DAY 113: The Cliffs of Moher

Hans and Ute were kind enough to contact a tour company that would meet us in Kinvara (a nearby town) and take us around The Burren and The Cliffs of Moher.

The tour company picked us up near a local castle and brought us into Kinvarra. We walked around the cute little fishing village and hit up a small craft fair. The weather didn't look too good as it sprinkled rain on us and we crossed our fingers for sunny skies by the time we reached the cliffs.

Our first stop was at a beautiful abbey. Truthfully, I can't remember the name of it, there are so many stinkin' run down abbeys in this place!! But what was cool about this one was the congregation had paid to have some of the roof rebuilt so it is still used on Christmas and Easter Sunday masses.

We continued on to Poulnabrone Dolmen.

FUN FACT #71: Poulnabrone Dolmen is a portal tomb dating back to the Neolithic Period, probably between 4200 BC and 2900 BC. It is essentially five or six 12 foot slap rocks that are built into the shape of a shelter. During excavations, 22 adult and 6 children were found to have been buried underneath it. It is thought to have been the center for a ceremony or ritual.

This place was actually pretty cool looking. Unfortunately, a few years back, one of the slabs fell off and split. So they don't let people get too close to it anymore. But it was still really pretty to see this structure that is literally thousands of years old standing on top of the limestone floor of The Burren.

After taking our pictures, we went to a buffet restaurant to have some crappy Irish food before continuing onto THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!

When I was a kid, I used to get movies in my Easter Egg basket. Usually, they were movies that my brother and I had never even heard of. The Mask of Zorro, Airplane!, The Naked Gun, and The Three Musketeers just to name a few.  My brother and I were a bit confused why the Easter Bunny would give us such strange movies, but my parents would just say, "The Easter Bunny must have thought you would like them. Watch it and see. Maybe you will!"

Unsurprisingly, the Easter Bunny was always correct in his assumptions. Also unsurprisingly, our parents became just as big of fans of these movies as we did. Coincidence? All of those movies became our favorites on our long car rides to South Carolina. But perhaps what was the biggest hit with my brother and I was The Princess Bride.

Now if you haven't seen this movie, go watch it right now, because it is a serious classic. In any case, when Vizzini, Fezzik, and Inigo Montoya have kidnapped Princess Buttercup, they abscond with her to The Cliffs of Insanity in order to evade a mysterious ship that is following them. The mysterious pirate ends up being Buttercup's long lost love, Wesley, who then climbs up the Cliffs to chase down her kidnappers. Wesley and Inigo then have an awesome sword fight at the top where they "Are not left handed!" and hopefully you know the rest. (Sorry, I just geeked out again...)

But one of my favorite parts of this movie is when they finally arrive at the Cliffs and Vizzini shouts, "The Cliffs of Insanity!! HAHAHA!!!" So when I finally got to go to the Cliffs of Moher, which is what the Cliffs of Insanity scenes are shot at and based upon, I got really excited.

FUN FACT #72: The Cliffs are 390 feet tall at their shortest point, and 702 feet tall at their tallest.

Our prayers were answered and the skies cleared a bit as we arrived at The Cliffs. We were given a couple hours to walk along their edge and take pictures. They were unbelievably beautiful. It was a little bit scary walking around on muddy paths along 700 foot drops, and I know my mom and grandma would not have approved, but I had so much fun running along the top of the cliffs!

When we returned to Kinvara, we grabbed a pint at the local bar while we waited for Ute to pick us up. Our bartender happened to be the owner (and a wee bit drunk) so he gave us our drinks for free! What a nice man. The next day we relaxed on the farm to prepare for another long week of chicken farming.

DAY 108-112: I. Hate. Chickens.

Monday began our first week as chicken farmers!

Ute took us around for our first day to show us the ropes. Their farm has 600 chickens on it, but only 400 of them are egg laying. 100 of them will lay eggs next year and the other 100 Hans and Ute are raising to tell to another farmer for next year as well. So although we do not have to collect eggs from these houses, we do need to feed, water, and clean them every day. So Ute took us around to every house to show us where to climb over the small electric fence used to keep the chickens in. Then we would open each chicken hatch to let the screaming little beasts out. For every house, we had about a gallon of organic barley seed as well as any leftovers from our meals the day before. The chickens would go wild and run around their designated lawns to eat everything before it was gone. In addition to this feed, there was other organic feeders inside each house that needed to be filled every week.

