The next day I had to backtrack, as in my jetlaggy state (just
the kind of state you want to be driving a car in on foreign soil), I’d missed
seeing Blarney Castle, one of my bucket-list items. I’ve wanted to kiss the
Blarney Stone since I was very small and one of my teachers, told me about this
amazing stone which was supposed to confer the gift of the gab on anyone who
kissed it. I was glad I made the effort to make the trip back (only a couple of
hours, but every minute counts on a trip like this!), as Blarney Castle was a
fantastically castle-y castle – complete with dungeons which were cramped and
dark and full of drips and splashes, a murder hole over the doorway (a place to
pour boiling liquids on unwanted visitors – OG, I think we need to consider
installing one of these), and narrow spiral staircases.
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| A proper castle. I was particularly taken with the garde-robes, which would have made standing in this particular location rather unpleasant a few centuries ago. I think I read too many books about life in medieval castles growing up ... |
I couldn’t help
thinking of CL, who works with me at Rahamim, and all the stairs he has to
climb when we have an event downstairs – at Blarney Castle, the kitchen was on
the 5th floor, and the staircases got narrower and more spirally the
higher one got. Ironically the kitchen was built with a fireplace large enough
to roast a cow (literally) – how they would have got the thing into the kitchen
given the stairs, I don’t know, but the medieval equivalent of a crane must
have been involved.
I was actually so nervous about kissing the stone (I’d heard
that you had to hang backwards over a high ledge to do it) that I raced up and got
it over with as soon as I got to the castle, so I didn’t have to worry about
it. This turned out to be a good move, as I pretty much walked up and did it without
any more audience than the two members of staff on hand to stop you falling
over the ledge as you try to kiss the stone. Given the awkwardness involved,
even this was more than sufficient witness.
You see, sure enough, you have to lie on
your back on a stone ledge over the battlements on the 5th storey of
the castle. You then need to push most of your body weight over the ledge (they
have installed some metal bars for you to hold on to as you do it) and nearly
hang upside-down in order to reach the stone. #MostAwkwardKissEver. You then
have to clamber back up out of this position, which given my lack of gymnastics
training or inherent ability, was a rather graceless performance.
I was very relieved to find that they had actually blocked
off the gap underneath the stone, so all you see now when you are hanging off
the ledge is a stone block a couple of feet below – elsewhere around the
castle, in the same location you would see the ground, a frighteningly long way
off.
It’s not often mentioned, but Blarney Castle is happily
situated on a good bit of land, filled with trees and lakes, a fern garden, “witches’
garden”, generous stables (now used as a café – the loose boxes of the stables now
each house a table and chairs where you can eat your lunch), and acres of
daffodils. Ireland is lousy with the things, they seem to grow everywhere –
roundabouts, roadside banks, and parklands like the ones at Blarney.
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| Daffodils - little snippets of sunshine. |