County Meath

We spent the entire day Saturday exploring County Meath which is north of Dublin.

I had mentioned that our B&B overlooks the River Boyne. You might have heard of the Battle of the Boyne. This was where William III of England (and of Orange) defeated James II in 1690, who tried to keep the Catholic religion in England. This also started the heavy oppression of the Irish Catholics.

We had breakfast at the B&B with a nice young couple from Toronto. Since we can see Newgrange and Knowth from our bedroom, we decided to start there.

This is a complex of burial mounds that date back past 3000 B.C. They are known as passage tombs because they consist of a huge pile of rock and dirt with a small tunnel (or passage) into the interior where the burial of cremated human remains were deposited. These mounds are huge which the pictures don't reflect.

Knowth contains the largest of the mounds. It has not been excavated and restored completely, so entrance into the passage is limited.

Newgrange has smaller mounds, but is in better condition, so we could enter all the way into the central chamber. It also has cut-away sections so we can see the construction methods.

With both sites, the tunnels are very small and constricted; I was just able to squeeze through. The people who built these were quite sophisticated in engineering, architecture and art. The stones surrounding the mounds and the tunnel walls have carvings which took a lot of imagination and talent. The engineering required to build these tombs out of huge rocks is amazing. And their method of packing in rock, dirt and gravel to keep water out is remarkable; in 5000 years of Irish rain no water has ever seeped in.



These people were also accomplished astronomers. The large mound at Knowth has two tunnels, one east and one west, which illuminate at the solar equinoxes. The Newgrange passage is aligned such that at the winter solstice, the rays of the sun when it first rises illuminates the tunnel all the way into the central chamber. We had a demonstration of this. The New Age folks like to gather here on December 21.




We then drove to Slane for a very nice lunch at The Poet's Rest (or George's Patisserie). Then it was on to Trim. This is a town on the Boyne where a castle was built by the Norman lord Walter De Lacy in the late twelfth century. It started out small and underwent a number of revisions until it was a three story high impregnable fort. The movie Braveheart was filmed here.

The only down side to the drive to Trim was my TomTom GPS. It does not do Ireland well; many of the well know Points of Interest are not recognized and several times it had me going around in circles. GRRRR!.







We finished the day with a very nice dinner at The Waterside in Termonfeckin. We were celebrating our 42nd anniversary so we wanted something special. Tomorrow it's off to explore Dublin.