Once we entered the house, we wet about getting the eggs. Now this part is a bit difficult to explain, especially because I forgot to take a picture of it. But the egg nests was this large shelving unit built into the wall. There were about 30 boxes- 5 boxes high,  6 boxes across. There were little gates that the chicken would crawl through to get inside. Once sitting on the woven basket inside, their weight would activate a lever that disallowed any other chickens to enter while the first was laying her egg. In the woven basket floor, there was a hole. The hole was in the center and lowest point of the floor, thereby forcing the egg to roll down the sides of the floor down through the hole. Once through the hole, there was a large wire drawer that extended underneath all 6 boxes across. To collect the eggs, all you had to do was pull out the drawer and collect the eggs from all 6 boxes on that level. The shelf was 5 boxes high meaning there were 5 wire basket drawers of eggs to collect. Every house had a different number of chickens, so the amount of eggs from each house varied.

FUN FACT #70: Chickens will eat their own eggs if you do not remove them from their houses every day. HOW MESSED UP IS THAT?

After collecting the eggs from one house, we would continue to the next and repeat the process taking note of which houses looked like they needed fresh straw on the floor as well as new water.

Once we fed and let out all of the chickens and collected the eggs, we would return the eggs and their baskets to the egg counting house. Lizzy and I would then crank up the radio and set about our task of cleaning every single egg and removing eggs that were warped or cracked. We then would count how many eggs were collected from each house and put them in large egg crates.

Our next job was to separate the eggs. I would load the eggs onto a conveyor belt. The eggs would then be weighed individually by a machine and sorted into extra large, large, medium, small, and extra small. Ute would put the eggs according to weight into individual 12 egg crates. Lizzy would then stamp each egg with a stamper that signified what section of Ireland they came from as well as stamping the box with their expiration date. It was quite the little factory set up!


When this job was finished, Lizzy and I would refill any water dispensers or spread straw throughout the houses. Once or twice a week we had to wheelbarrow 30 pound bags of chicken food to load into the feeder. These jobs could take between 1-3 hours, depending on how much needed to be done. Once these jobs were finished, it was usually around 1:00pm at which point we would go inside and eat lunch and rest until 2:30 and continue working.

Once our work with the chickens was finished for the day, we went out to the two large polytunnels (or greenhouses) on Hans and Ute's property. We did more weeding (which we weren't too excited about, but hey, comes with the territory) which fortunately was not not nearly as bad as at Oliver's. These gardens had actually been maintained in the past 5 years, so there wasn't too much to dig up.

When the sun began to set around 4:30pm, we would round up the chickens. Typically, they would already be inside their houses ready for bed. Occasionally I had to chase a few inside, but that was very rare. We would shut their little chicken hole doors and the main front doors to lock them in for the night to keep them safe from foxes and such. Then our day was over!

DAY 106-107: Traveling to Gort - Hans and Ute's

Our next destination for WWOOFing was Poulataggle Organic Egg farm in County Clare. This was an organic chicken farm located on the West Coast of Ireland in an area called The Burren (pronounced "the burn"). To get there, Oliver dropped us off in Navan. We took a bus from Navan to Dublin, then Dublin to Galway, then Galway to Gort (which was the closest town to Poulataggle). In total, this took us about 6 hours. We were exhausted from all of the traveling and were excited beyond belief to meet Ute at the bus stop in Gort waiting for us.

We drove about 15 minutes from Gort to Ute and her husband Hans' farm in the middle of The Burren. As it was about 6:00pm and pitch dark out, we were unable to see much of the area. When we arrive at their lovely cottage, we were greeted by their adorable black labs Abbey and Gibbs who were named after the NCIS characters. We then met Hans who was excited to meet us and we sat down for dinner.

Hans and Ute were both Germans who had moved to Ireland to start their farm about 25 years before. Hans had rebuilt the cottage almost entirely himself. The kitchen he built Ute was magnificent! And she put it to good use. Her cooking was some of the best I have had since my mother last cooked for me.

Ute then showed us our new digs! Instead of living in a spare and sparse room in a mobile home with Oliver, we now had our own mini apartment. Our own bathroom (with constant hot water...), a mini kitchen, a small living area, and a queen bed in a loft. Lizzy and couldn't have cared less about having to share a bed. We had our own living area! And unlimited wifi! Sweet baby Jesus, this felt like the Ritz Carlton compared to our last location. We fell asleep quickly in our warm comfortable bed that night prepared from some exploring tomorrow.

Sunday morning brought the sun! We immediately set off down the road to explore a bit of The Burren.

