

Also…

1)Andrew Quin’s weblog a friend from college – writes really well (I need lessons!) click on the little UK flag on top right – unless you can read Swedish.

2)My friend Eliza is Ms. August in a climbing calendar!

3)There’s a scarily cool website called www.archive.org which keeps a record at regular intervals of the whole WWW. So you can see the BBC website from aaages ago. I’ve put up a link to my own website from when I first put it up.. the DHTML only works with Internet Explorer I’m afraid.