Lord Bandon's Folly

It's the 4th - it should be a polytunnel shot but only Serpent will notice!! The polytunnel is looking pretty unexciting and today was too gorgeous not to be out and about. The sun was shining, it was warm and clear and no wind. I should have been gardening or doing boring stuff in the house, instead maps, notepads, camera and off into the wild for a spot of research and adventure. I was on my own today as travellersjoy was working and himself is full of cold.
The views were breath-taking - I've spent about half an hour umming and aahing about which image to put up - please biggify as it's such a huge landscape. My alternative was an amazing yellow lichen covered rock in a blue pool! Anyway, this is a view from the ruins of the bardic school looking out across Dunmanus Bay towards the Mizen peninsula. You can see Lord Bandon's Folly or tower- a vanity built by hungry tenants for the local land owner during famine times. The bardic school, now a cluster of ruinous but scenic old stone buildings perched atop impressive cliffs, was apparently once world reknowned - even the king of Spain sent his sons here to learn how to become bards and poets! The bad news is they drowned in the nearby lake. The good news is they were turned into swans and are still there.

I achieved and visited two holy wells, a ring fort, the bardic school, a delapidated farmhouse, and a cillen ( burial ground for the unbaptised, usually infants) . I saw lots of butterflies, wrens, a firecrest, a family of whooper swans (not the Spanish princes they were elsewhere) , mallards, herons,a snipe and one human. There were even violets blooming! The colours were amazing and the exhilaration and wildness impressive. The only bane of fieldwork are yappy dogs and frisky cattle - both too plentiful bold for my liking.