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From Saints to Castles - Just too much in one day

 How many experiences can we have in one day without our heads exploding!

Today we tried to find out!

We left our accommodation at Clara Lodge and made our way south.

We decided that we did not want to travel hours to destinations this time around, we wanted to enjoy places at a more relaxed pace. 

The first stop was a Kildare where we wanted to visit Brigid's Well and St Brigid's Church. St Brigid. We had been here before (for me third time) and I have a real connection to her energy. Brigid was not always a Saint, nor was she Catholic, but she was, let's say appropriated as the Irish would not stop celebrating her.


The Church was beautiful but also a little sad that it seemed to be St Brigid in name but little on the inside celebrated her. I did not see an eternal flame, which is part of her legend and it seemed to be all about standard Catholic imagery. I was disappointed.

At the Well, now that was a different story. This place is ALL ABOUT Brigid. It is just beautiful. Brigid is adored here. She is seen as a healer and people come to have their mind, body and spirits healed.

There is a clootie tree there too - you can just see it in the picture above, just behind the railings on the bridge over the water. It was in full bloom yesterday and covered in items left by people who wanted to ask Brigid for her healing energy. Ribbons mostly, but also socks and material, shoe laces etc anything that could be attached to the tree and left. This is also a VERY traditional pagan thing to do!

Next we went forest bathing going into another forest on our way to our destination for the night.



Yet again, I was at a loss for words to be walking in a place so beautiful. We spent probably an hour here and also found an abandoned building covered and overgrown. It was an old barn which had belonged to the owner of the estate. Next we arrived at our accommodation for the night, Kinnity Castle which is a popular and amazing place where you can stay the night and the management have really worked out how to keep this place thriving and making money.

 Anne purchased one night's accommodation and we were put into the Abbey wing. On entering we found ourselves looing at the largest bed we had ever seen under a canopy! It was a unique room with lots of odd things that surprised us. By the way , the bed was very comfortable but when we put the jug on to boil water we had to put the jug on the floor as the lead from the jug would not reach the table. The toilet looked like a throne (photo tomorrow) and there was a giant mirror in the bath room.

We had to wedge the tissue box in the window as the sash was broken and the window would not stay up. Little things, yes, but when you are paying top dollar for your accommodation you do expect a little more. But, we with all of these places, you are paying for the joy of staying in a hotel.


Forgot to mention that we surprised our beautiful friend Danielle at her work place and gave her big hugs and then we all met up again in the evening at our first investigation site for this trip Charleville Castle.



This place was huge and very, very impressive.

At the moment Charlesville is only open for tours and special events and we only had a very small area of this huge place to explore. We had with us member of Puka Paranormal and our guide was Samantha who has spent 11 years volunteering her time and energy to keep the place open for visitors and paranormal investigators.

And the place has been used for movie sets, documentaries and loads of paranormal shows.

It was really nice to hear that many of the production crews who used rooms for their movies donated money to help renovate areas of the castle because the idea of upkeep and costs to keep the doors open in places such at this is unbelievable. 

We had between 8pm and 12 midnight to head into 6 spaces within the building and the time flew. We did hear footsteps in many locations during the night, we had knocking in rooms where we were investigating and we had a small piece of glass appear in a place where it was not possible for that glass to be.

Lots of people felt touches and that we were being observed. We did record the whole session, so we will be keen to see if we get any vices come up on the recordings.

We eventually landed in bed at about 2am exhausted.


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