Another light

... later than was wise, because this morning I was up at 6 to drive our ferrycatchers to the ferryport - along the coast road that was so thick with traffic last night that we had to abandon it. But this morning:

'Mum, Look at that sunrise.'
'Yeah, beautiful.'
'Stop and take a photo.'
'No, I don't do sunrises.'
'Stop. It's really beautiful.'
'No, I'm taking you to the ferry.'
'We've got plenty of time. Stop.'

You can see who won.


I'd forgotten to check the route I'd planned ages ago for B's and my trip west which meant that we did a serendipitous detour via Birr Castle, home since 1620 of the Parsons family (Earls of Rosse). Like any wealthy and privileged family they indulged their own interests but unusually this family combined intelligence and inquisitiveness with a fascination for science. 

In extras is the telescope the third earl built in the grounds which, when completed in 1845, was the largest telescope on earth, capable of capturing more light and seeing further into space than any previous telescope. He discovered that galaxies are spiral in form and the M.51 whirlpool galaxy is commemorated in the garden with a scale spiral of lime trees which visitors can walk around. His wife was a photographer and her 1852 darkroom is believed to be the oldest surviving example in the world. Their son was especially interested in the moon and invented a machine which measured its heat, proved to be accurate during the 1969 moon landing.

The grounds contain a 500-year-old oak tree, the tallest box 'hedge' (trees) in the world and a meadow which has been left to its own devices for 500 years, flowering, seeding and regenerating. The family are now planting a grove of redwoods that they expect to last 1,000 years.

We hadn't left ourselves enough time for the castle, nor did we leave ourselves enough time for Galway City where we grabbed pizza slices to eat as we wandered its lively evening streets. So our last bit of driving, through narrow winding roads to 'Nigel and Ann's' remote airbnb by the sea south of the Cliffs of Moher, was in the dark, no streetlights. When we knocked on a door to ask the way we turned out to be only five houses wrong but temporary confusion ensued as the house we knocked at turned out to contain another "Nigel and Ann' and neither household knew the names of the other.

Sometimes the world is strange.