PS Doolin

Buses. I forgot to mention the buses - the huge, top-heavy tourist buses. Like the trucks, these behemoths also bully and barrel their way down the secondary country roads here. I've also seen the occasional cyclist or exercise walker at imminent risk of becoming road kill. I felt, myself, as if I were facing execution, either by
truck, bus, or other car; or, if not that, by Avis upon the return of their battered vehicle. But that's all behind me now. Right?

In the aftermath of my harrowing day on the road, I didn't do justice to Newgrange. I've been drawn to Newgrange since first reading about it twenty-five years ago. Thirty miles north of Dublin, in County Meath, Newgrange is a large grassy mound constructed on a high hill overlooking the meandering and peaceful Boyne River, a 5,000 year-old sacred mound of carefully constructed stone whose neolithic spiritual function is speculated to have been as a passage tomb. Newgrange is older than its cousin in England, Stonehenge, and even older than the Pyramids in Egypt. The stone chamber inside the soft grassy mound is so perfectly designed that not a drop of water has entered the chamber in all these fifty centuries - and these are stones fitted together without mortar. I made a point to arrive as early as I could get there with the intention of missing the tour buses. I did even better than I thought. I was the only one there for the first shuttle to the site. In fact, the young Irish man operating the shuttles softly pleaded with me to wait an hour for the next bus when there would be more people. I almost folded and then remembered my ambitious plan for the rest of the day. I respectfully said it was okay with me that I be the single person on the tour. Several minutes later, a Dutch couple arrived, so then there were only three of us. As close to a private tour of Newgrange as one can get. Our guide took us into the chamber. As directed by her, I placed my cheek on the chamber floor and looked toward the opening through which the sun enters the chamber for seventeen minutes on winter solstice. The narrow stone corridor into the chamber is shaped in an "S." One can't imagine how the sun could enter the chamber, at any time of year. But here was a perfect opening, only able to be seen by the human eye from a particular spot on the chamber bottom.

It was after Newgrange that I got lost, but I've already covered all of that. On my twisted way to Doolin, I drove through the towns of Trim, Athlone, Ballinasloe, Lisdoonvarna, and then Kinvara, Burren, and Ballyvaughan on the southern side of Galway Bay.

Doolin surprised me: Remote, windswept, on the edge of the Atlantic, with a wild feel about it but with green rolling hills on which grazed horses and cattle. In County Clare, population 200. Pubs known for their traditional Irish music. I stayed at Frank Maloney's Doonmacfelim House and had a great breakfast. (Breakfast has become my main meal since I've been in Ireland.) I didn't meet Frank until the morning. "Are you Frank Maloney?" I said. "Is it good news or bad news?" he fired back with a grin.