Friday, June 15, 2018. Bunratty Castle and Ballyvaughan.

John put our luggage in the car at 9:38 a.m. and we headed for Adare and then for Bunratty Castle. Adare is rated as the prettiest village in Ireland, with thatched roofs and so on, but it was raining so we just stopped at the Heritage Centre for directions to Bunratty Castle and moved on. Deidre had recommended Bunratty Castle and Folk Village and it did not disappoint us. Just north of Limerick, the castle was built in 1460 and has been well preserved. It has been fully restored with 15^th-17^th century furnishings. The Bunratty Folk Park provides examples of 19^th-century housing for various types of Irish people.

We paid our entrance fee and went to P. McNamara’s Pub for lunch. The pub was full and service was slow. Abby ordered the ham and cheddar sandwich and a bowl of pureed vegetable soup. I had the Irish smoked salmon plate, which consisted of two slices of smoked salmon and a lettuce salad with tomatoes and cucumber.

We headed down hill toward the castle. We passed a couple of curraghs, traditional Irish row boats, turned upside-down to keep them from filling with rain. We stopped at the Loop Head Farm House, the house of a traditional fishing/farming family from West Clare. The family made its living by both fishing and farming, as well as by selling peat cut from the bog. The thatched roof was covered with a grid of ropes to keep it in place during Atlantic gales. The house was made of mortared stone that had been thickly whitewashed. Most of the houses in the folk park were actual buildings that had been moved to the site, which made them even more interesting.

Next was the Cashen fisherman’s house, a two-roomed home of a North Kerry fisherman. The wooden timbers and some of the furniture in this house had been made from wood salvaged from shipwrecks or from flotsam and jetsam. The floor was of rammed earth. Smuggling by fishermen brought in wine and brandy, which were preferred over beer and whiskey among the North Kerry fishermen’s families.

We marched into the castle, where our first stop was the main guard room, the main living room of the common soldiers and retainers. It is the room now used for medieval banquets. There were several elaborately carved cupboards from the 15^th and 16^th centuries. We climbed up a very narrow, one-way staircase to the Great Hall, the original banquet hall and audience chamber of the Earls of Thomond. The walls were furnished with original tapestries and an oak “dower-cupboard” from 1570. Next door was the kitchen with an enormous fireplace and large turtle shells on the wall that were used as dishes and covers.

We climbed about 20 steps to the Earl’s bedroom, where one of her ladyship’s beaded dresses was laid on the bed. We passed into the North Solar, where the chandelier is a German “leuchterweibchen,” an odd-looking mermaid made of either painted wood or porcelain. Abby went back down to the Great Hall, while I climbed about 40 steps up to the battlements, where there was a nice view of the Ratty River at low tide, with the Shannon estuary in the distance.

We exited the castle and visited the Mountain Farmhouse, a poor farmer’s house of a type found in Limerick and Kerry. Next was the Shannon farmhouse, the first house to be reconstructed in the Folk Park. It originally stood on what is now the main runway of the Shannon airport. We looked into the “Bothan Scoir,” a one-room house of a poor landless laborer who would have worked for a local landlord. Many of these houses and their occupants were lost during the potato famine. The Golden Vale farmhouse was a replica rather than a house moved to the park. This farm would have been about 100 acres with 20 cows, a half-dozen hogs, two horses, a donkey, and many chickens, ducks, turkeys and pigeons. There was quite a contrast between this house and the home of the poor landless laborer.

After leaving the castle and folk park, Deidre had advised us to drive as far as the Kinvarra exit on the motorway, a divided highway, and then approach Gregan’s Castle Hotel near Ballyvaughan from the north, avoiding the dreaded Corkscrew Hill. We would later spend plenty of time on Corkscrew Hill, but with Martina as a driver. Deirdre’s advice was sound, and we arrived at Gregan’s without incident. At the hotel we received a free upgrade to a two-room suite, with a very large bedroom and bathroom and a separate sitting room. Both the bedroom and the sitting room overlooked the Burren, a rocky, glaciated landscape known for its diversity of flora.

We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant beginning at 6:00 p.m. The preparation and presentation of food in the restaurant is amazing; several restaurant awards were posted in the hotel lobby. Dinner started with some snacks, chick liver pate, crispy oysters and smoked salmon with lemon foam on top. The first course was mackerel tartare served in a scallop shell, followed by wild rabbit for me – the best rabbit I have ever had – and crab wrapped in cucumber for Abby. For the main course, I had roast suckling pig while Abby had free-range veal. The food was amazingly good, possibly the best we have ever had.

Dessert was brought to us in front of the Spain-Portugal world cup soccer game, the first half of which we watched with an English couple in the television lounge area associated with our rooms. Abby had a delicious assortment of cheeses, while I had a sweet chocolate-raspberry pave and with a dollop of sorbet. Even more amazingly, Ronaldo, scored a hat trick that left the game with Spain all tied up at 3-3. Our day was almost as good as Ronaldo’s.