FUN FACT #69: The Burren is composed mostly of limestone pavements with criss-crossing cracks throughout. The limestone was created created 350 million years ago when it was part of a tropical sea. The landscape contains fossils of coral and sea urchins because of this. So its a pretty cool landscape.

We walked a bit down the road and looked at the crazy cool rock formations throughout the landscape. We kept walking until we came upon an old monastery, tower, and cemetery. I swear, Ireland has more ruins than any other place I've been. Every time I turn around theres another abbey or church or what have you thats falling down.

Nevertheless, Lizzy and I took pictures because it was such a beautiful day. I could not tell you the name of the this place or if it was at all significant, but I can say it was pretty. We walked back in the pouring rain and relaxed for the rest of the day. Tomorrow is our first day as chicken farmers!

DAYS 101-105: More WWoofing

Can't you see how much fun I'm having!??

After our relaxing weekend, we got back to work in the gardens. Although we had completed weeding one neglected garden, Oliver had 3 more for us to do. FUN FUN FUN!

Lizzy and I started to lose our minds a little by the work and started doing our own renditions of Taylor Swift's Blank Space in Indian accents... Safe to say, we were quite sick of weeding. But not to worry! Because when the weeding was complete, we shoveled out the chicken coop and spread chicken $h!t all over them! EVEN MORE FUN!

Freshly weeded garden. On the left was our next job.

We dug up quite a few potatoes which was unbeliveably exciting at the time. Star peeled them and put them in a shepard's pie for us for dinner which was delicious. We spent most of the week weeding and spreading poop. One day we were able to help Star clean out The Mill a bit which actually ended up being a worse job than the weeding... Beggar's can't be chooser's I guess...

On Friday we went on a long walk to an old abandoned place down the road from Oliver's. It was pretty comical as we climbed over the brick wall only to realize that Jake the Dog could not climb over. So I climbed back and shoved his fat but over the wall before we got seen trespassing on private property and we were off.

Jake running through the cemetary

We found a ridiculously old graveyard and and beautiful road leading up to this old abandoned mansion. We walked around the mansion's gardens and tennis courts and horse stables before finally getting creeped out as it got dark and turned home.

The next day we were off to our next WWOOFing destination! Although Oliver's place had treated us well, we wanted to see a bit more of Ireland. The best way to do this was to work someplace new, so we found another farm on the west coast. We were very ready to get out of our smelly room and to stop weeding and try something different.... like chicken farming!

DAY 99-100: Newgrange

Me in front of Newgrange!

Oliver told us that one of the best things to see near Navan is a place called Newgrange. Apparently, it is one of the oldest man made structures in the world. So Oliver drove us about 40 minutes to the Newgrange land and museum which was located near Drogheda.

FUN FACT #65: Newgrange was built around 3200 BC making it older than both the Pyramids and Stonehenge. The site is essentially a large mound with a retaining wall around it along with large 2 ton rocks with ancient carvings on them. Newgrange is the largest of three such mounds; the other two being called Knowth and Dowth. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

When we arrived, we walked around the museum for a bit until it was our turn to go on the tour. The museum was very interesting as Lizzy and I learned about people's lives at that point in time. When it was our turn to go on the tour, we crossed the Boyne on this huge foot bridge to get to the bus station. The bus took us to the hill that Newgrange rests upon.

FUN FACT #66: It was first discovered in 1605 when a local farmer was attempting to dig up a large mound on his property to use the rocks within. Over the centuries, dirt and vegetation had overgrown Newgrange to make it invisible to people. Newgrange has since been explored by archeologists and historians for many years and is now widely accepted as having been a crypt and/or a religious building. Human bones have been found within.

FUN FACT #67: What makes Newgrange so special is not only how old it is, but its astrological accuracy. There are two entrances to the mound. On the shortest day of the year, December 21st, the Winter Solstice, the sun rises and shined directly through the entrance hole. When it sets, it shines through the rear exit. This was first seen by an archeologist in 1968. Imagine being the guy who first saw that happen!

So Lizzy and I waited and listened to all of this information from the tour guide, along with some information about the artwork on the large megalithic stones in front. We then were led inside! It was a pretty long tunnel that was rather short- I had to duck quite a bit, I can only imagine how crouched Lizzy was...

When we got to the center chamber, lights had been installed for us to see. There were a few side chambers with some more spiral artwork. Above our heads was a huge ceiling that was built upwards by rocks that reminded me a bit of a cone. The tour guide explained that in this building's 5,000 year history the roof had never leaked. So. Cool.

