Blarney Castle & Cork 🇮🇪

Back on the road again this time to see the Blarney Castle (yes, the one with the Blarney Stone) and Cork.

The Blarney Castle & Gardens

The current Blarney Castle dates back to about 1446 with some indications that the previous fortification dates back to about 1200. As we are learning on our journey, many of the Irish castles have been involved in multiple regional disputes and changed ownership over the years whether through conquest, royal decree or sold by their families. I guess a lot can happen in over 800 years. It originally contained a fairly large walled town that included gardens and various buildings that supported the castle.

Of course, we had to do the obligatory pic in the pillory. I'm sure this will be the first of many.

The castle was amazing. It had several stand out features for the time. The Earl of the castle had a bed chamber with a window that stood out from the fortress giving him a view with large windows. I guess that was something quite special for the time.

Garderobe

Do you know what a Garderobe is? I didn't. Well if you don't, it's the equivalent of a communal restroom. Apparently, that's one way they know this was a stately castle as it could accommodate three people sitting side by side doing their business. Sure makes me appreciate flush toilets.

Did you happen to notice the strange slots on the side of the castle pic below? Well, guess where the waste went? I suspect this side of the castle wasn't that pleasant (apparently, this is "downwind").

Up, Up, Up

We worked our way higher and higher up the incredibly steep stairs with narrow steps. We stopped off in the kitchen (Cathy is standing in the fireplace below). Finally we made our way to the top to enjoy the amazing views and marvel at what 11th century people could build with crude tools.

The Blarney Stone

We queued up for our shot at the Blarney Stone. I guess COVID must have freaked us out a bit as the idea of kissing a stone that thousands of people a day kissed just didn't appeal. Yes, they were cleaning it but we just couldn't do it.

Dealing with unwanted guests

My favorite feature was the murder hole. If someone got past the initial gates and into what looked like an ante room, you can lock them in and subject them to all sorts of torture (e.g. sword, pike or boiling liquid - I'll learn later that the medieval castle defenders liked their boiling liquids).

The Gardens and Grounds

The gardens and grounds were extensive and filled with interesting little finds, many which I didn't expect in Ireland.

The Poison Garden

For some reason, the castle has a garden full of poisonous plants. There was also a portion of the garden with carnivorous plants.

The Blarney House

The Jefferies built a large house (I would call this a mansion) in 1874 that overlooks a lake and has extensive and private gardens. Yup, that's Cathy trying to break in. When we were there they were doing some refurbishments to the outside but it still looked pretty impressive.

Cork

Cork and County Cork are supposedly one of the foodie areas of Ireland. We planned a visit to the English market to check out some of the offering assuming this would be like many of the food markets we'd run across in some of the smaller towns in the U.S. We hoped we'd pick up some lunch and enjoy it as well as some of the regional fare (cheese, maybe some beer or wine, etc.). The market, while good, wasn't quite what we thought it would be. It definitely catered to the locals and had more meat, fish and other things that could be bought by locals, brought home and prepared. We did find a place making amazing smelling sausages and pepper rolls so we grabbed one of those only to find there was no seating in the entire market. I was so hungry by that time that I didn't mind eating my sausage & pepper roll over a wine barrel table in an alley next to a bar. We are learning to be flexible. We were hungry enough that we didn't grab a picture of it but it was delicious and certainly different. It looks a bit like this.

We were tired from the long drive the previous day and decided to leave Cork a bit early. It was a relatively big city, with a lot of people and not the same charm as Killarney. We weren't impressed. Maybe we just didn't give it enough time.