Day Three - Ballinskelligs
When we left the Staigue Fort, it was getting dark, and we realized that we were in need of gas. We stopped at the next small town, but there was nothing open. The petrol stations are small and are open when they are open. And they were not open tonight. We had wanted to stay in Ballinskelligs, but it's a very small town and we weren't sure there would be gas there, even in the morning. So we decided to head instead for a bigger city for the night, Cahirciveen. I was pretty happy with this choice, once we got there. The town of Cahirsiveen was very small, but had all the necessities: a couple of pubs, a couple of B&Bs, a post office, some shops. We found a B&B, O'Sheas, and walked down the road to a pub, McCarthy's Bar. This was a cute little place run by a couple, Con and Rosaline McCarthy. I know this because they wrote it on a piece of paper and gave it to Thierry, for what reason we do not know. They also wrote the “real” name of the bar, which is something like An Bonnan Bui. There is some connection between their bar and a book that was written by the name of... McCarthy's Bar. They actually had a copy behind the bar, and I read a bit of it and it was very funny. I've been meaning to get it and read it.
We sat at the bar and had a couple of delicious pints of Guinness while waiting for our food. When we asked about the Skellig islands, where we were desperate to go, Con McCarthy informed us that there are no boats that go there in the winter, but he brought out a lovely picture book from behind the bar, with many pictures of the peninsulas, including the Skelligs. The food took a while (they were busy with a huge party of very loud Americans) but it was delicious. Almost every time we ate dinner, we ate in a pub and had some kind of delicious, fresh and well-prepared seafood, accompanied by not-so-interesting assorted vegetables (some combination of broccoli, carrots, cauliflower) and plain, bland, boiled potatoes. Luckily the fish was invariably yummy and sizable. This night's meal was exactly that, and we left quite happy and sleepy and went back to the B&B, where we found it a tad too cold in the room for our taste, with no way to remedy this (manual adjustments on in-room heating devices are clearly just for show). This was to be true of all our remaining nights in Ireland.
The shower the next morning was similarly the beginning of a puzzling and sometimes frustrating pattern. It appeared to be some sort of “electric” shower. There was a gadget to adjust the heat and pressure (up to a point, “heat” and “pressure” being relative terms in Ireland) and switching said gadget on caused the bathroom lights to dim and produced a loud generator noise. This made us a tad bit nervous, as connections between water and electricity, we are told in America, are to be avoided. But we managed to shower without mishap and get down to breakfast, which was exactly as I've already described. While we were eating, the hostess brought in Thierry's guidebook, and said something that sounded like “blah, blah, left, blah, found, blah, blah, brought this morning...” This was the West, and understanding the natives here required our full attention. It was likewise hard for them to understand us, of course. Anyway, we puzzled this out and came to the conclusion that we'd left it at the pub, and that one of the McCarthy's had brought it around this morning. It was like we were in Mayberry, Ireland.
When we went out to our car, it had frosted in the night. We were just getting out our credit cards to scrape the light layer of ice, when the B&B host came out with a kettle of hot water, to pour on our windows. How cute is that? I loved that.
So, we left Cahirciveen and headed back down to Ballinskellig. This part of the Ring was austere and beautiful and moody and windy. We found a gorgeous old monastic ruin where the monks had settled when they left Skellig island in the 13th Century.
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