The tour guide then shut off the lights and did a simulation of the Winter Solstice sun with a mechanical light that shone through the window and down the passage to the central chamber. I kind of felt like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark when he uses the sun to shine through Staff of Ra on the miniature display of the city of Tanis to find the Ark of the Covenant. (I know, I'm a dork, leave me alone...)

FUN FACT #68: The rocks used to build Newgrange were not from the area. They were brought to Newgrange from another part of Ireland about 20 kilometers away.  Historians think that the rocks were strapped to the underside of rafts while the tide was out. When the tide returned, the rocks were able to float down the Boyne to the area where Newgrange resides. What the scientists and historians cannot figure out, however, is how the hell they were able to get these 5 ton rocks up to the top of the hill.

Some horsies we saw on our walk!

Cattle Crossing!!

Anyway, we were able to walk around this giant mound of rock and look off it down on the Boyne. Unfortunately, it was a rather cloudy day, but the magnificence of this place was not diminished.

On Sunday, we spent most of the day relaxing at the B&B. We went for a very long walk around the area with Jake the Dog which ended up being incredibly beautiful. On our way home, we were stopped by a cattle crossing the stone bridge in front of the entrance to The Mill. They were all baby cows and so cute!!

DAY 94-98: Our first week of WWOOFing

Our first week of WWOOFing was quite the wakeup call. I mean, we knew this experience wasn't going to be all rainbows and sunshine, but I don't think we were prepared for how tough it would be.

Our first task was to replant raspberry bushes from a small hillside behind the mobile home. First we had to dig about 50 holes in the middle of the lawn by the river. This took us a solid half a day to do 25 holes that were deep enough to accomodate the deep raspberry roots. This sounds relatively straightforward, except we had 3 inches deep of grassroots to pull up before starting to dig. Then underneath this were rocks the size of my head. I swear, multiple times Lizzy and I came across some very old rock walls. Eventually, Lizzy and I split up. I kept digging the hole while she dug and pulled out the bushes from the hill side. All in all, planting these raspberry bushes took us about two days. By the end, we had some serious hand blisters, despite the gardening gloves my mom sent us (Thanks Mom!)

So Monday and Tuesday we planted raspberry bushes, and Wednesday we weeded a garden that looked as if it hadn't been touched in about a year. Let me just say- NOT EASY. While we ripped out this garden, the golden lab Jake continuously barked at us until we threw him rocks to go fetch. What a weird dog. As the ducks and chickens kept creeping closer, we started throwing the rocks in the middle of their flock so Jake would chase them off. All the birds would run away for about an hour until they returned- all except the one eyed goose.

Jake in the our weeded garden!

Lizzy attempting to remove a rock.

The One Eyed Goose. God this thing was creepy. It was huge first of all, it came up to about my waist, and because it only had one eye it would cock its head to one side and looked a bit crazed as it ran around the yard. The One Eyed Goose would follow Oliver wherever he went. From the mobile home to the house, from the house to the car, literally everywhere. And let's just say that because of this, the One Eyed Goose and Jake the Dog were not friends. They consistently got in fights. Lizzy and I always secretly rooted for Jake to put this old bird out of commission, but sadly this never happened.

On Thursday, it was Thanksgiving!!! Oliver was so kind to take us shopping the day before so we could spend all day on Thursday cooking. We made a large Thanksgiving dinner for Oliver and his friend Mary (who also lived on the property), Oliver's daughter Sinead, Star (the B&B manager), and his friend Margarita (who kept escargot snails on the property in a greenhouse) and Margarita's daughter. It was quite the crew at the table and it was an amazing meal. After dinner, I skyped my family briefly and Lizzy and I walked to the only bar for miles. It was pretty funny as we walked into a little Irish pub in the middle of nowhere that only locals went to. We got a few looks, but we enjoyed ourselves and our first Thanksgiving away from home.

Friday was another day of garden weeding- funnnnn. Our backs were killing us so Oliver kindly allowed us to take the rest of the afternoon off. We spent it taking a nice stroll down the road with Jake the Dog.

DAY 93: Bective Abbey and Trim Castle

Bective Abbey

This morning was a Sunday, and although it was our first full day at Oliver's because it was the weekend he allowed us to spend the day exploring!

The first thing we decided to do was to explore Bective Abbey which was directly across the street. Jake, Oliver's yellow lab, accompanied us!

