Kinsale

Kinsale is a harbor immediately south of Cork City. The site has been inhabited continuously for thousands of years and provided an important port for the Vikings and the Normans. It is the closest port in Ireland to Europe, so it has always held a strategic military value. At one time it was the main port for Ireland, but in the past 200 years it has diminished in value because of the shallow waters and the commercial traffic has moved to Cobh. It now serves fishing and recreational sailing interests.

On Thursday, we drove to Kinsale, first stopping off at Charles Fort. The clear skies clouded up as we approached the coast and it started to drizzle by the time we arrived. The fort was constructed in 1681 to protect the valuable harbor, but it was vulnerable to attack from the land side since it was visible from surrounding hilltops. After the Battle of the Boyne, the war between James II and William III came to Cork and Kinsale in 1690 and the troops of the Duke of Marlborough took the fort from the Jacobites.

Between 1690 and 1921, the fort was a British garrison and training facility. In 1923, during Ireland’s civil war, the Republicans burned the fort to keep it from being used by the Free State troops; since then it has been unused and has fallen into disrepair. The tour through the fort was very interesting and the exhibits informative. A lot of effort has been spent to educate the public on how the troops lived and what their family life (if you can call it that) was like. The fort is on a promontory that juts into the harbor; while this was good for defense, the wet and windy conditions must have made life in unheated barracks miserable.

The town of Kinsale is charming, full of shops, restaurants and pubs; it is reminiscent of Sausalito (like Cobh and Dingle) but nicer. A lot of the towns in Ireland have gone the tourist serving route. Most of the streets are two-way and a large number of them are one lane (or two lanes with parking blocking one). These narrow lanes come together at odd angles and are lined with small shops along with the tourists walking all over the place so driving in Kinsale is quite an experience.

We had lunch at the Fishy Fishy café; in spite of the awful name, the meal was excellent. The waiter commented on the fine weather saying that it was “a typical Irish summer day”. After strolling around the town and stopping at an Internet café to check email, we drove back to Mitchelstown. In the evening we watched the movie Michael Collins with Liam Neeson which covered the 1916 rising through the civil war.