Cregg Castle 1

Click on Pictures in text for larger image

15 May, Sunday

Inishmore is such a peaceful place to be and the early morning light is idyllic. The fact that the winds were calm and the sun was shining just added to that. After breakfast we wandered around outside and then walked down to the water. Our flight back was scheduled for noonish , so we had plenty of time. The cost of our mini bus tour and drop off included pick up to return us to the airport the next morning.

It was a warm morning so the walk was quite comfortable and we came across some hungry looking ponies in a field and they seemed all too willing to eat anything that we could rip out of the ground and serve to them. We were filled with the pride of rescuing them from starvation by snapping up weeds from the just out of reach and they all bolted for the biggest handful they could find. We sure did think we were a bunch of country kids.

The fields lead right down to the rocky coast and Mike decided to play on the rocks and pick some up to bring home because clearly his duffle bag needed more weight from things that provided less shape. I contend that he should have been collecting whiskey. Time slips by easily on Inishmore and just walking the coast for a day would have been enough to fill my time, but a mini bus would soon be waiting to whisk us off to the airport. Our morning driver was not quite as ebullient as Peader who was apparently sleeping in after a day of driving, a night of music making and subsequent partying. The boarding of the plane was less formal on this day because we had already been weighed in. Clearly they hadn’t seen the size of the meal we had eaten but perhaps they realized that any body weight gain would have been counter balanced by a loss of weight in Euros, so we should be ok. Lynn was given a short opportunity to take the wheel and after a few rolls, loop the loops and a water landing she handed the controls back and we were taken safely ashore to the mainland.

We had plenty of time to get to Cregg Castle (http://www.creggcastle.com/) but everyone was pretty interested in getting there so we headed back in that direction. We called and got directions because I had never approached from West of Galway so I wouldn’t be coming up the N18. Basically, turn right just past Regan’s Pub was all that we needed which of course led me to think, “Perhaps we should stop at the pub”. We did and enjoyed a fine pint and some lively conversation with the bartender. Oddly, Bob didn’t get lost.

My merry band of thieves arrived at the castle and was not disappointed. This is a neat old place built in 1648 and like most Irish castles, has had many owners. The current owners purchased the castle in 1972 and it has been a working farm ever since. Its doors were opened to guests in 1990. We had a room on the top floor which looked out over the fields in two directions. I tried, with very little luck, to convince my friends that the place was haunted and even resorted to making scratching noises on the doors late at night. Oh well, I guess it will have to wait until Halloween.

A trip to the Dunnes store was planned so that we could pick up copious amounts of liquor, cheese, crackers, water, bread and liquor (did I mention liquor). We wanted to have something on hand to eat and drink while listening to music. We decided to have a wee snack of the grub and apparently the other arriving guests thought it was a service provided by the castle. They joined right in and took some up to their rooms. They were from the States.

We had dinner at whatever the name of that pub is at the corner when you get into Claregalway. I’ve eaten there twice and still can’t remember the name. The food is fine and the pints are good. We would find out that we would see very little else but Smithwicks and Guinness as we headed north. The concert was scheduled to begin at 9:30 or so and Anne Marie had invited an accordion player to join her. As it turned out, Anne Marie doesn’t join in much and she flits around the castle quite a bit doing other things. Pat, her husband, was out of town and the accordion player was adequate enough but as interested in talking as playing and when Anne Marie would sit down for a tune, they would babble on about people we don’t know and make jokes about them and chuckle knowingly while we stared blankly but pretended to be amused.

Anne Marie is apparently a bit of a musical purist so when they finally picked up to play a tune, the accordion player wanted to play a polka and she would have nothing to do with that. She also went on and on about musicians who read music instead of knowing it all from memory. She told a tale of how Patrick was disgusted after hearing the Budapest String Quartet play a concert that they used music which clearly meant that they didn’t know it. This being the second time I had heard the story, I was starting to believe that it was Anne Marie who was disgusted. Of course, she plays the bodhran which requires even less memory, in fact, almost none. You know what the drummer got on his IQ test ….. drool. But I digress. Felicity would spend the next 24 hours or so plotting a painful execution for Anne Marie that would in someway involve ridicule over not being able to read a simple piece of printed music, a children’s song perhaps. There would, of course, also be thumb screws, water torture, rabid bats and rats, and black pudding. I attempted to medicate Felicity so she could sleep through the night without homicidal thoughts.

More Pictures

For easier viewing of picture pages, press F11 on your PF keys. Picture page will open in a separate window.