Two old relics head off to see more ruins

Another glorious day in Ireland and today the sun shone through the clouds to give us a perfect day for travel.

We started off with a full Irish breakfast, but I stopped at the black pudding and had to hand that over to Anne.

We posted some mail and had another coffee scones down in the town centre and at about midday we headed off for some more site seeing.

The first stop was at Lackeen Tower House.

There is a significant amount of folklore connected to the site. It is said that it is now the home to a pooka, a fairy shape-shifter from Irish mythology. The legend goes that some old hags were stealing from a dead body when an O’Kennedy came upon them.

They were defended by the pooka which was captured by O’Kennedy.

It was taken to Lackeen castle where O’Kennedy’s servants begged their master to let it go or else they would be cursed. After promising to never hurt any member of the O’Kennedy family, the pooka was released.

There is a local tradition which states that the pooka can still be seen roaming around the castle to this day. I have read several different versions of this story, and it can be found in many books of folklore.

This was an awesome place to wander through and explore. There were plenty of cows and calves in the meadows surrounding the Tower as it now sits on a farmer's property. We did manage to catch the farmer and ask his permission to walk through his property to get to the Tower.

The whole thing was quite open and we could wander through to our hearts content. If the Tower was in Australia we would never be allowed to venture in without it being made safe with ropes and ladders and ....oh, let's face it - it just would not happen.

So to have the freedom of going up and down the old winding staircases, stepping over birds nests, hanging onto what was left of frames, walls and balancing on ledges was fun and exciting.

Did we see the Puka? No we did not, but I am glad that whatever elementals were there that we did not see were looking after us and keeping us safe.

Then we went on to Birr Castle.

The castle itself is out of bounds, but we went there for the gardens, which are expansive.

There are 120 acres of gardens and parklands to enjoy within the castle demesne. It’s home to many rare plants, collected over the years by the Earls of Rosse on their overseas travels. The current Earl and Countess have also traveled to many countries in search of new plant species for the gardens.

There are now over 2000 species of plant as well as over 40 champion trees throughout the gardens.

By the end of the day we were totally wrecked, but the gardens were beautiful with fields of wild flowers carpeting the grounds.

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