Cahir Castle

Last weekend was an extremely busy one for me. On Friday there was a postgrad trip to Dublin to see the various archives that we can get access to for research and then Saturday and Sunday were spent on an Archaeology Society trip. I'm mostly going to break my posts down by location, but since Dublin wasn't really a photo trip I'm throwing the couple of photos I took in with the first place we went on the society trip.

Now, the reason that I even took any pictures at all in Dublin is that at the end of our trip we ran into a little snag in the plans. We walked up to the bus to go home and discovered that our driver had locked himself out with the keys left in the ignition and the motor running. This, obviously, caused a bit of panic. The driver started trying to break in one of the windows, but being safety glass, that wasn't going to be happening unless we found him a sledge hammer. So the guys on the trip came up with the idea of hoisting someone up on top of the bus to try to get in through one of the emergency exits on the roof. This would have been great...if the exits didn't latch from the inside. At this point we were all getting a bit desperate...and that's when the driver gave Paul the go-ahead to smash in the glass of the emergency exit. And, mind you, this is in the middle of Dublin city centre, right outside of Trinity College, on a Friday night...meaning there are people everywhere! So, Paul went ahead and smashed in the window, crawled in the exit, and opened the bus for us. Then we had to wait another 10ish minutes for the driver to clean up at least some of the glass from the seats. Good times.

This is a picture of Paul on top of the bus telling us all to get back so that he could smash the window.

So, the biggest problem with smashing in a window is that this is Ireland in late November. That means that it's nearly freezing outside and raining a lot, so we were getting rained on inside the bus for the entire 3 1/2 hr ride back to Cork. Zoe's face pretty much sums up how everyone was feeling for those few hours...

Oh yeah, and did I mention that this particular field trip was 15 HOURS LONG?!? Yup, that's right. We left Cork at 7 am and arrived home at 10 pm. I was absolutely dead by the time I got home, but I couldn't go to bed straight away because I had to start packing for the trip leaving the next morning!

Which brings me to...Cahir Castle!

On Saturday morning we left bright and early around 8:30 (at least it was light out that time!) for the Archaeology Society trip. The first stop of the trip was at Cahir Castle where we were given a tour and then had a bit of time to wander around for ourselves.

That's a canon ball that has been stuck in the wall for a few hundred years.

You can hardly see it, but on the left side of the picture is the original front door to the castle that has been filled in.

This was our tour guide. Don't remember her name anymore though.

No railings in high winds...that was fun.

Teeny tiny staircase!

This is another canon ball, but it is not actually in its original location.

So there you have it, Cahir Castle! Sorry about the lack of commentary on the photos, but for the most part I don't know exactly what I was taking pictures of, simply that it looked cool. 

Next up will be the Rock of Cashel and surrounding sights!