Gypsies & Stone Circles

Today Michelle and I took quite an adventure to a little teeny town called Ross Carbery. We thought we needed to go to the town before Ross Carbery, called Clonakilty, but we asked the 'Traffic Warden' when we got off the bus and he shuffled us back onto the bus and sent us on our way to the next town. We got off the bus and waved goodbye to our cheerful chauffeur (AKA bus driver). We walked to the town square, and thank god, there was a sign post with a map. We took pictures of the map in sections because as it turns out, there are no pocket maps of the town. Anywhere. So we had to guide ourselves using tiny digital camera images of the map. We walked along a nice little one lane road until we got to our first standing stone.

Lovely lane

This is Sheela on the first standing stone.

She is accompanying us on our adventures.

After we spooked a pheasant in the grass, we continued our hike along the road until we came upon a jolly old fella' named Thomas. He gave us a rundown of this cool mansion that is next to his property and told us how to jump the electric fences that surround his property.

Coppingers Court

After we finished cruising around here, we kept a walkin - heading for Drombeg to the stone circle (which I don't actually have any pictures of - stand by, I'll get them from Michelle). By this time, our little legs were getting tired and we hoped we would find someone there to give us a lift back to town - or at least part of the way. Luck be with us, we found a lovely gal named Jen. She nibbled on a snack with us while we sat next to the stone circle and gave us a lift a good part of the way back to town.

Sign post in Irish & English

Ruins of an ancient house at Drombeg

After a tea break in the pub, we set off in the opposite direction for another round of standing stones and circles. We stopped several people to check that we were on the right path to the stones, and nobody knew what we were talking about. Most people told us that nothing like that existed around these parts (which is baloney - there are lots and lots in that neck of the woods). We're pretty sure that everybody in the whole town was talking about us and assumed we were gypsies by the end of the day, despite our lack of flowing skirts and jangling beads and bells. We finally just trusted our gut and headed out. We were totally right and we found an amazing stone circle in plain sight that looked like nobody had been to in years. It was incredible. There is something completely unexplainable about the sacredness of the stone circles. There is just a feeling you get when you stand in the middle and spin a full 360 degrees, looking at each stone and the beautiful backdrop of the Irish countryside and sea.

The lunchtime pub

Irish countryside with the sea in the background

Bohonagh Stone Circle

A black sheep