5 July 2005---Flirtations with Pneumonia & Other Adventures
We had another field trip today, and guess what. It rained again! It's that darn Murphy, I just know it.

Today was more of an archaeological field trip to the Boyne Valley. Our first stop was to the Hill of Tara, a place of great mystical and historical power. The rain started in earnest by the time we reached Tara, so most of us weren't able to fully appreciate it. In fact, I think that more than half the group was ready to call it quits at that point right there.

On a clear day, one can supposedly see for miles and miles; something like 16 of the 32 counties of Ireland. The ground is very uneven with mounds and ditches and one must be especially careful of the steaming mounds! Tara has environment lawn mowers, otherwise known as sheep. You can imagine the smell that arose on the bus once we all got back on! :)

Even despite the rain, I'm really glad we went there. One can sense that it was and still is a place of great power, even if we don't fully understand exactly what the full purpose of Tara was to the ancients beyond a burial mound and a place to crown the high kings of Ireland.

Our next stop was to Castle Trim in, well, Trim. I didn't realize this until we got there, but a good portion of Braveheart was filmed there. Good ol' Mel built up alot for the filming, so you can't really recognize it, but being the good guy he is, he left it the way he found it.

The cool thing about Trim is that it is relatively unchanged since it was built by the Normans over 800 years ago, unlike Dublin Castle which has been changed and modified so that it is unrecognizable from its original construction.

A good portion of the original curtain wall, the outer wall surrounding the keep, still stands, as does some of the inner bailey's stone structures. Nestled along the River Boyne, Castle Trim was of huge strategic importance in its day.

Unfortunately the weather was still uncooperative, very much so. Can we say torrential downpour? And of course this happens when we're waiting in the bailey for the tour of the keep. Even though they had split our big group basically in half, there wasn't a whole lot of cover to go around. We did have the opportunity to go onto the roof of Castle Trim, but as the rain gods were being especially generous, I decided that it would be prudent not to risk it, given my accident prone history and all. I had already almost slipped once on the VERY NARROW spiral stairs that led up into the keep.

Lunch was the high point of the day at that point. Warm chicken panini....yum!

After recharging our batteries we headed to the Loughcrew Cairns. This was my favourite stop. It was a bit of a climb to get up thehill, but it was well worth it in my mind. Loughcrew Cairns date back to the neolithic era and maybe even further. The cool thing about Loughcrew is that like some of the other chamber mounds in Ireland, the sun shines into the entrance at certain times of the year, lighting up the interior of the mound. The thing that's different with Loughcrew is that this happens on the equinoxes, whereas the one up in Sligo that is associated with Queen Mebd happens on the Winter Solstice. The ancients were geniuses!

Atop the hill one can see for miles. As the weather finally decided to cooperate for once today, we really could see for miles. The view is spectacular. I only hope that my pictures do it some justice!

We actually got to go inside the one excavated mound and into the first chamber. It was a bit claustrophobic with about eight of us crammed in there, but it was still very interesting. You could see the ancient carvings on the stones and wonder what they meant. One theory about the mounds is that because the ancients held them in such high mystical/spiritual(pre-Christian) regard, that they would have all their important events take place there, even births. Now I didn't have too much trouble getting up that hill, but it's hard for me to picture a nine-month pregnant women in the beginning stages of labor doing it!

Our next and last stop was in Kells to view a couple of the Celtic Cross monuments at the church of St. Columba. I'd have to put this one on the bottom of the list, as we had already seen examples of Celtic Crosses at Glendalough, but it was painful by any means.

Tonight we had one of our special seminars and the guest was Claire Keegan, an Irish writer. She read a couple of short stories and as she read, you could feel yourself being drawn into the story and the world she had created. I'd definitely put her on my list of must-reads!