The Watch

We left Listowel in the afternoon. An amazing drive out of sunlight and up into the foggy (smoke)Ring of Kerry, where we visited two very different ring forts. The first, the oldest I think, was a fairly small structure with an inner stone-walled circle which we assumed was a fanciful modern addition as it took up so much space. Apparently though this was very much part of the original building, a cattle-pen. I was stiff and creaky but climbed inside stared straight upwards, a 21st century tent-pole beholding the drizzly lowering sky, probably far less clued in than the original inhabitants.



The second structure, above, is far more leaborate. Stéig is an iron age fort build around 400 AD. It's very solid and quite beautiful. [Quote from Wiki]: It was built without mortar, using undressed stones. Vertical joints visible in the wall show that gaps were left during the building of the wall to allow access and were filled in later. There is also a tapered, lintelled doorway. Inside is an elaborate network of stairways leading to terraces and corbelled cells in the wall reached by passages. [end quote]. Tourists were already patrolling the walls, as we did, though there are signs telling us not to. But the temptation to climb the sound steps and stand where iron-age watchmen walked is hard to resist.