FUN FACT #63: The scenes shot here at Bective Abbey for Braveheart are those of the Princess of Wales walking through the hallway with her French maid as well as the Princess visiting Wallace in prison.

After we ran around the ruins of the Abbey, we returned to the B&B for lunch. Oliver then drove the two of us into the town of Trim to see Trim Castle.

FUN FACT #: Trim Castle was built in the 1100's and was the center of administration for the County of Meath. It changed families a few times and most significantly was occupied by Oliver Cromwell for a brief period in 1649. The Castle has since fallen into disrepair, along with its moat and towers.

FUN FACT #64: Trim Castle was another location used in the shooting of Braveheart! The scenes of William Wallace being tortured are shot in front of the castle. Lizzy and I also saw the window that Longshanks throws his son's lover out of. LOL

View of a Tower inside Trim Castle

So we explored the old castle and the ruins of a monastery and cemetery as well. When we finished, we got hot chocolate and walked around a craft fair at a hotel across the street. Once we had warmed up a bit, we set out to walk home.

It was beginning to get dark when we realized we were a bit far from The Mill, so we decided to try our hand at hitch hiking!

Trim Castle

I know, I know, you shouldn't hitch hike, its dangerous, blah blah blah, but it was getting cold out! So we stuck out our thumbs and wouldn't you know it- A taxi pulled up! We told him we didn't have any money, but we just needed a lift to about 3 miles up the road. So this very nice Irishman let us take his taxi for free! He didn't take us all the way to The Mill because that was a bit out of his way, but he took us as far as he could which was incredibly kind of him. Lizzy accidentally left her Ray Bans in his car, so I suppose he did end up being compensated greatly....

Tomorrow is our first day of WWOOFing!

View from Trim Caslte

Trim Caslte at Sunset

DAY 92: The Deportation Saga- Part 3

The Driveway on the Boyne to the Mill

The Bridge over the Boyne

We "woke up" in the airport and went to check into our flight. Once our bags were checked, we found a nice cafe to eat breakfast and relax until our flight.

Everything went off without a hitch! By noon we were climbing off the plane in Dublin. We held our breath as we presented our letter from Oliver that stated we were staying with him. The Immigration Officer barely looked at us as he stamped us through. SWEET VICTORY!

Oliver told us in an email to take a bus to Navan (the closest town to his B&B) at which point we could borrow someone's phone to contact him to pick us up. We took a beautiful bus ride just a bit north of Dublin and he picked us up in his tiny red Volkswagon.

Oliver was a very nice old man who knew much about Ireland. He was fun to chat with as we drove to his Bed and Breakfast. Oliver's place was a small stone house that was home to his B&B manager, Star, and to guests only. Oliver lived in a mobile home on the property which was where our room was located. Also on the property was a large old wheat mill- one of its rooms had been restored for use, but the rest was rather derelict. The plan, Star told us, was to renovate the entire mill to be used as an even larger B&B. The whole property was located right next to the Boyne River.

This is the B&B

FUN FACT #61: When Ptolemy first mapped Ireland in the 2nd century, it included the Boyne. That's probably because it is 70 miles long, and was used by the Celts, Vikings, and everyone after them. The Battle of the Boyne in 1690 during the Williamite (Jacobite) War is one of the most important battles in Irish History. This battle was fought in an effort to return Catholic James II to the throne in favor of William of Orange. The Catholic Irish lost, and James returned in exile to Italy, and from this battle forward British rule was solidified in Ireland until the 20th century. James II's son would eventually try the same thing in Scotland with the same results, but that's the story for another time...

When Lizzy and I arrived we were overcome by the unbelievable beauty of the area. The B&B is literally right on the river with a small stone bridge and an old falling down Abbey across the street.

FUN FACT #62: Bective Abbey was built in 1147, but has since fallen into disrepair. It was, however, used to film the 1995 film "Braveheart". In fact, most of Braveheart was actually shot in Ireland, and not Scotland. Why? That's a good question...

The River Boyne and Bective Abbey behind it

Following our disinfection and complete scrub down of our living quarters (which looked like they hadn't been inhabited in quite some time) we unpacked and got used to our new digs.

 That night we showered in what was quite possibly the worst shower of my life. 5 seconds of freezing water + 5 seconds of warm water + 5 seconds of scalding water = WORST SHOWER IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. Fortunately Star informed us afterwards that we were allowed to use her shower in the main house for the rest of our stay which made us extremely happy. We fell asleep with springs poking into our backs, but hey- we made it!