County Sligo

I rsvp’ed myself for a 5-day tour through Northwestern and Northern Ireland. There were too many things I wanted to see and I wasn’t comfortable driving in the passenger seat, so I opted for a guided tour instead. My tour guide, Dave, is great. He is extremely knowledgeable on Irish culture, history, and lore. Highly entertaining. We started touring County Sligo and the countryside is gorgeous. Very scenic. We hiked up a mountain to see a 5-1/2 thousand year-old tomb, which we were able to crawl inside and then stand in to investigate. It was small on the inside, but there were three small rooms that had been built to house the graves (bones and ashes), very cool. The wind was insane on Monday as seen in the picture by the direction of my hair. It was so strong you could lean forward and not fall on your face. We hiked up a second mountain to see Queen Maeve’s tomb (Celtic warrior queen), and I thought I might die. The wind picked up just before we got to the top and it was difficult to walk, as the wind kept wanting to blow us back down the mountain. To add to the difficulty level, it’s been snowy, sleeting, and hailing off and on for a couple days, so the ground was damp and muddy, making conditions quite slippery. Lore has it that when you climb up to Queen Maeve’s Tomb, you are supposed to bring a rock from the climb and place it on top of her tomb, if you don’t, it’s bad luck or something. So, I climbed to the very top, and try as I might to place my rock in the rock pile, but I couldn’t it. The minute I got to the top, the wind gusts picked up, you had to crouch close to the ground to prevent yourself from being knocked over. On top of that, it had started to hail, and with the wind, it felt as though somebody was stabbing myface over and over again. And did I mention how cold it was, the wind chill (which was trying to knock me over), had to definitely be below freezing. After two attempts to get my rock on the pile, I just threw it in the direction of the pile and hoped it wouldn’t get flung back via the wind and knock me out. I couldn’t feel my fingers or toes until we got to the hotel (about an hour later) and I swear the heat in my room was cranked up to 90 all night just so I could get rid of the chill. Ugh. Beautiful and worth it (because I didn’t die), but I would highly suggest visiting later in the season.

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