The Full Oirish

... but done very well. 
Today we nipped over the border to Kerry. It was a fabulous day and Himself wanted to do a large walk and I wanted to do two smaller ones so we started from here - Molly Gallivans. The family have developed a traditional farmstead, complete with farm and animals - and a tea room, and Irish jerseys, and yes Leprechauns, but on the whole it is done well. This is just a spare house, and that's a turf pile in front of it, but the main farm has the café etc but also some rooms furnished as they would be 100 years ago. See extra for the kitchen window. The view across to the mountains is also pretty incredible. Himself was walking around there somewhere.

I went off in a different direction in search of a Mass Rock and well. This involved a drive down some very tiny roads and just as I was starting to get a bit panicky as the vegetation in the centre of the road was getting more luxuriant, a layby appeared helpfully labelled Mass Rock. Half an hours walk through new forestry, over a small bridge (admiring the original stepping stones) then up steps cut into the rock towards a colossal cliff. There lay a huge rock, deposited by glaciers, a smaller rock underneath once being used as the altar. Next to it another mighty rock with a bullaun (basin) carved out of it, full of incredibly cold water and once used as a font/holy well and said to contain miraculous cures. A horrible story associated with the place involved the capture and beheading of a priest who was conducting Mass. A priest's head was worth £45 back in Cork and whoever had done the deed took the head to the city only to find that Catholic emancipation had just been granted.